HP Officejet 100 Mobile Printer

Produce professional-quality documents on the go with the compact HP Officejet 100 Mobile Printer, which lets you print wirelessly from a variety of selected notebooks and smartphones via built-in Bluetooth technology. This compact mobile inkjet printer has a long-life, lithium ion battery and prints up to 500 pages when fully charged. The portable HP Officejet 100 Mobile Printer weighs just 5.5 pounds (with battery) and prints up to 22 pages per minute black and 18ppm color. It delivers laser-quality black text and vivid color graphics, and produces lab-quality, borderless 4 x 6-inch photos. You can connect to a PictBridge-compatible device to print lab-quality photos and cut printing costs with optional HP high-capacity XL print cartridges, which print two to three times more pages than standard HP print cartridges. This reliable inkjet printer has a 50-sheet input tray and a 500-page monthly duty cycle and lets you monitor battery life with an indicator light and disconnect quickly with the Bluetooth On/Off button.

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Features

1.  Print at your convenience while on the go, using built-in Bluetooth wireless technology
2.  Rely on a long-life, lithium ion battery-print up to 500pages when the battery is fully charged
3.  Do more-produce professional-quality documents on the go, using Original HP high-capacity ink cartridges

Customer Reviews

Very good for what it does
-By Ursiform

A little background: I already have two printers I use. My Epson R2400 is a great photo printer, but only a mediocre general purpose printer. My old HP LaserJet 4M still does the job, but it has some limitations. It's a big energy hog/space heater, so I don't leave it on, and it takes a while to warm up. It's black and white only. And the single feed tray no longer works. I thought this little HP inkjet might be a replacement for my general purpose printing, of which I don't do a lot. I was also intrigued by its Bluetooth capability; I don't print very often from my laptop, but Bluetooth would be a very convenient way to do it when I want to.

I first loaded up the software on my laptop, which took a while. HP is certainly not frugal in loading software. At one point the instructions were to just follow the "add printer" instructions in Windows (XP), which weren't entirely clear for adding a Bluetooth printer. I didn't have much trouble figuring it out, but I've been dealing with computers for a lot more years than I want to think about. HP's instructions could have been more helpful.

After that I was able to print using the Bluetooth connection. I then unplugged the printer, and printed using battery power. It all worked!

Next I loaded the software on my desktop, and set out to print via USB. There is, of course, no USB cable included. Never mind that USB connections on computers are 99% standard, they saved the few dimes including a cable would have cost. Fortunately I have a cable for nearly any occasion, including things nobody has used in twenty years, so I got it hooked up and printing.

The print quality is very good on the paper sample HP included, and almost as good on basic laser printer paper. It can't quite match a laser printer on fine lines and small fonts, but for most people it will suit their needs quite nicely.

As HP included the ability to print borderless photos, I had to test that capability. I printed a photo from Tuscany at 4x6 on both the HP and the R2400. To be fair, I used the stock settings for both, not the adjusted settings I normally use with the R2400. The HP did produce a decent picture. It wasn't up to the R2400's quality, but it's not an expensive photo printer. With some adjustments it could be pretty darn good. I wouldn't recommend getting one to use as a photo printer, but it is certainly capable of printing a photo now and then.

OK, let's talk it's limitations. It has no paper capture tray, which is not surprising in a printer designed to be portable. And its dinky cartridges aren't going to print a lot of pages, especially with a lot of color.

This is a good, light duty printer that will work in a constrained space or as a portable printer. If you plan to do a lot of printing get a larger inkjet printer with separate cartridges for different colors, or a laser printer. If you want to print a lot of photos get a photo printer. But if you are looking for a printer that fits in a small space, can be moved around, and does a good job on the occasional page you need printed, this is a surprisingly good printer.

Almost perfect if you need portability
-By D. Matheny

We already have a good color inkjet printer in the house - but we've been wanting something portable for the last year or so. The main use for this printer is for my wife to take to 'scrapbook weekends'. A little printer is very useful when scrapbooking, but it's just too big of a hassle to lug the full-size printer around with her.

This Officejet 100 mobile printer fits the bill perfectly! Although we ran into some unexpected problems, the overall experience was far better than we expected for a printer of this size. (I will go over some of the issues we've run into during this review.)

