The Bottom Line: It's not the cream of the crop, but a great printer, and for this price, you can't do better.
Hewlett Packard has a mixed reputation among those who have extensively used a variety of printers. Without a doubt, their various trademarked technologies designed to improve the image or text appearance to the natural eye (for example, color smart technology) really do work - and it shows. Lexmark and Epson like to show off huge DPI settings (dots per inch); don't be fooled. The reality is that after 600x600 DPI, the methods of coloring and boldness of the ink is far more important than cranking the DPI up to 1200x1200 or whatever numbers they're now touting. I guarantee you - if you hold up a photo printed to a 1200x1200 non-HP printer up beside a 600x600 image printed from an HP printer, you'll prefer that of the Hewlett Packard. So when it comes to image quality, Hewlett Packard leads the pack. Hands down. The 840C is no exception. The image quality (color and black & white) is absolutely phenomenal for an inkjet printer.
The other reputation HP garnered in the past 5 years or so (in drastic opposition from very early, incredibly reliable models, including the HP 500) was that of unreliable design. The Hewlett Packard 660C, a hit in its time, was nearly unusable as soon as two years later by a great many users. It's not-so-solid design had numerous problems - bleeding ink cartridges, black smudges, an inability to catch the paper in its tray and so forth. Fortunately, HP seems to have fixed the design with its new models, including the 840C, which appears much more solid over long term use.
Another nice facet is HP's typically simple to use and efficient software. Changing to gray scale, printing in a photo-copy intended format, changing ink concentration, paper types and so forth is a snap. The only complaint falls under USB setup, which is sometimes more complicated and finicky than it need be, due to the way in which the printer is detected.
The only real "bad" with this printer isn't entirely unreasonable or unique to this printer. The ink cartridges are quite pricey (around 40 dollars), and if you use the "normal" ink quality / boldness, it can run out relatively fast if used regularly. And the cartridges don't honestly hold *that* much ink. Remember when you buy this printer - there are plenty of ink cartridge costs ahead!
That said however, the HP 840C is an excellent deal. It will serve students and homes well, at any level of expertise.
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