HP Deskjet D5560 printer review

Inkjet business printers at the cheap end, around £50, may not have the sophistication of their more expensive counterparts, but they can still produce quality prints.

HP's Deskjet D5560 is a slim but wide printer, black with a black and white screen. This panel shows how full the two ink cartridges are, in 25 per cent steps, and has other warning and information icons.

The A4 paper tray pulls down from the front of the printer and has a support which swivels out from its front edge to hold it up when it’s extended. Paper feeds from this tray and ends up sitting on top of the stack when it comes out. The D5560 has a relatively large footprint when the tray is fully extended.

There are two ways of connecting the Deskjet D5560: USB and wireless. To set it up for wireless connection, you have to temporarily use the supplied USB cable, and once the connection is established using the supplied software it’s possible to disconnect the cable and reposition the printer.

HP claims speeds of 28 pages per minute (ppm) for black and 21ppm for colour pages, but these are both relevant for the lower-quality draft mode. In normal printing, we measured a top black speed of 6ppm, with 2.5ppm for colour. These are not particularly quick compared with other similarly priced printers.

Print quality, of both text on plain paper and photos on photo paper, was good. Black text was sharp and quite presentable and colours were bright. Photos were sharp and better than we would have expected from a business-oriented printer.

The two ink cartridges, one black and the other colour, are available in two sizes, with the larger cartridges offering better cost per page. Using the larger Value cartridges gives page costs of 3.3p for black print and 8.3p for colour. The black cost in particular is quite high, though the colour cost is more reasonable.

Overall, this is a good, budget inkjet, though it has a large footprint when printing and is not cheap to run.