HP Deskjet 2540 review – still one of the cheapest inkjets

The HP Deskjet 2540 is an low-cost all-in-one printer with built-in wireless networking and a 1,200×1,200dpi scanner, but few other features. There’s only a tiny mono LCD display and no memory card reader. This means direct printing and scanning aren’t an option, and the MFP doesn’t support HP’s ePrint email printing system. You can print directly from Android and iOS tablets and phones, though, and it’s unquestionably cheap – we originally reviewed it at its £40 RRP but prices have now dropped as low as £30 from some retailers.

The Deskjet 2540 looks and feels distinctly flimsy, and its design harks back to HP’s original Deskjet range, but this is a modern and surprisingly capable MFP for the price. It takes just two ink cartridges: a dye-based tri-colour cartridge for photos and colour document prints, and a pigment black ink cartridge designed to produce pin-sharp lettering. Unfortunately, this makes for very expensive running costs, even if you buy HP’s XL ink cartridges. A mono page comes it at 4p, but we were surprised by a relatively low colour cost of 5.8p, which adds up to a total of 9.8p per page of mixed black and colour printing.

HP Deskjet 2540 Print Quality

Standard quality mono text is among the best we’ve seen from a budget MFP, which is a credit to the quality of HP’s pigmented ink, which doesn’t bleed. There were very few jagged or uneven letter edges when we looked at our document’s 12pt text closely, although there was still a very faintly fuzzy edge to the letters on 75gsm paper. As ever, we recommend using 100gsm paper for optimal inkjet print quality. Draft quality text was almost identical to our standard quality prints, just a little thinner. As there’s little qualitative difference, there are distinct advantages to printing in draft mode: while our standard quality mono letter printed at 7.9ppm, our draft document emerged at 11.7ppm, saving over a minute on a 25-page print.

Both speeds are rather slow for even an inkjet, and the Deskjet 2540’s performance in our colour print speed test produced a print speed of just 1.6ppm. Fortunately, after waiting a quarter of an hour for our prints, there was little to complain about in terms of quality. Our colourful charts were smoothly shaded, even 8pt text was clear, dense and solid. Of all the sub-£50 MFPs we’ve seen recently, this definitely produces some of the best colour prints, making them well worth the wait.

Deskjets are all about document printing, but we were nonetheless disappointed by the 2540’s inability to make borderless photo prints. Unless you’re handy with a pair of scissors, this rules it out for photo printing. Our 6x4in photo prints on appropriately sized paper came out at around 5x3in, with a thick white border on one side and thinner borders on the others. They were slow to print, too, at 20 minutes and 39 seconds, while two 10x8in prints also took around 20 minutes.

Despite these issues, the quality of our photo prints wasn’t too bad. Even the washed-out looking reproduction of dark areas wasn’t too bad once the ink had dried properly over a period of about 36 hours. Colours are bright, but not too unnatural and although some low-contrast images look a little murky and the gradation of delicate shading can be a little abrupt in places. We’d have had no major complaints if only we could be print borderless images. That said, this isn’t sold as a photo printer, so you’re not being promised anything that it doesn’t deliver.

HP Deskjet 2540 Scanner

Photocopies are rather slow, at 35 seconds for a mono reproduction and 51 for colour, but once again, quality is good. You can only make a maximum of 9 copies; both colour and mono copy quality are very good, though, with evenly coloured or shaded images and clear, legible text reproduction.

The scanner is a perfectly good 1,200×1,200dpi CIS model, but you have to deal with HP’s software interface. It’s improved a bit over the years in terms of speed and usability, but the scanner interface is remarkably restrictive in other ways. For example, you can only choose a very limited range of resolutions from the scanner’s pull-down options. We were unable to carry out our 150dpi scan test for this reason. Scan speeds were rather slow; although 20 seconds for a 300dpi A4 scan isn’t entirely awful, two minutes and 37 seconds for a 1,200dpi photo scan was pretty poor. Cropping options are also very poor, with your best bet being to pre-select the size of image you wish you scan and positioning it on the platen accordingly.

Scan quality was a little dull, with a slight yellow tint visible on pale areas, but contrast between similar hues was fairly good and edges were clearly defined. Zoom in too far, though, and a speckled effect on borders between blocks of contrasting colour indicates automatic sharpening, which may not be welcome if you plan on doing close-up editing work on the scanned image.

HP Deskjet 2540 Conclusion

If you scan and print documents, but have little interest in photos, then this is a sound little MFP, albeit one with expensive mono costs. We’d have preferred more of an all-rounder, but if you’re okay the scanning and photo printing limitations of the Deskjet 2540, you get a decent range of other features for your money. When we first reviewed the Deskjet 2540 it cost £40, making it one of the cheapest MFPs around, and that hasn’t changed almost a year later – the price has dropped even further to £35, and although the ink costs remain higher than competing models, at this price it’s almost cheaper to replace the entire printer than it is to resupply its consumables.

This kind of purchase is a terrible impact on the environment, however, and when there are superior printers available for only slightly more, that end up cheaper to run in the long term, it’s still difficult to recommend. At the time of the original review the Epson Expression Home XP-312 was even more capable, cost less to run and could actually print photos properly, but price cuts mean that Canon’s PIXMA MG3250 is now even better value. Available for around £40 from Argos, it delivers great results and looks a lot more attractive than HP’s ugly white monster.