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My Overall Rating : ★★★☆☆

HP OfficeJet J4680 All-in-One Wireless Printer Review

The Officejet J4680 looks similar to the J6480 and the rest of the printers in HP’s current lineup. The majority of the chassis is a dark slate grey with muted shades of white and silver coating the sides and the control panel. Standing in at 17 inches long by 15.81 inches wide by 8.53 inches deep and weighing a manageable 13 pounds, the printer itself takes up very little space. The main reason why its footprint is so small is because the output tray is removable, but the catch is that the output tray doubles as the input tray, meaning that all the outbound prints rest almost directly on top of the blank paper, with only a two small plastic tabs separating the two “trays.” In addition, the input tray can only hold 100 sheets of plain white paper (the Officejet J6480 can hold 250 sheets by comparison), but you can get another 20 sheets into the ADF on top of the printer. Another gripe we have with the paper handling is that the adjustable arms that shrink to support 4×6 inch photo paper sit all the way inside the mouth of the printer, which could pose a loading problem.

The control panel takes up a majority of the front side of the J4680, comprised of a numerical keypad for inputting fax numbers, a small two line LCD, a directional pad, a Wi-Fi toggle key, and a variety of access buttons including power, cancel, back, and OK. Also, a pass-through light blinks green or red to indicate the status of the printer. Navigating the menus on the LCD is a little tricky because of the horizontal layout of the screen, but accessing the different functions (fax, copy, scan, print) becomes intuitive after a few hours of playing around with the buttons. We also like the helpful instructions that pop up on the LCD if you hover over an item for a while, but HP once again trips up and doesn’t include a media card reader or even a USB port, so you can forget about direct printing from a digital camera.

The top of the printer lifts open to reveal the 1200dpi flatbed scanner, measuring 8.5 inches by 11.7 inches to fit a variety of media sizes, but you’ll run into trouble if the document you’re scanning is too thick or uneven to sit flush on the scanner–we wish HP had built hinges onto the door. Scanning destination options include scanning directly to a file, a Word document, an e-mail, or a PDF file. Again, since there’s no reader, transferring directly to a memory card is impossible. The copy function is straightforward as well–you can fit the copy to a single page or enlarge/decrease the size, alter the quality of the reprint to save ink, and make the copy lighter or darker in contrast to the original image. You can make up to 100 copies at once, although you’ll obviously need to refill the paper tray somewhere in the middle of the job.

We’re pleased that HP is starting to include wireless access on almost all of their newer printers, and the J4680 is no different, although it separates itself from others on the market with the capability to turn it on and off using a button on the front panel. Setting up the 802.11g print server to connect to a computer is incredibly easy–using the network preferences utility on the driver, it’s simply a matter of waiting for the printer to sniff out your network and entering your password–the printer will do the rest of the pairing automatically. The whole process, from start to wireless printing, took less than 10 minutes of tangle-free installation.

Another way that HP keeps size and cost down is by incorporating the two-ink cartridge bay into the middle section of the printer, as opposed to adding a completely separate drawer just for ink. Unfortunately, the printer pulls all of its color ink from a single cartridge–you don’t get the cost-savings that individually replaceable inks provide. The driver keeps a rough estimate of the remaining ink left in each cartridge and displays it within the HP Solution Center included with the driver. In our testing experience, we found that the HP-901 model of black ink was barely large enough to accommodate our test prints, and we suspect that HP is guilty of bundling a “starter-pack” cartridge size in the box, since our tests don’t demand a large amount of black ink. We’re also surprised to see that the color cartridge remained almost full at the end of our sampling, despite printing a large amount of color photos.

Let’s take a look at all of the HP OfficeJet J4680 features/specification:

  • Wireless
  • Borderless photo printing
  • Up to 4800 x 1200 optimized dpi color when printing from a computer and 1200 input dpi
  • Direct photo printing
  • Color print; color copy; color scan; color fax

If you want to buy HP OfficeJet J4680, you can get it cheap online through Amazon.com here. They offer special discount price and reliable shipping service.

Let me show you what current owners have to say about it:

“…First of all, I must make clear I’m using this printer with computers running Ubuntu Linux, using version 2.8.10 of the HPLIP driver software (the first version to support it). I have no comments on the Windows or Mac software that comes with the printer, as I don’t use it.

I set the printer up with the control panel it has, it found my home network (802.11g, WPA2 encryption) immediately and I entered the network password and it connected first time. (after a power cut later, it reconnected itself fine).

The printer setup on my Linux computer automatically found the printer (wirelessly) without any problem and configured it in under a minute. Printed test page fine.

I’ve since printed other documents, done a 400MB full-page 1200dpi scan, sheet fed photocopies, enlarged photocopies etc all without any problem. All wireless (where applicable), haven’t needed to plug the USB cable in. It just works. I haven’t had any reason to test the fax features (don’t have a landline phone).

Quality-wise, color images are not quite as good as my older (wired) HP C3180 printer, but still quite acceptable. For printing and (especially) scanning the J4680 is fairly slow, for home use that doesn’t really matter.

I’ve even set up my Nokia E51 phone to print wirelessly to this printer, again a matter of entering the configuration details on the phone and it just worked.

I’ve deducted one star for the lack of a backlight on the screen, it’s really hard to read in anything other than perfect light. Other than that, I’m struggling to find anything to complain about. I’ll update this review when I do find something…”

If you want more info on this HP OfficeJet J4680, I suggest you take a look at the HP OfficeJet J4680 reviews on Amazon here. A lot of consumer positive response to this HP OfficeJet J4680 here.

Here is why HP OfficeJet J4680 is worth buying:

HP OfficeJet J4680 All-in-One Wireless Printer : Pro

  • Inexpensive; auto-document feeder; Wi-Fi connectivity; driver settings provide helpful shortcuts; small footprint.

HP OfficeJet J4680 All-in-One Wireless Printer : Con

  • Painfully slow output speed; awkward page handling; lacks page status monitor and media card reader; low output page count; ships with shallow ink cartridges.

Conclusion

The OfficeJet J4680 is a good all-around multifunction printer. Despite its slow print speeds and a couple of paper jams when using the plain paper we stock in the office, we found it to be a capable printer, scanner, copier, and fax machine. Add in some of the software niceties, and you have a recommended product.

This HP OfficeJet J4680 can be ordered directly from Amazon.com today. CLICK HERE for the best price and get your HP OfficeJet J4680 today! They are 100% secure site so you can be rest assured that your details are protected when ordering.

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