Before I get into the specifics of this printer, I should mention that we replaced the included black HP98 cartridge with a photo-color HP99 cartridge. The documentation doesn't mention whether this is possible, and the inside of the printer doesn't list it as being compatible - so I was a bit nervous. Honestly, the only reference I found to the HP99 anywhere was an obscure reference on the HP support sight (and that wasn't very clear). Fortunately, the printer picked up the new cartridge just fine and is using it as expected in combination with the, also included, HP95 color cartridge.

Another thing I did was to download the 'Basic Print Driver' package directly from HP instead of using the included install CD. This was a simple process, and the wizard walks you through setting up a Bluetooth printer connection if you haven't done it before.


Now, let me cover the things that we like about this printer:

1) The output is truly photo quality when using the HP99 cartridge, and the black output looks great as well (when using the HP98 cartridge). I will admit that the photos from our full-size ink-jet do look a bit nicer, but not by a lot. This truly is 'photo quality' output.

2) The Bluetooth connectivity absolutely rocks! When using Bluetooth, this printer is truly wireless - which makes it absolutely simple to pull out of a carrying bag and use. There is no worrying about cables getting lost, or in the way...

3) The overall footprint is very compact (it seems smaller in person than in the product photos). Because of that, you do give up a paper capture tray and the paper feeding isn't the best either - but those are compromises that most portable printer users should be willing to accept.

4) The battery life is excellent! The battery itself looks like a laptop battery, and just plugs into the back of the printer. The charge time from completely drained to fully charged is about an hour - which is pretty good. My wife has taken this on 2 overnight scrapbook retreats and it hasn't needed a charge while she was away; although, she does keep the power cord handy just in case.

5) The print speed is a bit slow for photos - but not overly slow. Once again, I was expecting this, and I felt like it was fast for such a small printer.

6) We have been using it with the borderless 4x6 HP paper, and that works great! We have to feed it one sheet at a time, and also have to push down a bit when it starts feeding; but, once again, I don't mind having to help it along in exchange for the portability.

7) Because of the small size, this printer is incredibly simple to operate. No fancy LCDs or flash memory slots, it just turns on and works as expected without any hassle.


If you've made it this far, I hope I've made it clear that this is a great little printer - but there are some limitations that we expected because of the size. Aside from those issues, we have run into a couple of problems that really do count against the printer:

1) The battery life is good, but the battery itself drains quickly when not in use. For example, we fully charged the battery after using it and then turned off the printer and placed it in a cupboard. The next time it was needed (only a couple of weeks later), we pulled it out and the battery was completely drained - to the point where it wouldn't even turn on. Because of this, you need to be careful to fully charge the printer before you load it up to take it with you. Don't assume the battery is still charged, even if you used it recently...

2) Some people will love this, but I can't believe how long the power cord is! It measures in at longer than 12 feet - and doesn't wrap up that compactly as a result. Honestly, the wrapped up power cord takes up about 1/4 of the space of the entire printer...


Overall, if you're looking for a portable printer, this is the best one I've found and I highly recommend it. On the other hand, don't make the mistake of thinking this will be your main printer at home. Although, at this price, I doubt many people will be thinking that! ;-)

Wow, great printer
-By Merddyn

I was skeptical at first.... a printer with a LI battery? I was pleasantly surprised though. It prints flawlessly, and the battery life is exceptional. The black and white isn't QUITE up to par with my laser printer, but I don't expect an ink jet to be. We primarily use this as a color printer, but the fact that you can unplug it and get up to 500 pages of print jobs off of a single charge is exceptional.

It also prints edgeless photos which is nice. Photo quality is exceptional, but it won't really replace your high end photo printer if super quality is your thing on photos. The photo print quality is exceptional for the average user though. I don't quite have a feel for how long the color cartridges will last, but i'll update the review as time goes on.

Setup was easy via usb. The cable wasn't included, but who doesn't have 375 USB cables laying around in a drawer in this day and age? At first I was a little disappointed that this didn't have built in wireless networking, but then I realized I could pick up a $3 bluetooth (BT) dongle and print wirelessly. Most laptops have BT built in or at least a BT dongle for a mouse so that's perfect for mobile printing. The bluetooth printing directly from your BT cell phone is exceptional as well.

Feeder has a 500 page capacity which is nice, but no paper tray. You have to give something up for a mobile printer and if I had a choice it would be to have the 500 page feeder over the paper tray.

The actual footprint of the unit is very small so it's good for tight desktop spaces.

Exceptional printer if you need versatility of being mobile. I could see this as a great printer for college folks or small business who needs to print in the field.

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