| The market for mobile printers is not large and | | | | over 5.5 lbs so you certainly wouldn't want to be |
| therefore is not well served by the major | | | | carrying it about all day. |
| manufacturers; HP has recently released a new | | | | It offers most of the necessary ports, PictBridge |
| HP Officejet printer into the market as a direct | | | | USB, standard USB, and an SD/miniSD/MMC slot |
| replacement for the HP Deskjet 460c. The H470 | | | | but does not include a Compact Flash port that |
| comes in three models, the base H470, the | | | | was available in the old 460c, so if you are a |
| H470b that includes a rechargeable battery and | | | | DSLR user you will have to look elsewhere for |
| the H470wbt that has the battery plus a | | | | your mobile printing requirements. |
| Bluetooth adapter; none of these printers are | | | | Print speeds for the H470 are a slight |
| cheap with even the basic model costing around | | | | improvement over the 460c with 5.5 pages of |
| £150. Sceptics might say this is because of the | | | | text per minute as opposed to 4.8 for the 460c, |
| lack of competition in this sector of the market | | | | this is still slower than the Canon opposition, the |
| but I suspect that this is closer to the real cost of | | | | IP90V that achieves over 6 pages per |
| a printer without the manufacturer relying on | | | | minute.Presentation, graphics, and photo speeds |
| selling large amounts of replacement ink cartridges | | | | stayed the same as the 460c, slightly edging out |
| that normally subsidise the retail price of normal | | | | the Canon in presentation and graphics but lagging |
| printers. | | | | a little behind for photos. |
| Whilst we are talking about cartridges, the printer | | | | We were amazed to find that the print quality of |
| comes with an HP337 black cartridge and an | | | | the H470's had substantially deteriorated |
| HP343 colour cartridge, these are both low | | | | compared to the 460c and was also no match |
| capacity cartridges and when it is time to order | | | | for the Canon. The 460c prints show sharp |
| replacements you should order the high capacity | | | | characters and pure black dark lines, but the H470 |
| HP338 and HP344 cartridges. The most | | | | printed letters with somewhat fuzzy edges and |
| economical replacements are either theHP twin | | | | blurred text in large font sizes. Bold text and light |
| packs or a good quality compatible cartridge. The | | | | graphics proved an even bigger disappointment, |
| printer can also utilise the HP348 photo cartridge | | | | dots appeared on thick edges and picture outlines |
| but if you wanta mobile printer for photos, | | | | were jagged and suffered from vertical lines |
| youwould be better of with a more photo-specific | | | | across the page. Photos printed were smooth, but |
| mobile like the HP Photosmart A826 | | | | the colours appeared flat and lacked saturation |
| The actual design of the H470 is very pleasing, | | | | with a grey shadow cast over the images. We |
| the casing is almost identical to the 460c it | | | | found employing the RLT (real Life Technologies) |
| replaces, but this time HP went for a matte black | | | | feature improved the situation with portraits, but |
| finish as opposed to silver. The corners are well | | | | the general image quality was poor. This only |
| contoured and the flaps fold neatly into the main | | | | re-enforces our opinion that for mobile photo |
| body, when closed it looks very rugged and is | | | | printing you should really invest ina photo-specific |
| little bigger than a laptop computer. Having said | | | | printer. |
| that when it is complete with battery it weighs | | | | |