HP's Envy brand is mainly known for its sleek, aluminium-clad premium laptops. With the Envy 100, HP wants to inject an unlikely shot of glamour into the world of printing, scanning and copying.
Brush the touch-sensitive power button and it glides into life: the front panel swivels smoothly upwards and a 3.5in touchscreen takes centre-stage. It makes for a luxurious experience, with a simple interface and access to a variety of web-enabled applications.
Via Wi-Fi or Ethernet these let you produce colour A5 drawings, posters and more without having to turn on your PC. The printer also supports HP's ePrint service, for printing away from home, and has slots for USB memory cards.
Squeezing all the features of an all-in-one into such a compact chassis does have its downsides. The lone paper tray is small, holding just 80 sheets, and instead of a five- or six-colour print engine, HP has opted for black and a single tri-colour cartridge.
Draft quality prints are poor, but Normal gives crisp, bold text and strong colours. There's a slight lack of focus on text while blocks of colour look streaky. Photos don't even come close to the vibrancy and sparkle of the A-Listed Canon Pixma MG6150; colours look muted and grainy.
The Envy can't use speed as an excuse, either. Mono and colour document speeds are 3.9ppm and 2.5ppm, a 6 x 4in photo took 1min 51secs and a full A4 photo nearly five minutes. Go back to that touchscreen for copies and scans, and it doesn't do much better, with five copies of a colour page taking 3mins 9secs, and a 6 x 4in photo at 1200dpi taking 2mins 14secs. Scans look good but colour fidelity was reduced in copies of the same photo.
The Envy 100 looks superb, and it won't disturb the peace, but we can't recommend it. It's twice the price of the Canon Pixma MG6150, quality is average, and it's dearer to run.
