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HP's OfficeJet range of ink-jet all-in-ones is well known, but its OfficeJet Pro machines are less famous. The main difference between the two ranges is the print speed of the OfficeJet Pro, which is a result of the separate ink and print head system used in these more expensive machines.

The OfficeJet Pro L7590 is a substantial machine, a good deal wider and higher than HP's cheaper, largely home-orientated machines. Coloured in black and cream, with a predominantly silver control panel, the L7590 looks purposeful and approachable, ideal in a small or home office. It has a 50-sheet Auto Document Feeder (ADF) on top of a standard glass flatbed, working across the width of the machine, and a 250-sheet paper feed at the front. Paper makes its usual 180-degree turn, common in HP inkjets, and is fed out to the top of the paper tray.

For the first time we can remember with an HP printer, there was a minor breakage in transit and one off the hinges for the paper tray lid was broken off. This didn't stop the machine from working, but might indicate the hinge bracket is a bit too flimsy.

There's a duplexer supplied as standard and this clips in at the back of the machine, next to the USB 2 and Ethernet network sockets. Four memory card readers are stacked up vertically, in pairs, in the front right corner of its case.

The most unusual feature of the OfficeJet Pro L7590 is its ink-delivery system. Behind a cover on the left-hand side of the paper tray there's room to slot in the four individual ink cartridges. These are connected by thin, transparent tubes to the print heads, which are also replaceable units. With a claimed service life of 41,500 pages, though, they will be a lifetime component for many customers. Interestingly, each head prints two colours, so black and yellow are paired, as are cyan and magenta.

Charging this whole system with ink is a one-off setup process and takes around 20 minutes. In use, the large volume of ink available means a wider swathe from each head and increases the speed at which documents can be printed. It also means a few more clunking and pumping noises during printing.

HP claims print speeds of 35ppm for black and 34ppm for colour, though it does clearly state that both of these are for printing in draft mode. Just as well, as the normal mode print speeds we saw were around 8.3ppm for black and 5.7ppm for colour. While these are quite fast for real-world inkjet printing, they are an awfully long way off the printed figures. For fun we tried printing our test documents in draft mode, but the black one still took 31 seconds, under 10ppm, and the colour one took 27 seconds, or 11ppm.

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