OFFICEJET J3680 BLACK OEM INK CARTRIDGE TWIN PACK

HP OfficeJet J3680 Review

Overview:

The HP Officejet J3680 looks more like a fax machine than a multipurpose printer. But the fact is, it really is a printer – with faxing and scanning features.

If your printer looks like a fax machine, then it’s really not something great to look at. But that’s the way this model comes across, complete with a featherweight telephone on one side and a vertical feeder that scans images before they are spewed out for delivery using plain paper. It does not look like a multipurpose printer at all, but it surprisingly works and functions like one.

This model appears to be a cross between a basic fax machine and a cheap desktop inkjet printer. It uses the same feeder for printing, scanning, and faxing, but has separate output trays for printing and scanning/faxing.

Pros:

Despite its unimpressive appearance, the Officejet J3680 surprisingly works efficiently as a printer, fax machine, and scanner. Text quality is excellent for business purposes and scanned photos/images are more decent than most other scanners in the market.

This tiny model is one of very few multipurpose printers that do not occupy too much space and are therefore perfect for starting businesses. It’s unbelievably light at 8.6 pounds. And its price is closer to a regular standalone inkjet printer than a multipurpose printing device.

If there are a few features not included in this model, you can always attribute it to pricing. It does what it’s made to do and delivers it with aplomb, with basic keystrokes in the control panel between the feeder and output tray. There are no preview modes, no fancy options, just plain print, scan, and fax.

Cons:

The HP Officejet J3680’s printing speed is too slow for comfort. In actual usage test, it does not come even close to the 20 page per minute (ppm) published speed of this unit. The tests show 2.4 ppm for single color printing and 1.4 ppm for colored. An A4 photo took all of 6 minutes, while a scan took 50 seconds to complete. This is too slow if you’re running an office that requires voluminous documents.
The built-in phone is too light to be taken seriously. It handles like a toy you’d buy for toddlers to keep them busy, although it’s really workable and you can actually make calls with it. If you’re just starting your business, you’d feel exactly like that. It makes you feel that you’re trying to squeeze every bit from your meager capital.
That said, the HP Officejet J3680 is undoubtedly a viable alternative to integrate a perfectly viable copy and fax functions to an office that is still struggling for cash and is short on space. After all, the character of a business is not defined by its office equipment, but by the person running it.