HP's Deskjet 1280 is designed to be a versatile, wide-format inkjet printer for both business and home office users looking for fast, high-quality text, graphics and colour images on a wide range of media sizes and types. The printer delivers relatively solid performance at a respectable price, but it's a little rough around the edges. In particular, its print quality on plain paper is average and it takes forever to print large documents. Its paper feed mechanism is a little overly aggressive too, and tends to crumple thin paper while it makes its way towards the printheads. There are much better graphics arts products available, particularly from Epson, but the Deskjet 1280 is good value if you want to make occasional A3 prints along with your regular business workloads. Just don't expect great things and you shouldn't be disappointed.

Pros: Good value; supports A3+ prints; networkable
Cons: Slow; average print quality; doesn't support borderless prints


The Deskjet 1280 (592x381x233mm, 10kg) can print vibrant colours on paper up to 330x482mm (A3+) - ideal for creating a professional appearance. It connects directly to computers that have parallel or Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports, and can also be shared on a network by purchasing HP's optional parallel port-connected Jetdirect 300x external print server (£195 ex. VAT). This single-port external print server supports 10/100Base-TX networks, but Wi-Fi or Bluetooth computers aren't catered for.

Network environments supported are versatile, including Novell NetWare/NDS/NDPS/IntranetWare, Windows 95/98/NT, IBM OS/2 Warp, IBM AIX, Artisoft LANtastic, SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX, SCO UNIX V/386, lpd, MPE-iX, and AppleTalk. You can also manage the Deskjet 1280 on your network using HP's excellent Jetadmin or Web Jetadmin printer management software.

The Deskjet 1280 is basic in terms of design and functionality. For instance, there are no wireless connectivity options or built-in memory card slots, no LCD preview screen, and no print test button. The two paper trays (holds up to 150 input sheets and 50 printed sheets) and access cover are flimsy, the paper guide frequently crumples media, and the three control buttons (Power, Resume and Stop printing) are noisy when pressed.

There is a rear manual feed however, so you can feed thicker paper that requires a straight paper path (up to 280gsm, 0.52mm), and the removable panel knob lets you quickly access jammed paper. There's also a print cartridge light that blinks when the access cover is open or a cartridge error occurs, and the Resume button blinks while waiting for a printed page to dry (press if you don't want to wait).

We also liked the media width sensor that alerts you when the paper size loaded is different from the size selected in the drive. Although hardly cutting edge, the benefit of a lack of hardware features does mean that printing is kept as straightforward as possible.

Similar to other inkjet printers, the Deskjet 1280 is designed to print on a variety of media such as plain paper, envelopes, labels, card and transparencies. It works well with most office paper types or quality 25 per cent cotton bond paper, although because it uses ink to produce an image, high-quality paper accepts ink better and produces the best results.

A neat feature is that when printing more than one page on transparencies, photo paper, or other special paper, the Resume light blinks after each page has been printed to allow for the printed page to dry before printing the next page.

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