HP L7680 Multi-function printer

The L7680 is the equivalent of the "DN" models you'll find in standard Officejet printers. This models comes with the duplexer and network as standard whilst leaving out the extra paper tray and bluetooth functionality of its more expensive sibling, the L7780.

More importantly this unit is the first in the L7000 line with duplex scanner functionality compared to the younger brother, the L7580 which only has single sided scanning.

So what else it have to offer...

 

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Each of the models come with a fax and automated document feeder (ADF) as standard and these work as you'd expect. One small feature I particularly liked was the ADF's input tray design which allows someone to put something heavy on top of it (like our cat!) and detach without breaking any lugs thus making at least one part relatively accident proof in a small but important way.

 

The K5400 In Another Guise

The printer engine is much the same as the K5400 and as a result many of the printing pro's and con's are much the same so rather than repeat the whole thing here's a few of the salient points

 

As this is the L7680 model we're limited to the 250 sheet capacity provided by the single tray (but you can get the expansion tray to add a further 350).

Print speed is a nippy 15ppm in full colour and even "best" quality which is apparently analogous to "laser quality" (according to Hewlett Packard) you're getting a reasonably quick printout compared to normal speed on a Canon iP4300.

My favourite feature of all has to be the photocopying. Single sheets can be handled via the usual scanner platten while you can get multi page documents easily using the ADF. Warm up times are quite fast and the use of a cache to store the scanned image (in normal quality) means you aren't waiting for the printer to re-scan the document every single time it prints a copy. Coupling this rapid scanning with the printspeed and you actually have something that could give a normal photocopier a run for its money.

 

 

Drunk driver?

Sadly this is a common problem with HP and their printers. If I had a penny for every bit of their lousy driver software I've encountered, I'd be rich. The initial driver release for this printer had a number of issues that recur across a wide number of user forums. What's particularly frustrating is that simple Q&A testing would have caught many of the issues.

One classic example is that the printers "quick setting" for duplex (double-sided) printing has the "mirror printing" option set to yes by default. HP still haven't even admitted they missed this but it's there and caused untold confusion for users across the board. Another issue relates to the printer stopping a printjob before it's finished and without completing all the copies you've requested. No error, no indication it's died, just the pages missing (if you notice).

The duplex problem has been fixed in the 8.0.1 driver version and there's some question as to whether the premature stop is related to poor networking support (it tends to affect jobs sent over the LAN) or some other cause..

Either way, HP need a kick up the proverbial backside with their driver issues.

Digital Filing

This feature was obviously dreamed up for the home office types but you can't help but think that HP dropped the ball in the technical instructions department because anyone with a half decent networked office will be using Server 2003 SBE or standard now and unless you use Mac's regularly you'll have missed how to make this work.

The fix is documented here

Once you've resolved that however you can successfully scan documents into a PDF format anywhere on your network. Setting it up is simple enough via the internal webserver and you can even set pin numbers to stop random use/abuse of protected areas. All in all, it's a nice feature which could work a little better and definitely could have been better supported.

Summary

Ok, so poor drivers are an annoyance but they can be fixed (assuming HP take the time) but if you use your head and install your driver without using the HP software loader you'll find it's a pretty good unit. Some other features I've skipped over such as the photocopying functions and these are pretty good too but not particularly noteworthy in the context of other Multi Function Devices.

All in all, I'd give this a better rating than the K5400dn. Well worth the money.