Design

For the small office, the OfficeJet 3830 is the most business-oriented AIO printer by all standards that don’t cost much. At 8.5 by 17.7 by 14.3 inches (HWD) and weighing 12.4 pounds, it’s roughly the same size and girth as most budget business-oriented inkjets. In comparison, the Canon TR8520 is perceptibly smaller, however, it weighs about 5 pounds more than the Officejet 3830.

If in your choice, you must have a smaller and lighter printer but don’t like a mobile printer designed for travel, the smallest AIO I know of right now is the HP DeskJet 3755 AIO Printer (5.6 x 15.9 x 5.1 inches and 5.1 pounds). For the sake of smaller size and portability, you’ll have to skip the automatic document feeder (ADF) and make do with little print speed.

For paper handling, the OfficeJet 3830 has a single rear 60-sheet paper tray with a 25-sheet paper output, which is a very small paper capacity when stacked against many competitors. For example, the Canon TR8520 has the ability to handle up to 200 sheets from two 100-sheet input sources each. The Brother MFC-J985DW, on the other hand, has a 100-sheet handling capacity, while the Epson ET-4750’s single paper drawer holds up to 250 sheets.

With a 35-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) that isn’t auto-duplexing (something I didn’t expect at this price), the OfficeJet 3830 gets a feature that’s rarely found among entry-level printers. is seen. However, a print engine that doesn’t support auto-duplexing, means you can’t print two-sided pages without manually flipping them over to print the other side. Not surprising though, as none of the AIOs on all the machines mentioned here have auto-duplexing document feeders.

Additionally, the printer has a 2.2-inch monochrome touchscreen, which wraps the entire control panel. The panel is easy to use, very responsive, and is suitable for a maximum monthly duty of 1,000 pages, and a recommended 250 pages per month.

Connectivity

Surprisingly, this is HP’s only business-oriented one I’ve reviewed without an Ethernet port. That’s not to say that there has to be an Ethernet port, especially for AIOs designed to support fewer than five users. Nowadays, almost any device you come across, from laptops, desktops, smartphones, or tablets, supports Wi-Fi and/or Wi-Fi Direct, the protocols supported by the HP Officejet 3830.

The OfficeJet 3830 also has a USB port for connecting to a single PC with Apple’s AirPrint and HP ePrint. It’s also got some HP mobile apps, as well as other workflow profiles, all accessible when you’re connected to the AIO wirelessly. The USB connection does not connect the printer to the Internet, as it does not support mobile apps.

Performance

HP bills the Officejet 3830 at 8.5 pages per minute (ppm) for monochrome paper and 6 ppm for your color pages. It’s possible to exceed manufacturer values ​​in testing, with the 13-page Microsoft Word document yielding 9.8ppm, with its rating exceeding 1ppm. For a budget entry-level AIO, that’s pretty impressive, though about 3ppm slower than the Canon TR8520, 5.6ppm slower than the Epson ET4750, and 5.5ppm faster than the HP Deskjet 3755.

For color print, the OfficeJet clocks in around a 6ppm rating, and a further 2.7ppm in a combination of 13-page Word documents, color PDFs, Excel, and a couple of PowerPoint documents. You might be wondering why the price is below the 6ppm rating, the reasoning behind this is that prints are a mix of color business documents that are more complex and have a much higher ink coverage percentage than the copies used by manufacturers.

Print speeds are average for color 4-by-6-inch snapshots, with the OfficeJet managing an average of 51 seconds, which is significantly slower than other AIOs use for comparison here, but for a smaller office operation Ok. Even with the low purchase price, print, and copy quality are pleasant, and the printer’s photo output quality is also good.

HP Instant Ink

However, there is a caveat with excellent output. If you run a lot of complex prints on the OfficeJet 3830 without subscribing to HP’s Instant Ink Delivery program, it could prove to be too expensive an AIO to use in the long run. That’s an average of 9 cents for monochrome pages and 21 cents for color pages, and that’s if you’ve bought the more expensive XL-sized cartridges.

When you use Instant Ink, the printer monitors its own ink usage and orders replacement cartridges as needed, allowing you to print 300 pages per month or photos for as little as 3.5 cents per page. Where this printer becomes a real deal is when printing photos as large as 8-by-10 inches at about 3.5 cents per photo, a value even competing AIOs can’t beat.