HP 610 Digital Color Copier

Set-up was straightforward. The footprint is a bit larger than the 150, but it also makes copies up to legal size so the scan bed is larger. It has a tray to feed originals into and a "two-sided" copy mode that works nicely. The quality is only mediocre in "fast" mode (my mode of choice for most copies). When set to "fast", text is a bit blurred, though certainly legible, and colors are noticeably subdued. it is decent/acceptable in "normal" mode. I have only attempted copies of pages with text and moderate graphics-no photos as yet, but my guess is that it would not be a great photo copier. The graphics I've printed are not extremely accurate.

The speed is acceptable, although it seems cumbersome and slow for single copies. But after initial warm-up/head cleaning and for multiples it is much quicker than the 150. Color copies produced at a rate of about every 5-6 seconds in "fast" mode.

The downside is the noise. It literally sounds like it is coming apart. I had a transmission go bad in a car once that was almost as loud as this copier! Thankfully, it resides in our homeschool room and not in my office where I make business phone calls. It would be impossible to talk on the phone in a 12' x 14' room while this thing makes copies.

The other big downside to me is the lack of Mac driver support. So far there are not even any "gimp-print" drivers available. I hope HP will correct this and produce drivers for us Mac users.

My final verdict is that it satisfies my need for a decent copier. With a hundred dollar rebate, making the total purchase around $300, the price is about right. I have no idea about some of the advanced features like collating, banner printing, etc. Most of these I will never use. All in all, for what we'll use it for, it's a keeper.


Shorter life span than expected   January 4, 2005
Maggie (Austin, TX USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

We bought this item new for our office a little over 1 1/2 years ago for $550 (the cheapest price we could find it for at the time) and it served us well, up until it quit working. The copies are a little slow, but it does have many helpful functions etc. I am giving it only two stars because even though it was so versatile and met all our needs it lasted less than two years and cost us $550. (That's over $275/year!!!)


Boat Anchor   September 13, 2005
W. CGA
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

I bought this machine a little over two years ago mainly for the features. Paid about $600 for it. After about a 1-1/2 years, copies began having white streaks in them, and then nothing. Copier would eject the paper, but nothing was being printed. Ran the self test and the print page came out great. Tried a few more cleanings etc and finally an error message came up "IDS failure, call HP". I did and they were absolutely no help. Finally gave up and found a local repair shop. Turns out one of the colour print heads was faulty. Cost me another $150 to repair. Why did the copier not tell me the head was needing replacing. I could have done it for 1/3 the cost of what I paid to get it repaired. Six months later, noticed the streaks again, but this time I replaced the ink cartridge first as it was empty. After another $45, same problem. . . white pages only being ejected. Ran the system check this time and I get the IDS - Ink Deliver System error on all print heads, but no error message saying so on the display. Do I replace all the print heads at a cost of $250 or do I get another copier. I chose another brand of copier.


When it works...   December 22, 2005
R. Kyle
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

Nothing but problems with this 610. Have purchased
endless printheads at about $36.00 each. Great when it works,
which is not very often. Very expensive to keep running.
Am replacing the unit after less than two years. Not
dependable.