Product Listing

HP Officejet 150 Mobile All-in-One Printer - Premium Portability

By Hafeez Sim - 28 Feb 2013
Launch SRP: S$599

Introduction & Design

 

Print, Copy & Scan On the Go

While there are a number of portable printers (such as the Canon Pixma iP100 and HP Officejet 100) and portable document scanners (such as the Brother MDS-600 and Doxie Go) in the market, we struggle to remember one that does both functions. The HP Officejet 150 Mobile All-in-One Printer is one such device, and HP went as far as claiming it the world's first portable all-in-one printer. Besides cramming print, scan, and copy functions into a relatively compact unit, the inkjet-based Officejet 150 comes with a 2.36-inch color touchscreen, a 500-page monthly duty cycle, a 50-sheet paper tray, built-in Bluetooth-wireless technology (so that you can print from mobile devices), and a lithium-ion battery that lasts for up to 500 pages.

Indeed, if you happen to be a business traveler who spends much of your time in hotels, cafes, or other commuting spots, the Officejet 150's specs certainly sound appealing. But how does it perform in actual use? Let's find out.

Fairly Compact

First things first: Because of the Officejet 150's inkjet and multifunction nature, it will never be able to match the compactness of single-function printers or scanners or direct thermal printers such as the Brother PocketJet 6 Plus. But apart from size, owners of the Officejet 150 make fewer compromises. For one, it prints in mono as well as color, uses plain paper, and offers (in theory) the high quality associated with inkjet printing. So, instead of seeing the Officejet 150 as a slightly larger portable printer, think of it as a very much shrunk down desktop inkjet AIO printer.

The HP Officejet 150 placed side by side with an Apple MacBook Air for relative size comparisons.

Here's the HP Officejet beside the Neatscan to Office, a portable scanner. While the Officejet 150 looks much larger, do remember that the Officejet 150 is a full-fledged AIO, albeit a 'portable' one.

 

Now, the Officejet 150 itself weighs 2.9kg and that's hardly considered mobile judging by the weight of common tech gadgets like tablets and notebooks. With the aid of its lithium-ion battery, you can print from just about anywhere, but it will bring the total weight of the unit to 3.1kg. Alternatively, it can draw power from a wall outlet; but because the power supply isn't built-in, a small external power brick is needed.

The small battery pack attaches to the rear of the printer. HP says a fully charged battery lasts about 500 pages.

A PictBridge USB port and a USB 2.0 port are found at the rear of the Officejet 150. There's no wired LAN support, but it does support Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR for wireless printing.

At the rear left corner of the HP Officejet 150 is an SD card slot, which allows you to print images and documents directly from an SD card. The image thumbnails will be displayed on the Officejet 150's control panel, letting you select which images to print.

Popping up the Officejet 150's top flap reveals the paper input path which sits up to 50 sheets of paper (the flap now becomes the input tray). To load standard-size media such as A4 paper, the control panel has be to tilted upward first (there's a latch at the right side to accomplish this). Navigation of the Officejet 150’s functions is done via the small resistive touchscreen on the control panel. Be warned though, it does require a slight bit of pressure before a command gets registered. If you're used to capacitive touchscreens on modern mobile devices, you might feel a tad disconcerted with the experience initially.

Here's a top-down view of the Officejet 150. The areas marked in red are the printer media width guide and the scanner media width guide respectively.

The 2.36-inch touchscreen is your control panel and is flanked by six touch-sensitive buttons (the resistive kind). You can adjust copy, scan, and photo print settings, see information about ink and battery levels, as well as setup Bluetooth options here.

As can be expected of a mobile printer, there's no automatic document feeder (ADF) on the Officejet 150, nor is there an output tray to speak of. As such, take note to set aside some space for the printouts when they come dropping out of the Officejet 150.

It also isn't endowed with a flatbed scanner, so scanning of books and magazines are obviously out of the discussion. What you can scan are single page documents. The scanner's input path is actually the gap underneath the control panel when you tilt the latter upward. To scan a document, you've to manually feed the document into this slot; for a multi-page document, this has to be done one page at a time. When you slide the document to be scanned into this slot, you'll feel the scanner gripping the paper, and hear a tone when the document is detected.

In order to copy or scan, you will have to feed each page through the slot beneath the control panel.

Unlike some portable printers which use thermal transfer technology to print, the HP Officejet 150 is a proper inkjet printer that's just shrunk down to size.

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7.5
  • Design 7.5
  • Performance 7.5
  • Features 7.5
  • Value 7
The Good
Has a scanner unit
Print quality is good for a portable printer
Portable and has a battery pack
Well-built
The Bad
Manual feeding of originals for scan/copy
Limited connectivity options
No Wi-Fi and mobile print functions
Pricey
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