HP Launches PageWide Series of Small Business Printers

HP Inc. today took the wraps off a new line of small business color inkjet printers. Dubbed HP PageWide, these printers can trace their roots back to the company’s large-format printers that once produced high-quality textbooks, posters and other reading material in large quantities.

The new printers use a fixed print head design to deliver fast print speeds and reduce maintenance costs. In most color inkjet printers, the print head sweeps across the page, depositing ink as paper incrementally feeds though the printer.

Though that may work well enough for many small- and home-office users, the process is impractical for businesses with large, room-filling printers. In HP’s large-format commercial printers, paper from massive rolls continuously feeds through at high speed. A fixed-array of print heads deposit ink as the paper flows through uninterrupted.

Now, that technology forms the basis of a new line of small business color inkjet printers.

HP Pagewide small business color inkjet printer

The HP PageWide 352 Small Business Color Inkjet Printer.

High-Quality, Low-Maintenance Inkjet Printers

“With its new brand of HP PageWide printers, HP brings the innovative technology that powers our industrial Web presses and large-format printers into business printers for the office,” said Tracy. “PageWide printers offer small businesses fast, high-quality color printing with the lowest total cost of ownership to help them work more productively.”

HP designed PageWide printers with fewer moving parts, which translates into hardier, more streamlined internal components that improve durability, minimizes maintenance, and turns paper jams into a rare occurrence. It also means that the new hardware can print high-quality documents faster.

PageWide small business color inkjet printers “feature sleek, compact industrial designs to help maximize office space, capabilities to support printing from mobile devices, and fast, energy efficient printing,” Larry Tracy, director of product planning, HP Inc., told Small Business Computing. “Whether you’re looking for professional color prints at the fastest speeds in the industry, quality ink-based color printing with big performance in a compact package, or the best value on black-and-white printing, HP has an option for every business need and budget.”

During a recent meeting with HP executives in New York City, the PC-and-printer maker demonstrated how PageWide delivers near-laser color print quality with vibrant inks that dry practically in an instant. Fanning a soggy stack of printouts waiting for them to dry is a thing of the past.

PageWide color inkjet printers also use HP’s latest pigmented ink technology which, apart from delivering vibrant colors that add spice to boring business documents, resists smudging, smearing and fading. As HP dramatically demonstrated to this writer, dumping a bottle of water over a freshly-printed, color-packed document failed to make the ink run.

A PageWide Inkjet Printer for Any Size Small Business

The HP PageWide 300 series starts with the 352 and the PageWide MFP (multi-function printer) 377 for small businesses and work groups of three to 10 users printing up to 3,000 pages a month. Both models offer print speeds of up to 45 pages per minute (ppm) in the efficient General Office (GO) mode and both support wireless mobile printing. The MFP 377 adds duplex (double-sided) scanning speeds of up to 26 ppm. The PageWide 300 series ships in June with prices starting at $599.

Next up in the PageWide printer portfolio: the Pro 452 and the Pro MFP 477. Starting at $499 when they ship next month, the 400 series targets organizations that print up to 4,500 pages per month. They print at up to 55 ppm in GO mode or 40 ppm in Professional mode.

HP designed the PageWide Pro 500 series printers for companies or work groups with five to 15 users and print volumes of up to 6,000 pages per month. The Pro 552 and Pro MFP 577 can print up to 70 ppm in GO mode and 50 ppm in Professional Mode. They offer additional print-management options, including control panel shortcuts that initiate complex or multi-step tasks with a single tap. Prices start at $699 when they ship in April.

The top-of-the-line HP PageWide Enterprise Color 556 and MFP 586 deliver print speeds of up to 75 ppm for small businesses that pump out 15,000 printouts per month. They feature an 8-inch touchscreen, 7.4-second first-paper-out time, and an encrypted internal hard drive that helps prevent data leakage. Expect to part with $1,249 for the 556 and $2,800 for the MFP 586 when they ship in May.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Small Business Computing. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.

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