Expert’s Rating
Our Verdict
The OfficeJet Pro 6970 is a various , high - quality printer that can assist you to scale down track costs . Just be deliberate when choose whether to make up for ceremonious ink cartridge or a subscription .
It ’s a lilliputian on the bulky side , butHP ’s OfficeJet Pro 6970provides an impressive range of characteristic and high - speed printing that make it a good option for anyone who works from home or in a little power .
If you ’re going to be using the printer at oeuvre every solar day , HP tempts you with a free , three - month visitation for its‘Instant Ink ’ subscription strategy . It ’s still possible to buy ordinary switch magazine , though , so you should believe carefully about your printing process penury in lodge to pick out the most cost - effective direction of bribe ink for your office .
In our review we quiz and range the HP ’s blueprint , feature of speech set , print swiftness and quality , and run costs , to assist you decide if it ’s the Mac printing machine for you . More cosmopolitan buying advice can be found in ourBest Mac printersgroup test .
( notice that this exemplar is for the UK market . HP tells us that the closest equivalent weight for the US food market is theOfficeJet Pro 6978 , which has been formally discontinued but may still be found onAmazonand elsewhere . )
Features and design
While theHP Tangowe retrospect latterly was a succinct little pressman shoot for at home users and selfie junkie , the OfficeJet Pro 6970 is a more serious - minded gadget for produce professional - reckon documents in a home place or small business . It ’s a 4 - in-1 multifunction gadget that combine a printer , scanner , copier and fax , along with an automatic document bird feeder that helps to speed up scanning , copying and facsimile machine job .
That range of features imply the OfficeJet Pro 6970 take up a fair bit of space , measure a full 464 mm wide , 228 mm high and 390 mm deep , and weighing in at just over 8 kilo . It ’s not the form of printer that you may just sit on a ledge , so you ’ll need to make some room on a reasonably tough desk or table before you get started .
It ’ll make its keep , though , as the chunky printer has room for a large paper tray that holds 225 sheets of A4 newspaper , along with a 60 - sheet output tray , and it has a recommend print mass of 800 pages per month , which should be enough for most home workers and lowly offices .
The HP provides USB and Wi - Fi connectivity , with support for Apple ’s AirPrint for iOS devices , and there ’s also an Ethernet port for a wired office connection as well . It includes two - sided printing , with options for printing a assortment of dissimilar pamphlet formats , and the document affluent on top of the unit can even scan or copy two side of a varlet as well , so the OfficeJet Pro 6970 can handle a all-encompassing orbit of printing tasks in your office .
Print speed
If you ’re going to be printing a couple of hundred pages per month ( or more ) then you do n’t need to be forget standing around while the pressman does its problem , so the OfficeJet Pro 6970 needs to allow both quality and speed .
It ’s quoted by HP as running at 20 varlet per min ( ppm ) for unmixed text papers , and 11ppm for colour . Our run really raise a very hefty 17ppm for text , with coloration coming in at a more small 8ppm , but that should still be fast enough for most abode exploiter and small offices .
Print quality
The quality is telling , with our Word and PDF documents revealing smooth , detailed textbook that could give a more expensive optical maser printing machine a rill for its money .
color graphics are well too , and the OfficeJet Pro 6970 can turn its hand to the occasional selfie or product brochures , produce bright , bluff colouring when used with glossy picture newspaper .
Running costs
This is a workhorse printer for day-by-day use in your office , so it ’s important to keep track of running costs . However , the OfficeJet Pro 6970 complicates matters as it not only provides a number of different sizes of ink cartridge , it also allows you to sign on up for one of HP ’s Instant Ink subscription strategy .
This means that there are a number of dissimilar options that will affect the twenty-four hours - to - solar day running game costs of the printer , bet on whether your workplace leans more towards simple text documents , or a wider range of colour graphics and documents .
The black ink cartridges trade by HP come in no less than three different sizes – standard , XL , and XXL . However , the standard and XL cartridge are quite expensive , and not recommended if you know that you ’ll be printing text documents on a unconstipated daily basis . The XXL black magazine is a bit more affordable , cost £ 38 and hold up for 1,500 pages , which do work out at 2.5p per page – although even that is still a little higher than we ’d like .
color printing is more fair , though , and the people of color cartridges are only uncommitted in two size – standard and XL . The three stock cartridge with cyan , magenta and yellow inks come to a total of £ 27 and last for 315 Page , which is tantamount to 8.6p per page , which is n’t bad at all . And swap to the XL cartridges brings the price per page down to a very competitive 5.3p .
Instant Ink
But , as we ’ve mentioned , the OfficeJet Pro 6970 also move over you the option of signing up for one of HP ’s Instant Ink subscription schemes . These scheme allow you to impress a fixed turn of pages every month , which are paid for by a monthly subscription fee . When the pressman start to run low on ink the printer software simply sends an e-mail off to HP and asks for new ink cartridge to be sent in the post , pay for by your monthly subscription .
There are several subscription options uncommitted , start at just £ 1.99 per month , which allows you to print 50 pages each calendar month . That gives you a cost of 4p per Sir Frederick Handley Page , regardless of whether you ’re publish in black - and - livid or color .
That ’s expensive for round-eyed contraband textbook document , but very competitive for colour printing – with other subscription plans declare oneself even lower price as well . So , if you mainly need to print a lot of letter and other text documents , you ’ll be better off just buying an XXL contraband ink cartridge every few months to keep the costs down .
But , if you want to print a pot of photo , mellow - character brochures or other merchandising materials , then you could economize a lot of money by signing up for one of the Instant Ink subscription . And , to sweeten the sight , HP is currently offering that free , three - month trial for the Instant Ink schema as well .
Verdict
A multifunction printer and fax such as the OfficeJet Pro 6970 will be overkill for some multitude , but it can sure enough handle any office printing undertaking that you ’re probable to have at it if you cultivate from home or go a humble business .
The cost of ink cartridges complicates matter , with both conventional cartridges and HP ’s monthly subscriptions offering different pricing levels for dissimilar types of document . However , as long as you opt carefully , the OfficeJet Pro 6970 is a versatile , mellow - quality printing machine that will help you to shrink running costs for your agency documents and other printing tasks .
