05:30
Hmm. One thing of note with this printer is that it'll feed the next sheet into the paper path even as it prints the current page.
In duplex, the printer does this pre-feeding when printing the second side of a sheet.
This is unlike the Epson WorkForce printers I've used, which only put one page into the paper path at a time.
HP's approach reduces the amount of time it takes to go from one page to the next.
At high resolution in full color, the HP Officejet Pro 8630 actually outperforms the WorkForce WF-3640 because it can print all four colors in a single pass of the carriage.
The Epson requires only one pass to print monochrome making it extremely fast for simple text documents, but the PrecisionCore 2S design means that the CMY colors are on the same printhead slowing things down a bit (multiple passes are required to print color).
The WorkForce Pro models use PrecisionCore 4S, where each of CMYK has its own printhead chip. This allows it to print all colors in a single pass of the carriage. Not sure how performance actually compares because I've never used one of those printers.
This is one of the biggest reasons high-end office inkjet printers deliver much higher performance than home-use models especially with color. Each sweep of the carriage can cover much more of the document at once than on a home printer.
HP Officejet Pro X and PageWide printers are completely different beasts and operate in a fundamentally different fashion, so they're not relevant to this discussion.
I'm quite shocked at how much faster this HP printer is, and I thought Epson PrecisionCore (2S) was fast. The Epson PrecisionCore 4S models are probably just as fast as this HP machine, but again, never had any experience with one.
The HP design, from what I can tell, has CMYK on separate rows of the thermal printhead. It's a single printhead chip, but it's a single-pass process for both color and monochrome prints.
Epson PrecisionCore 1S and 2S printers multiplex colors onto the same printhead by putting the different colors onto different parts of the same chip.
On printers with PrecisionCore 1S, all colors share the same printhead. 2S case, K gets its own printhead but CMY are multiplexed.
Both 1S and 2S require multiple passes to print color, and 1S is much slower with all jobs than 2S. 1S is found on home-grade models, while 2S is found on SOHO-grade models.
PrecisionCore 4S is reserved for WorkForce Pro models and gives each of CMYK its own printhead. Monochrome printing is not much faster than on a 2S printer but color printing speed improves dramatically as multiple passes are no longer required.
Your thoughts on the inkjet printing process?