HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e Printer Review

The HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e's build quality is good. The body, made from 30% recycled plastic, feels sturdy and solid overall. Design-wise, there's a lot to like as well. The scanner lid has sufficient hinge resistance, so it stays open above 45 degrees. The power cord is detachable, so it's easy to replace in case of damage. Also, there's a rear panel that you can remove to gain access to the sheet rollers in case of a paper jam.

Some areas aren't as positive. There's a loud clipping noise when raising the lid, and there's no damper to prevent the lid from smacking down when it's below 45 degrees. The display's hinge has its own quirks as well, as it exhibits quite a bit of movement even when it's set to its resting position. Another issue is that the printer tends to shake violently if you're printing multiple pages in succession. Finally, our unit is missing part of the logo.

The HP 9730e doesn't require too much maintenance. Like most inkjet printers, there's a risk of the printheads clogging if you don't print for a long time. If you experience clogging or other print quality issues, a few maintenance functions built in can help resolve them, including printhead cleaning and printhead alignment. If you aren't sure how to perform maintenance tasks, you can watch how-to videos directly on the printer's display.

As for ink maintenance, the cartridges have a fairly decent yield, so you only have to replace them occasionally unless you're printing many sheets daily, like in a busy office setting. Replacing the ink cartridges is easy; just turn on the printer and pull down the front panel to reveal the cartridges. The cartridge holders are spring-loaded, so you need to push on the cartridge itself to release it. Accessing the sheet rollers is a bit more complicated. You get decent access from the back of the printer by removing the rear panel; if you need front access, you can get partial access via the cartridge bay by pushing the print carriage out of the way. Depending on the location of the jam, you may also need to remove the two input trays and the output tray. The input trays hold 250 sheets each, for 500 sheets total, so you shouldn't have to replenish them often.

You can get the user manual from HP's website.

The HP 9730e's display is excellent. This color capacitive touchscreen features a full glass finish, which, combined with its high contrast and large icons, results in an easy-to-use display. Also, because of the size of the icons, this display is big-finger approved. You can tilt the screen to make it easier to see when standing. 

Our unit wasn't perfect, however. The touchscreen froze three times during our testing: once during a firmware update and two more times during regular operation. The only fix was to power cycle the printer by unplugging it from the wall, as the power button also wasn't responding. Let us know in the comments if you have experienced this issue as well! 

You can get all four ink cartridges in a bundle, but this costs the same as purchasing them individually. High-yield cartridges are available—the HP 936e have an advertised yield of 2500 black and 1,650 color prints. 

The printer warns you when the ink is low and again when the cartridge is empty. You can't print in color when one of the color cartridges is empty; if you're in the middle of a color print job, the printer will prompt you to resend it in black. Finally, you can't print in color without a black cartridge installed. 

HP states that this printer is only for use with genuine or remanufactured HP cartridges. It comes with three months of free ink through Instant Ink, HP's ink subscription service. However, know that if you subscribe to the service or set up the printer using HP+, HP's cloud connection service that extends the functionality of their printers, the printer must have a continuous internet connection to function, as HP continually updates the firmware to block the use of third-party cartridges. See the Connectivity section for more details.

There are two OCR options on the HP 9730e. You can save scans as a searchable PDF using the HP Smart App. The app also has a Text Extract function, which produces a new text document of just the text rather than a scan. It works fairly well but does produce some mistakes, most notably with special characters.

The scan quality is mediocre. The ADF has difficulty processing sheets, resulting in crooked scans. The default image processing settings when using the Document preset are also too aggressive in trying to remove artifacts and watermarks, so fine details tend to look faint or blurry, like the lines on the graph in the sample document. The same image processing applies to documents scanned with the flatbed scanner. You can turn off many of these features in the Auto Adjustment tab of the HP Smart app; for example, disabling the Auto-Enhancement feature helps with the overly aggressive processing but doesn't completely fix the issue. Finally, the scanner enables HP Easy Color by default, which adjusts the color settings of scans. It's set to Conservative by default. Disabling this setting results in scans that are dimmer and less processed; using the Automatic setting provides similar results.

• Documentation
• Power cord
• Set of HP 936 starter ink cartridges:
  • 1x Black
  • 1x Cyan
  • 1x Magenta
  • 1x Yellow

The print quality of color documents is great. Just like with black-and-white documents, small and fine elements are clear, and text is quite sharp, although a bit fuzzier than on black-and-white documents. Misalignments happen sometimes; printing in the High-Quality mode helps resolve most of these issues but requires more ink.

The printer stops printing and warns you when a color cartridge runs out. You can continue to print in black and white, but only temporarily.

The printer comes with three months of ink via HP's Instant Ink subscription service; however, subscribing to the service will block you from using third-party cartridges, which are typically cheaper.

The top and bottom input trays hold 250 sheets of plain paper each. The output tray can hold 75 sheets at once.

You can set custom page sizes, but they differ across the two paper trays. The top paper tray (paper tray 1) supports paper sizes from  3" x 5" (76.2mm to 127mm) to 11.7" x 17" (297.2mm x 431.8mm), while the bottom paper tray (paper tray 2) only supports paper sizes from 8.5" x 11" (215.9mm x 279.4mm) to 11.7" x 17" (297.2mm x 431.8mm).

This printer's color gamut is mediocre. While dark shades are its strong point, it struggles to reproduce bright hues. As a result, photos will lose some detail, like the feathers on the red bird in the parrot photo. There's also significant graining throughout all color transitions.

This printer's color accuracy is reasonable. It tends to oversaturate colors, resulting in a vivid, albeit inaccurate, image. Skin tones are also overly warm. While some people may like this kind of image when printing photos at home, it isn't suitable for professional or enthusiast photo printing. 

There's an additional color setting called Best Quality. This setting is very similar to the standard Maximum DPI mode the printer uses out of the box; here are the deltaE results.

This printer does an excellent job reproducing small details. Although the way the printer uses halftones results in fine details being a bit soft, you can still differentiate background details from foreground objects. The lack of contrast in bright hues also detracts from the level of detail.

Although this printer supports borderless printing on 4" x 6" paper, noticeable printing artifacts appear on the left and right borders of the page when using this small sheet size. This is because the rollers have difficulty holding the 4" x 6" sheets. The issue persists regardless of the print quality or settings you use. Printing on a larger sheet of 8.5"x 11" doesn't have the same issues.

You can print from a USB flash drive using the USB input on the front of the printer. If you enable HP+ functionality or subscribe to HP's Instant Ink subscription service, the HP 9730e requires a constant internet connection to print, even when printing using the USB input or from an external device. You can skip HP+ activation during the initial set-up process and print without an internet connection.

You can use the HP Smart app to initiate printing, scan with your device's camera, and access Printables for pre-made content like birthday cards, worksheets, etc. You can also manage your ink subscription and access help and support pages.

While ChromeOS and macOS devices don't require drivers to print, Windows devices do; using the HP Smart app automatically installs the correct drivers and configures the printer for you.