The printing industry is in a rut.
With the digitization of almost everything, people no longer print as much as they used to. More modern ways of storing and sharing information, changing communication preferences in the home and office, and environmental concerns are disrupting the printing industry and creating challenges for stakeholders like HP.
I would argue that it’s not just technological, economic, and social changes that are reducing printers’ businesses. For the average person, printers and their features have become boring. When was the last time you heard about a new killer printer feature?
HP has come under a lot of fire for alleged anti-consumer practices in its printer business, causing many people to stop using their devices. But HP’s latest printing announcement is a rare example of a printing company proposing potentially useful new features to drive business, rather than questionable business strategies.
Printer needs to be rebranded
Frequent readers of Ars Technica (myself included) may be surprised to hear that I praise printing companies, especially HP. In recent years, HP has been a major factor in the breakdown of trust between printer brands and their customers.
The most egregious crime is using firmware updates to prevent previously purchased printers from working with non-HP inks. HP has filed numerous lawsuits over this, paying millions of dollars in fines and customer compensation. Activists are calling for HP printers to be removed from the electronic product environmental assessment tool’s registry because of HP’s dynamic security updates.
But HP continues to stand behind Dynamic Security, with CEO Enrique Lores even making unrealistic claims that third-party inks pose a cybersecurity threat. Updates that block device functionality that people rely on for important tasks, even work-essential tasks, can ruin someone’s day. It could also make people more distrustful of updates, creating more pressing security concerns than non-proprietary ink cartridges. In addition, HP and other printer companies (such as Canon) have come under understandable criticism for their combined printer/scanner devices, which require ink to perform scanning, which should be an inkless task. I am receiving it.
In 2024, the best thing I would recommend to someone looking for a printer is either a boring black and white Brother laser printer from 2017 or a trip to the local library.
Features under test may actually improve printing
So I was thrilled to hear that HP announced a feature for printer users that could easily and instantly improve a customer’s printing experience. This feature is currently only available to select customers as a beta software driver. But Perfect Output, as HP calls it, can be a useful tool for simplifying and speeding up certain types of print jobs, especially for tech novices.
Perfect Output is the first in a category of printer features that HP calls HP Print AI. Yes, this is part of the AI marketing hype currently overwhelming technology users (don’t shoot Messenger!). Perfect Output will make it easier to print from a web browser (articles, travel documents, tutorials, etc.) and spreadsheets in a cleaner, more natural way, HP announced Tuesday.
As an example, HP says Perfect Output lets you quickly correct image size and remove ads and white space when printing something from a website.
Perfect Output Previous HP print job example…
…and after that.
HP says it should also be easier to print spreadsheets that don’t span multiple pages, like the image below.
Spreadsheet print jobs before HP’s new AI features…
…and after that.
