The HP OfficeJet Pro7740 (249.99 USD) is a large all-in-one printer that can print, copy, and scan documents up to 11×17 inches. It can also print fax letter-size documents. 

The Editor’s Choice Brother is similar in price, paper capacity, and maximum duty cycle. (Opens in new window) The 7740 can produce quality and speed sufficient to replace the Brother printer.

Design and Features

The HP OfficeJet Pro7740 is heavy and large, measuring 15.1 x 23 x 18 inches (HWD), and 42.9 lbs. It can be moved by two people and should be kept on its own table or bench. 

The standard paper capacity of the 7740 is 500 sheets, divided between two 250-sheet trays. It can handle a maximum monthly duty of 30,000 pages, and a monthly recommendation of 1,500 sheets. It also includes an auto-duplexer that allows for two-sided printing.

The 7740 also includes a flatbed that can scan legal-size paper and an automatic document feeder (ADF), which can handle 35-sheets. This supports single-pass duplex scanning. 

Brother MFCJ5720DW comes with a 50-sheet ADF and a similar duplex scanner. The 2.7-inch touchscreen colour makes it easy to navigate. It is enclosed by a touch-sensitive border. A port is located below the display of a USB thumb drive.

There are many options for wireless and wired printing on the HP OfficeJet Pro7740. It has a USB to connect to a computer, and Ethernet to connect to a wired network. I tested it using an Ethernet connection with the drivers installed on a Windows 10 Professional computer. 

It supports HP wireless direct, which is HP’s proprietary equivalent to Wi-Fi Direct. It supports printing from Google Cloud Print and is compatible with Apple Air Print. It does not include PostScript drivers.

Print Speed

The HP OfficeJet Pro7740 was used to print the text-only section of our business applications’ suite at 23.6 pages per min (ppm). This is one of the fastest ink jets I’ve seen using our new test regimen. The entire test suite was printed at 9.7ppm.

We need a way to compare these scores with the scores of printers that were tested using our old system. However, it is clear that the speed scores of the 7740 are still very high in comparison. 

The new and old suites, which were used to test Editors’ Choice Brother FFC-J5720DW, both have a PowerPoint and four-page PDF document. However, the documents are different. The 7740 printed the copies in each case in half the time that it took for the MFC-J5720.

Quality

The 7740’s output quality is excellent. It produced text that was above average for ink jet and excellent graphics. We also took slightly better photos. 

Except for those that require tiny fonts (which isn’t always the case when using ink jets), the text should be sufficient for business use.

Although it was minor, the graphic had one flaw. It was minor banding in a few backgrounds that most people wouldn’t notice. The combination of text and graphics should work well for PowerPoint handouts that you distribute to colleagues or clients, formal reports, and other marketing materials. 

The photo quality is slightly better than I would expect from drugstore prints.

Running costs

Based on HP’s yield and price figures, the 7740 has running expenses of 2.1 cents for monochrome pages and 8.1 cents for colour pages. These figures are not exceptional, but they are still good. The Brother MFCJ5720DW runs at 1.7 and 7.6 Cents per black or colour page, respectively.

Conclusion

The HP OfficeJet Pro7740 is a powerful combination of high speed and excellent output quality. It also has a large paper capacity. And, it can print on paper up to tabloid size. 

The Editors’ Choice Brother MPF-J5720DW is slightly cheaper if you print a lot. However, it doesn’t match the quality of the 7740. 

It succeeds the MFCJ5720DW, an Editors’ Choice tabloid printer for medium duty in a small or large office.