HP has announced a new range of flagship A3 MFPs designed to accommodate the new demands of a hybrid workforce and the growing requirement for endpoint security while also meeting HP’s sustainability commitments. The introduction of the six-strong follows a tumultuous couple of years that have shaken up working practices, transformed office culture and ushered in a new era of hybrid working based upon cloud and digital transformation. As impactful as these changes are, they haven’t entirely eradicated the need to print. In a March 2022 Morning Consult survey commissioned by HP, 57% of respondents cited having access to a printer as one of the things they miss most about working in an office; 56% missed having access to a scanner. More powerful, more productive HP’s new flagship A3 MFPs – its first since 2017 – meet the continued requirement for print, while also beefing up scanning and workflow capabilities to meet the needs of organisations in the throes of digital transformation and hybrid workers wanting to interact with the cloud even when they are in the office. The MFPs combine a much more powerful processor – a system on a chip – giving a 7 times improvement in the performance of the device with upgraded hardware components, e.g. a bigger touchscreen display (10.1in vs 8in) and a bigger ADF (330 sheets), and a new low-melt toner formulation to Goodbye to grey boost productivity. What this means from a printing perspective is an increase in print speed to 70ppm (from 60ppm) and significant reductions in the all-important first copy out time (FCOT), from 20.5 seconds to 11.8 seconds, and boot from sleep time, from 150 seconds to 100 seconds. Scanning and workflow productivity have been improved through: n faster scan speeds (300 images per minute, up from 240ipm); n faster OCR speeds; n time-saving features like ‘reverse and retry’, where the document feeder will reverse a jammed page and try to re-scan it on the fly, and blank page separation, where the MFP will automatically create a new file when it recognises a blank page separator in a stack of pages; and n more sophisticated workflow features including scanning to multidestinations and the ability to preview and re-order pages and edit, redact and add signatures to scans via the bigger touchscreen display. Fewer interventions HP is boosting productivity further by minimising the need for interventions by users and/or service engineers. As well as increasing machine uptime, this has the benefit of reducing the need for on-site visits by engineers, saving managed services providers time and money and enabling them to reduce the carbon footprint of their operations. One key enhancement in this regard, partly enabled by smaller toner particles, is a big increase in the toner drum yield, which reduces the number of replacements needed throughout the lifetime of a device. As A3 Office Product Category Manager Andy Louch explains, this has allowed HP to reduce the need for onsite visits by synchronising maintenance cycles with the replacement of long- life consumables. “With a 40ppm product, on a 5-year contract and average monthly volumes, we would previously have needed to send an engineer out seven times in the lifetime of the contract; on the new range we will have to do it just twice. And when engineers are with the machines, jobs can be done quicker as well. For example, firmware upgrade times have been reduced by 75%, from 20 minutes to 5 minutes.” MPS providers also benefit from enhancements to the Smart Device Services HP introduced on its previous machines, with AI-powered sensors feeding back telemetry data on a range of factors, from how many pages have been printed and when the next service is due to warnings about failures or wear and tear to the fuser unit, rollers or the drum so that engineers can take preventative action and arrive on-site with the necessary spares to improve first-time fix rates.Where applicable, an MPS provider can take control of the operator panel and correct problems remotely. Another way in which these new devices can boost partner profitability HP launches new flagship A3 MFPs optimised for managed print services businessinfomag.uk magazine 20 OFFICE PRINT
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