The HP Deskjet 3820 is a cute colour printer I bought for after 2 to 3 months of market survey. I am from eastern India and so the nearest place where I carried out the survey for different brands was Kolkata. To tell you the truth, this model 3820 amongst a series of new models of HP fascinated me. I had seen and tested printers from the leading brands like Canon, Epson, Lexmark etc. First of all Lexmark printers were horrible with regards to features and also price. Moreover the models available were not so attractive. The output I did not like too. Next coming to Canon, well the name by itself is a leader but after all you have to be satisfied in the long run. The dealer whom I approached, tried to convince me that you get three separate ink tanks and when one tank is over, you can replace that particular tank and that is the greatest advantage within one particular model of Canon which I was being shown. But somehow I discarded the idea of owning a canon.
Before I continue the story for the other brands let me tell one most important thing before you go for a printer is you should seriously ask yourself ’’How much I will use my printer and what for I will use it?’’ Accordingly you decide which type of deskjet or inkjet you should go for? If your needs are for high quality graphic works etc then you should go for a photo quality printer, provided u have the budget. Like for e.g. after the 3820 model of HP you will get the 5550 model which was priced at a decent 9K+. If your need is limited to office paper work then the lower end printers woule be peaceful for example in HP there are the 3325 models which are priced at around 3K. Although my 3820 was priced 6K+, now the prices are still falling.
So being not satisfied with the performance of canon, I surveyed the Epson printers which also turned me down although at the initial level I was bit fascinated with one particular model (i dont recollect the model no.) which my friend bought at a decent 3K gross. The inks were also damn cheap. So that time I made up my mind that epson is the one I need. But then I hardly realised that epson printers are a blunder. I guess very few people know that every time you switch on the epson printers, it does a lot of preparation and mind you there is a automated head cleaning process during this preparation, when a lot of ink is wasted. This no one realises. People think that oh! the inks are so cheap then Epson is the best. But if you calculate for the long run, you will start scratching your head, I bet. So that was all the Epson story. The colour print outs were not at all impressive except when taken on photo paper. I have also seen later other models of Epson and after that simply discarded the idea of owning an Epson.
Finally landed up for the HP and this 3820 model was cute enough (i would say Love at first sight!!) and also exactly suited my requirement too. Performance wise it was very good. Prints are excellent. Only thing is that the inks are bit costly. But I have personally felt that inspite of the ink cost the performance is excellent. And to tell u the fact I always take text or tables or any black and white figure prints in draft mode. There are three print modes in this model(Draft, Normal and Best). I occasionally take prints in normal or best modes since the draft mode prints are quite near to laser prints if you see them from a distance of 25-30cm. So why take in normal or best modes?? I generally do a lot of graphics work in Coreldraw 10 and the prints from corel are awesome in normal mode. I have also taken colour prints on Transparencies and the results are superb in best quality mode. It took a little less than a minute to print a full colour page.
Let me mention some important features in this 3820 model
a) You can cancel print at any time, there is a button on the printer for this job.
b)In best quality you can get a resolution of upto 1440 dpi. I have already tested it and the output is fascinating.
c)Draft mode printing speed is very fast 12 Pages per min and print comes good, very rarely I have noticed the letters to be distorted. Speed is also reaonable in best mode, I feel it is not slow and not very fast at the same time.
d)Printer prints with very less noise.
e)Low ink indicator light is there on the printer. Moreover on-screen ink level indicator (for black and color separate indicators) gives you an idea how far you are away when you will run short of ink.
f)Front paper loading and front paper printing technique. The loading tray can be folded and this saves space. This feature is really cute amongst others.
g)The printer when switched on, while starting up and getting ready, doesnot create lots of noise as other brand printers do especially Epson.
h)The paper tray holds around 80 ordinary sheets, although manual says 100 sheets.
i)You get a software cd and a poster which explains how to get hooked up for the first time and also a booklet with this printer but friends, do not expect any palettes or images supplied extra in a CD or any other imaging software with the CD as supplied with Epson printers. HP fellows dont give us all these bonus things as Epson people do.
j)Ink cartridges are given with the printer. HP15(black) and HP 78 (tri colour). Loading the cartridges for first timers will be easy, not at all a tough job, I feel. The black cartridge costs 1050 bucks approx while the colour one costed 1450. I bought two of them since after a long time I bought the 3820 I now feel I have to replace the black one soon. I always get messages that ’’Please change the black ink cartridge’’ and also on screen level is very low, which I keep on ignoring since my draft mode prints are still really good.
k)An excellent dust cover from HP has been provided with the printer to protect your printer from dust etc.
l)There is no printer cable supplied in the printer box, mind it...This one you have to buy one, which barely costs 50-60 bucks (the good one)---parallel port cable. Dont Go for the USB cable...they are costlier and of not so great use over the parallel cables. Well if you have no parallel ports free on ur PC CPU then USB is the choice.
m)The 3820 has a 2MB built-in RAM memory.
n)The 3820 dimensions are 445mm wide, 197mm high, 256mm deep and power consumption is 25W average when printing.
o)This 3820 really helps in two-sided printing. The printer automatically prints the odd numbered pages first and after that a message appears to reload the page so that it can print the even ones.
p)The software that comes with the CD loads a shortcut for HP Printer assistant on ur desktop which provides a hell lot of help. It assists you in whatever problem u may face with ur printer. It even assists in cleaning the print cartridges automatically when print quality has decreased. It also helps in calibrating the print cartridges to ensure optimal print quality. Everything the printer does by itself, only you hae to do the clik clik job gazing at the screen.
So thats it, I think all these information will really assist anyone to decide his/her buy. Finally I would say that the ink cost may be bit high (I think HP should start considering or thinking over this) but performance wise and quality wise the 3820 model has won my heart and I am completely satisfied with it. Morever I use it on a regular basis for my projects and I never have to worry anymore since all my printing solutions is already at hand.