HP Officejet H470

You'd need a largish bag to carry the HP OfficeJet H470 Mobile Printer as it measures 34 x 16 x 8cm excluding the battery, which is easily removed for transport. And at 2.25kg (including the battery), it's a substantial addition to your hand luggage. Both Qantas and Virgin Blue only permit 7kg of carry-on, so that's a third of your allowance gone - though Virgin explicitly allows you to carry a computer in addition to a bag, and Jetstar has a more generous 10kg allowance on most routes.

The review unit had obviously been around the traps and some scuffing was apparent on the matte surfaces, but it worked properly so I'd take that as a sign it doesn't require cotton-wool handling.

HP offers an optional Bluetooth adaptor, but the H470 worked with my generic Bluetooth dongle plugged into the PictBridge USB socket. The other USB socket is deeply recessed to suit HP's adaptor, but mine wasn't quite the right shape to fit.

Netbooks generally don't have optical drives, but I don't recommend downloading the drivers and other software from HP's web site, as that resulted in several 'file not found' issues after I took that route. Copying the entire contents of the CD onto a thumb drive or other USB storage device is a much more satisfactory procedure. That problem overcome, setting up the H470 for use via USB or Bluetooth was straightforward and successful.

The battery is said to be good for up to 480 prints per charge, but I wasn't prepared to waste that much paper to find out whether HP is telling the truth.

Nominal speeds are up 22ppm black, 18ppm colour, and 49 seconds for a 4 x 6in borderless photo print. It took 38 seconds to print a page of a document containing a mix of text and graphics, using the 'everyday general printing' preset. Printing the same page as the second page of a print job took just 5 seconds less. That's less than 2ppm, which isn't within cooee of 18ppm.

The H470 sacrifices little quality for portability. Black text is dark and clear (just the way I like it), and the graphic elements were on a par with many of the desktop printers I've tested recently. 

The story was similar - though not as extreme - with photos: 2 minutes 32 seconds for the 4 x 6 print using the 'borderless photo' preset.

An optional photo cartridge adds light cyan and light magenta to the mix. The print time was practically unchanged, and - at least on my usual test image - so were the results. The photo cartridge took a little of the red out of the various skin tones (not that they were excessively pink to start with), leaving the faces looking slightly green around the gills. That effect was absent when I printed other shots, and I think carrying a third cartridge around would be more trouble than it is worth.

Canon iP100

The Canon PIXMA iP100 Mobile Photo Printer is a similar size to the H470, measuring a little under 33cm wide, 18cm deep and 6cm high.

The battery pack increases the depth to the best part of 21cm. The battery itself is fairly compact, but the plastic cover that keeps it in place is bulky and does nothing for the appearance of the printer. Apart from anything else, it's moulded in grey plastic rather than the silver finish used for most of the case.

A pair of screws secures the cover to the rear of the printer's case, and Canon has the sense to provide slots to suit a small coin (a five cent piece, if you're in Australia). However, the battery socket has a small blanking plate that could be easily lost. 

Like the H470, the iP100 weighs in at 2.25kg including battery, so it's a significant addition to your luggage 

There's a USB interface for connecting to a computer, a second one for a Bluetooth dongle (our generic one worked just fine) or a PictBridge camera, and an infra-red interface (not as important as it used to be, but sometimes useful - perhaps for printing from an older phone camera).

Again, the software ships on a CD, so one of the simplest ways of transferring it to the iP100 is via a thumb drive. It would be handy if either the installer or part of the software itself were able to check Canon's web site for updates.

As usual, the print speed was significantly slower than the notional 14ppm for colour (20ppm black). Our mixed document took 42 seconds for the first page and 28 seconds for run-on, making the iP100 slightly faster than the HP portable - but not enough to make much difference on the relatively short jobs that are the bread-and-butter work for such devices.

Text quality was completely acceptable, but lacked the dense black look I noted with the H470. Yet solid areas of black seemed equally dark with both printers. Using a magnifying glass revealed that the iP100 had slightly finer text, but the outlines weren't quite as smoothly formed as those from the H470. My test document includes a © symbol in a small point size, which is a pretty stern test of an inkjet printer.

When it comes to graphics, Canon's reds were a little less vivid than HP's, while the blues seemed slightly lighter. While the results are different, I can't really say either is better than the other on this criterion.

I confess to a general liking for photos produced on Canon printers. While iP100 output had the even gloss of a 'real' photo and very smooth colour tones, there was a noticeable red tinge, especially in skin tones. Regardless of how fair or dark a person's skin is, a little extra red looks better than too much green. So while we slightly prefer the iP100 to the H470 in this respect, otherwise there's not much between them - except that the Canon is somewhat quicker at 2 minutes 11 seconds for a 4 by 6in print.

Conclusion

There's not that much to choose between these two printers. In terms of portability, they're the same weight. While the Canon is a little smaller in terms of volume, that's negated once the bulky battery cover is fitted. HP's external battery is less obtrusive and more easily removed.

The iP100 is faster than the H470 - not by much, but sitting waiting for a printer isn't one of my favourite ways of passing time. The Canon comes out ahead for photo quality, but I have a slight preference for the HP output when it comes to non-photo prints.

So leaving aside the question of whether you prefer a black or silver finish (or perhaps which looks best with your netbook), it largely comes down to price. $A100 is $A100, and we can't see $A100 worth of difference at RRP, and almost as much at street prices. So I'm inclined to the iP100 unless you can make good use of the H470's optional Wi-Fi interface. But that will set you back another $A95 at list price, so you could buy the iP100 plus a Wi-Fi enabled printer for your office or home for the same price as an H470 with Wi-Fi.

By Stephen Withers