At this year's Consumer Electronics Show, I saw a prototype for one of HP's newest all-in-one printers, which HP claimed would be able to print pages about as quickly as laser printers do—making it the fastest inkjet printer out there. HP also said that although the printer cartridge would be expensive, it would last a long time and actually save you money.
Although we don't have HP's all-in-ones tested yet, we just added HP's regular-printer version of this model to our Ratings: the HP Officejet Pro X451DN ($450). And according to our tests, HP is right: The Officejet Pro X451DN is the fastest inkjet printer we've tested. Also, its ink-and-paper consumption score make it among the most inexpensive to use in its class. And we give this model excellent scores for speed, since it performs tasks very quickly.
But this efficiency and speed comes at a price: The printer falls short on quality. For instance, its photo quality is just fair, and text quality is just good, which is one of the reasons this model falls shy of being a recommended model.
When you compare the Officejet Pro X451DN to the Epson Workforce Pro WP-4010, which has nearly as low an ink-and-paper consumption score, you'll see that the Epson also has very good text- and photo-quality scores and excellent speed.
