At a Glance

Expert’s Rating

Our Verdict

The initial purchase price of the OfficeJet 3830 is obviously very attractive, and will appeal to many home users and smaller offices. Its running costs are also quite good when printing in colour, so it will be a good option for printing photos, or reports and presentations that contain colour graphics. However, simple mono printing is more expensive, and the OfficeJet 3830 could prove expensive to run if you print a lot of simple text documents. If you don’t need to print all that much, though, this is a great-value all-in-one printer

Best Prices Today: HP Officejet 3830

At first glance, HP’s new OfficeJet 3830 looks like an absolute bargain of a printer . Costing £60, this compact multifunction device offers home users and small businesses a really affordable printer, scanner, copier and fax machine. It also includes a 35-page document feeder, built-in Wi-Fi, and even support for Apple’s AirPrint so that you print from your iPad and iPhone.

Also see: Best Black Friday Printer Deals

HP OfficeJet 3830: features

The 60-sheet input tray and 25-sheet output tray are fairly small, but should be adequate for a small home office. There’s no Ethernet for wired networks, but that’s only a minor omission, and the only potential deal-breaker is the reliance on manual duplex (two-sided) printing, which requires you to turn the pages over and reinsert them into the paper tray in order to print on both sides.

HP OfficeJet 3830: performance

Performance is pretty good too. HP doesn’t quote speeds, but we got 11 pages per minute when printing text documents, which is pretty good going for a printer in this price range. Colour printing was slower, at just 4ppm for mixed text and graphics, while a 4×6 photo print took a full 60 seconds, but that’s still fine for occasional colour work.

Text quality was good, but didn’t have quite the crisp, smooth outlines provided by the best inkjet printers. HP only specifies a print resolution of ‘up to 1200×1200 dpi rendered’ – which basically means that it’s a low-res printer that uses some clever algorithms to try and enhance print quality. We’d say that the OfficeJet 3830 will be fine for printing routine letters and reports, but if you require top quality text output then it might be worth paying a little extra for an inkjet or laser printer that provides higher native resolution.

We couldn’t fault the colour and photo output, though, which was excellent for a printer that only uses three coloured inks (cyan, magenta and yellow). But it’s those ink cartridges that give the OfficeJet 3830 a sting in the tail. We took one look at the two tiny ink cartridges – one for black and a tri-colour cartridge containing the three colour inks – and immediately started to worry about the running costs.

The good news is that colour printing isn’t too bad at all. Shop around online and you can buy a two-pack containing both standard-size cartridges for £22.98, while a two-pack with the high-yield XL cartridges cost £39.98. The standard-size colour cartridge will last for about 165 pages, which works out at a quite reasonable 7p per page, while the XL cartridges provides 330 pages and brings that down to a competitive 6p per page.

Unfortunately, the black ink cartridges don’t provide such good value for money. The standard black ink cartridge only lasts for a modest 190 pages, which comes to a whopping 6p per page. The XL cartridge increases the yield to 480 pages, but that still works out at just over 4p per page, which is well above average for an inkjet printer.

There is another option, though. The OfficeJet 3830 is on HP’s Instant Ink scheme , which charges a flat monthly fee for a fixed number of pages. There are a number of different options available for Instant Ink – starting at only £1.99 per month – but they still tend to favour colour printing, and leave mono printing looking relatively expensive.

That shouldn’t be an issue for most people, and the flip side is that it’s no more expensive to print a photo than a single page of black text. You can enroll in the scheme when you buy the printer, but you don’t start paying until you receive your first Instant Ink cartridge.There’s no contract, either, so you’re not tied into any kind of subscription – you can stop paying whenever you like.

Cartridges are identical to those you’d buy off the shelf – not a lower-quality version. You’ll also get a pre-paid envelope to return your empty cartridges. For many people this fixed cost is a nice way to budget for your printing: you can print 600 ‘pages’ per year for £24.

Specs

HP Officejet 3830: Specs

• 4-colour (CMYK) inkjet printer
• Print resolution 1200x1200dpi (enhanced)
• Scanner resolution 1200dpi
• Fax resolution 200dpi
• Connectivity – Wi-Fi, USB 2.0, Apple AirPrint
• 60-sheet input tray, 25-sheet output tray
• Dimensions 222x454x362mm
• Weight 5.76kg

Best Prices Today: HP Officejet 3830

Printer Reviews

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Home printers are working overtime for many people, with more of us than ever working from home. That means stock is hard to find along with decent deals but we’ve searched high and low for the best discounts nevertheless.

If your printer can’t cope or you’re sick of high ink costs, buying a new printer can solve the problem. We’ve rounded up the biggest bargains, and we also explain what to look for when buying a new printer.

With more demand than usual, printer deals are hard to find but here are the best ones in the US and UK.

What to look for in printer deals

It’s important to keep in mind that the price of the printer is just the beginning. You’ll also need to consider ink costs. Often what looks like a great value printer can turn out to be expensive in the long run because of expensive ink. Some manufacturers, including HP, now offer ink subscriptions which give you a fixed price for a certain number of prints per month, which makes it easy to know how much you’ll be spending.

Most modern printers are multifunction all-in-one devices that can scan and copy documents in addition to your standard printing capabilities. Some include a fax machine, too.

You can find printer reviews by category – choose from budget, laser, laser colour, inkjet and all-in-one models

Look out for Wi-Fi-enabled printers, as these are incredibly useful for when you need to print from your phone or a laptop. Also, consider whether they have USB ports or memory card slots for easier photo printing.

There are lots of different types of printers available, which can make it really tricky to decide which is right for you. It’s worth first noting that the printer market moves very slowly, so don’t be afraid of buying last year’s model.

Inkjet vs Laser

These are the two main printing technologies. An inkjet printer sprays tiny dots of ink onto paper and are generally cheaper than laser printers (though you may pay more in cartridges in the long run).

Laser printers, on the other hand, use a powdered ink called toner. The paper gets electronically charged to attract the ink into position. It’s then fused with heat onto the page. Laser printers work best for text and generally for printing quickly at high volume.

In terms of colour printing, inkjet printers can produce high-quality images but are usually slower. Colour laser printers, while faster than inkjets are more expensive to buy.

Ink cartridges might look cheaper than toner cartridges, but consider the cost per page: toner can often print 1000 pages or more, but ink might last only 100-200 pages. You can also use third-party toner which is much cheaper than genuine toner from Xerox, Samsung and others. Just make sure using it doesn’t void your warranty.

For more advice on which printer to buy, visit our best printer round-up .

Where to find printer deals

We’re bringing you our carefully curated list of the best printer deals right here, but here are a few retailers you can check out for yourself for printer deals:

US

• Amazon
• BestBuy
• Walmart
• Target
• Newegg

UK

• Amazon
• Argos
• Cartridge People
• Ebuyer
• HP Store
• John Lewis
• Ryman
• Currys
• AO
• Best Buy
• Box
• Scan
• Littlewoods

Where to find ink cartridge deals

Groupon often has discounts popular brands such as HP, Canon and Epson. See Groupon cartridge deals .

eBay is another place to check, though ensure you buy from an authorised reseller or a trustworthy source with a strong track record of positive reviews and ratings. See cartridge deals on eBay .

Author: Jim Martin, Executive Editor, Tech Advisor

Jim has been testing and reviewing products for over 20 years. His main beats include VPN services and antivirus. He also covers smart home tech, mesh Wi-Fi and electric bikes.

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