HP C5540 Ink
Photosmart C5540 Ink Cartridges

HP C5540 Printer Review

Need a convenient and easy-to-use multipurpose device for the home office? The HP Photosmart C5540 could be a good place to look. Windows and Mac compatible, this inkjet unit can print on almost any type of paper like plain, legal, card, envelope, transparency, label and photo. Its weight isn't portable, weighing 15 pounds, but it is still lighter than many other options on the market. It also has a respectable size of 8.5x17.8x15.2 inches, which won't take up too much space.

This all in one primarily only uses two HP C5540 ink cartridges, although two optional printer ink tanks are available as well. The two needed Photosmart C5540 ink cartridges are black and tricolor—yielding 200 pages and 170 pages, respectively. The optional tanks hold photo color and photo gray printer ink which yield about 130 pages and 80 pages, respectively. This thermal inkjet printer uses drop-on-demand printing technology to create realistic and beautiful images, and with the help of the black HP C5540 ink, about 32 pages can be printed per minute, and with color ink, 24 pages per minute can be printed. These speeds are the same for the copier as well.

The copier can create up to 50 copies from an original, and it has the ability to enlarge images up to 400 % of their original size. It also uses a fit-to-page function to make the task even easier for users. The printer and copier alike both create resolutions of 4800x1200 dpi using color HP C5540 ink and with black the highest possible resolution is 1200x1200 dpi.

The C5540 is also compatible with a large number of memory cards—Compact Flash, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, Secure Digital, MultiMediaCard and an xD Picture Card. Though the Photosmart C5540 ink is relatively inexpensive, its low page yields mean that buyers will need to buy ink often, which may be a turnoff for high volume printers.