Usually, laser products dominate the sector of print equipment for workgroups and corporate clients. And this applies to both monochrome and full-color printers and MFPs. Laser printers are popular due to their high print speeds and low cost per printed page.
With the launch of the new X555 and X585 series devices, Hewlett Packard is redefining the corporate printing landscape. HP has introduced new thermal inkjet devices from the X555 and X585 series to the market, which compete with laser models in both print speed and cost per print. These are the HP Officejet Enterprise X555 Inkjet Printer and the HP Officejet Enterprise Color MFP X585 Multifunction Printer.
Technology Fundamentals
The main technical solution, due to which high printing speed and phenomenal reliability of equipment is achieved, is a fixed print head made using HP Page Wide technology. This system was originally used in high-end commercial printing equipment and has since been adapted to smaller workgroup devices. The print head is located across the entire width of the page, and only the sheet of paper moves during printing. The head itself remains stationary, and drops of ink, as the page moves, are fired onto the paper, forming an image.
The printing mechanism is 4-color and structurally consists of 10 microcircuits, which HP calls crystals. They are located across the entire width of the sheet in a checkerboard pattern with a slight overlap. There are 1056 nozzles for each color on each die, that is, there are 4224 nozzles on one die. In total, the print head contains 42240 nozzles, which ensures high print quality. The crystals are arranged with an overlap of 30 nozzles, resulting in high-quality printing with clear image and character borders.
Electronics is integrated into each crystal, and control of all nozzles of one block is carried out by only 10 electrical connections. When printing, the nozzles are automatically checked for operability, and in the event of a malfunction of some nozzles, passive and active nozzle replacement is activated to maintain high print quality.
Due to the new technology of the printhead, high reliability of the entire device is also achieved, since there are no moving parts, mechanical tracking system and flexible cables. Therefore, the life of the print head is equal to the life of the printer itself.
The printer uses HP pigment inks that provide rich color and resist fading and smearing. Pigment ink does not penetrate deep into the structure of the paper, which gives deep blacks when printing documents, and the saturation of color images.
In total, five device modifications are offered – two printers and three MFPs, which differ in functionality and hardware content. Since they are produced on the basis of one printer, we will first consider the base model – X555dn.
HP Officejet Enterprise X555 Printer
In appearance, the X555 series printers are immediately different from most inkjet devices. The device has an interesting design, has a capacious paper tray, and a convenient platform for printed documents. Attention is drawn to the color touch screen, with a diagonal of almost 11 cm. It is on it that all printer control is carried out. From the side, the device resembles software-controlled equipment. We can say that HP brings to the market not just a printer, but a technological device for color printing, which is fast, economical and easy to manage.
The printer’s print speed in economy mode is up to 70 pages per minute, and ISO up to 42 ppm. Moreover, these values are the same for both black and white and color printing, and for laser printers, the speed of full-color printing is somewhat lower than monochrome. The printer comes standard with automatic two-sided printing at up to 22 ppm in both monochrome and color.
The laser printer takes some time to warm up the thermal unit, and the Enterprise X555 printer starts working immediately after the print command.
The printer has a capacious 500-sheet tray, so you can place an entire stack of A4 paper at once. Additionally, you can install one more of the same tray, and the X555xh model has two trays at once in the basic configuration. For custom media of varying weights, there is a 50-sheet multi-purpose tray that folds out on the left side of the printer.
The output tray can hold up to 300 printed sheets, so you don’t have to worry about taking finished documents out of the printer often. Modification of HP Officejet Enterprise X555xh except for an additional tray, has a secure hard drive of 320 Gb.
The printer contains very capacious cartridges that are conveniently replaced through the front door. The color cartridges are rated for 6,600 pages each and the black cartridge for 10,000 pages.
The starter cartridges that come with the printer have a slightly smaller volume – 3400 and 7800 pages, respectively, which is also a lot, even compared to laser printers, not to mention conventional inkjet models. By the way, for the convenience of users, when replacing cartridges, this process is shown as an animation on the interactive screen.
In addition, the printer has many other useful little things. For example, the power button is conveniently located on the front of the printer, so you don’t have to feel for the button on the back of the printer to turn the power on and off.
And the illuminated “home page” button on the control panel allows you to quickly return to the main menu without wandering through the settings pages. The screen has an angle adjustment, so each user can adjust the display to their height or to eliminate glare on the screen.
On the front panel of the printer, next to the display, there is a USB port for quickly connecting external media and printing files contained in them.
