Bought directly from Hewlett-Packard, the HP Deskjet 3940 Color Inkjet Printer and two ink cartridges cost $49.99. If you purchase a set of those cartridges separately, and eventually, you will, they will run you $29.99. That means the printer itself only costs about $20. How good a printer do you get for $20? A surprisingly good one, ideal for extremely light-duty use such as printing a few pages of homework a few times a week plus the occasional photo.

The 3940 is relatively small, at 5.6 by 16.6 by 7.2 inches (HWD), so it will fit just about anywhere. As you might expect at this price, it has a limited set of features. This makes setup easy. It offers four-color printing only, with one black and one tricolor cartridge to install, and connections are limited to the USB 2.0 connector in back. Software installation is fully automated. As with its close competition, the Canon Pixma iP1500, the ink cartridges run out relatively quickly. We had to replace them twice during our tests, which is unusual for ink jets in general, but was also true for the iP1500.

Output quality was quite good across the board. Compared with other ink jets that sell for $100 or less, the 3940 is below par for photos, in the upper midrange for graphics, and better than most for text. The only important shortcoming for photos is differential gloss—a difference in reflectivity for different colors, so that at some angles in certain lighting conditions, parts of the photo appear dull while others look glossy. Most people would consider the output good enough for casual snapshots but not for cherished memories.

Graphics output is easily good enough for basic business applications and marginally good enough to impress clients with your professionalism. It does fall short, however, when printing thin lines, which tend to disappear. Text quality is excellent unless you need to print documents with highly stylized fonts. More than half of our test fonts were easily readable at 4 points, but two fonts with thick strokes needed to be printed at 12 points to be legible.

Performance (timed with QualityLogic's hardware and software, www.qualitylogic.com) was acceptable considering the printer price, but on the slow side, particularly for photos. The 3940's total time for our business applications suite was 33 minutes 2 seconds, compared with 29:53 for the Canon iP1500. It was consistently just a bit slower on each test. On the other hand, it was notably faster than the 54:24 total for the more expensive Epson Stylus C66, which offers higher-quality output than the 3940 or the iP1500.

For photos, the 3940 was slower than both the iP1500 and the C66, averaging 4:47 for each 4-by-6 print and 12:29 for each 8-by-10. Here again, the iP1500 was the fastest of the three, at 2:30 for each 4-by-6 and 5:55 for each 8-by-10. The 3940's combination of quality and performance makes it a reasonable choice for a low-cost printer, but it doesn't deliver quite as much as the similarly-priced Canon iP1500 does.

Compare the printers mentioned above side by side.

Quality ratings: Text: Graphics: Photos:

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Copyright © 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in PC Magazine.