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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Speed Test

The HP Officejet 150's official speed specifications state that its draft print speeds are 22 pages per minute (ppm) for black and white documents and 18ppm for color documents. If you're printing normal-quality documents, the Officejet 150's official print speeds are 5ppm for mono documents and 3.5ppm for color. Of course, the actual print speeds are more modest; results are in the tables below.

For simplex and duplex print speed tests, we run the timer the moment we send the job in order to get a realistic gauge of the printer's real-world performance.

Being a portable all-in-one, won't be expecting too much in terms of speed. All portable printers offer convenience over raw power, though we were curious as to what the Officejet 150 had to offer. At normal quality, It took 1 minute 27 seconds to print out 10 pages of a black and white document, which translates to about 6.8 pages per minute. Text documents with graphics thrown in took significantly longer though, clocking in at 3 minutes and 40 seconds. In case you're wondering about photo prints, the Officejet 150 does photo prints as well, which are of reasonable quality.

*For the copy test, we had the Officejet 150 make 10 copies of a single-page document.

Print Quality

The HP Officejet 150 is capable of print and scan resolutions of up to 600 x 600 dpi. Unfortunately, you cannot select the quality for your scans; we can only assume that it is set to the maximum of 600 dpi. For copies, users can select between normal and best settings, though users are unable to set the dpi for copies as well.

While the Officejet 150's speed may disappoint some, it does fare better when it comes to print quality. Print quality for text documents is good; there will be no problems handing out business documents at a meeting or presentation. Like-wise, documents with graphics are of a reasonably good quality as well, though of course the Officejet 150 can't compete with the performance of a desktop inkjet or office laserjet printer, so do gauge your expectations accordingly.

 

B&W Print Quality (Draft Mode)	B&W Print Quality (Best Mode)

B&W Print Quality (Normal Mode)	Copy Quality

Color Print Quality (Draft Mode)	Color Print Quality (Best Mode)

Color Print Quality (Normal Mode)	Copy Quality

Photo Scan

Conclusion

The HP Officejet 150 is a unique 'mobile' device. While portable/mobile printers may not be new, the Officejet 150 is the only portable printer to include a scanner and thus elevating it to a portable AIO inkjet printer status. Output quality is generally good enough for business documents and if you intend to do a bit of scanning or copying on the road, then the manual feeding nature of the Officejet 150 shouldn't be a huge issue. Build quality is good as well and of course as a mobile solution, it takes up a reasonably small amount of space. 

However, the convenience the Officejet 150 offers comes at a premium with it costing S$599. And if you need documents in a hurry, the Officejet 150 is, unfortunately, not the fastest of printers. There's also limited ports if you're looking for more connectivity options. Being a portable printer, we did expect the Officejet 150 to support HP's ePrint mobile printing solution, but since the Officejet 150 sadly excludes built-in Wi-Fi, it would have been redundant to include this feature. But if you can overlook the limited print speed and output quality of the Officejet 150 and often wished you had a printer and scanner with you on the road, then the Officejet 150 is a viable solution, albeit a pricey one. If you can live without the scanner, do take a look at the older Officejet 100, which retails at S$499.

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