IT Pro Verdict

Pros

+
Multifunctional
+
Six months' worth of HP Instant Ink

Cons

HP's OfficeJet Pro 9010e is a colour inkjet multifunction peripheral that can print, copy, scan, and send and receive faxes. It's well suited to a home office, with sensible office features including wired and wireless networking, and a USB host port for walk-up prints or scans. It's also adept at paper handling, featuring a 250-sheet cassette, automatic duplex printing and a 35-sheet automatic document feeder. This also duplexes, so the 9010e can make double-sided prints, scans, copies and faxes.

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The OfficeJet Pro 9010e follows much the same style as HP's current range of home MFPs, although it's been sobered up somewhat with the addition of sensible grey plastics at the top and bottom. It's not a bad-looking device, brightened up to a degree by its 6.9cm colour touchscreen along with a couple of concealed status LEDs on the top left side.

Unpack and install the 9010e and one of your first considerations will be whether to sign up for HP+, HP's "smart printing system". Doing so qualifies you for six months' worth of HP Instant Ink, a subscription service that automatically orders new cartridges as you need them. The free offer is worth up to 4,200 pages, which isn't to be sniffed at, but HP+ membership means you must agree to keep the printer connected to the internet, and to use only HP's own cartridges.

Usually we balk at this imposition, but happily, the 9010e provides you with credible alternatives. You can sign up for Instant Ink anyway – the most expensive, 700-page-per-month plan works out at just 2.7p per page – or you can buy your own cartridges. In recent months we've tested HP printers costing as much as 24p per page, but use the highest-capacity cartridges and on the 9010e it's a very reasonable 5.3p.

Cost of ownership fears allayed, you can just get on with printing. The OfficeJet Pro 9010e takes a while to get going, needing 23 seconds to deliver the first page of black text, but it doesn't hang about afterward. It reached 18.8 pages per minute (ppm) on our black text test and even hit 7.3ppm on our very demanding colour graphics test – excellent for an inkjet in this range. It duplex-printed ten sides of colour graphics onto five pages in just under three minutes, a rate of 3.6 images per minute.

Image

This MFP also has a rapid scanner. It completed a preview in six seconds, needing only seven seconds to scan an A4 page at 150 dots per inch (dpi). The same scan took ten seconds at 300dpi, whereas capturing a 6 x 4in photo at 600dpi took a mere 15 seconds. Only at the maximum 1,200dpi did we have more of a wait – here the photo scan took 80 seconds.

With a fast printer and fast scanner, it's no surprise that this MFP made quick copies, spitting out a single black or colour page in ten seconds. Multipage ADF copies were impressive, needing only 78 seconds in black or colour. We timed a ten-page, 20-side duplex colour copy at a fraction under five minutes.

With pigmented inks, this isn't the ideal printer for glossy photos. This caveat aside, our results were impressive. Black text looks laser quality to the naked eye, while colour graphics were strong, let down only slightly by some subtle banding.

While duplexed inkjet prints are usually fainter than single-sided ones, we couldn't see any obvious differences here. Photocopies retained lots of detail from the originals. Black copies were excellent, though colour ones weren't entirely faithful to the original hues. Typically for an HP scanner, high-res photos showed evidence of digital sharpening. There's no option to turn this off, but it's noticeable only when you zoom in. The defaults work much better for document scans: our 300dpi A4 test was crisp and perfectly exposed. Unusually, the scanner didn't do so well at 150dpi, delivering a pixellated document with some compression artifacts.

Stick to medium-resolution scanning, don't bother with photo prints, and this MFP is unlikely to ever fall short. Its speed and sensible feature set mean it will keep pace with all but the most manic micro businesses. Sweetening the deal, it comes with a two-year warranty, upgradable to three years if you sign up for HP+. With sensible running costs either way, signing up for Instant Ink also feels like a genuine choice, and this MFP is all the better for it.

After a brief career in corporate IT, Simon Handby combined his love of technology and writing when he made the move to Computer Shopper magazine. As a technology reviewer he's since tested everything from routers and switches, to smart air fryers and doorbells, and covered technology such as EVs, TVs, solar power and the singularity.

During more than 15 years as Shopper's long-time printer reviewer, Simon tried, tested and wrote up literally hundreds of home, small office and workgroup printers. He continues reviewing smart products and printers for a variety of publications, and has been an IT Pro contributor since 2010. Simon is almost never happier than when surrounded by printers and paper, applying his stopwatch and a seasoned eye to find the best performing, best value products for business users.