HP Officejet Pro 8000 Enterprise review

There's also little doubt that, with just four large ink tanks accessed through a front panel, the Officejet is easier to maintain than many lasers. HP's 940 cartridges are available in XL versions that yield 2,200 black pages and 1,400 for each colour. Using the best retail prices we could find, that equates to less than 0.7p per mono page and just over 2p for a colour page.

HP's cost, energy and ease-of-management claims stack up, but...

While that may not sound remarkable in the context of a departmental printer, it's dramatically cheaper than an equivalent colour laser. By comparison, Kyocera Mita's 250 FS-C5150DN which has among the lowest running costs we've encountered costs around 50 per cent more per mono page and almost 200 per cent more in colour.

HP's cost, energy and ease-of-management claims stack up, but the quality and speed of the Officejet's prints don't quite match those of a laser printer. The Officejet's first page out time of 16s is slower than a typical laser unless the latter is sleeping. At just 9.4ppm over 25 pages it lags significantly behind when printing text, and at just 4.1ppm on our graphics-rich colour document test, almost all colour lasers would leave it in the dust.