HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e review: a wide-format 11×17 printer at a small price

HP’s OfficeJet Pro 9730e is a fast, wide-format multifunction printer that handles big jobs at an affordable price. When standard letter-size paper is too small, tabloid printers come to the rescue, copying, scanning, and printing on paper up to 11 inches wide and 17 inches long.

Tabloid prints are twice the size of letter paper, perfect for folding in half for brochures or in thirds for informational guides. However, size isn’t everything. The best printers offer good, reliable performance and excellent value.

I tested the OfficeJet Pro 9730e’s speed, quality, usability, and long-term supply costs to find out whether it’s the right 11×17 printer for you.

Specs

Design

With two large paper trays, the OfficeJet Pro 9730e can keep printing all day. As a wide-format printer, I expected the HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e to be large, but the volume and heft still surprised me. The footprint is 22.9 by 18.4 inches, and it stands 15.2 inches tall. With the front output bin fully extended and holding tabloid paper, the depth increases to 33.2 inches. The 42.9-pound weight and bulky size explain why HP recommends having two people unbox this printer.

HP had enough room for two 250-sheet paper trays, each capable of holding a variety of paper sizes from 3×5 photo paper up to 11×17 ledger sheets.

There’s a large flatbed scanner and an automatic document feeder (ADF) on top. A USB-A port on the front left makes walk-up printing convenient. This sturdy printer can keep rolling out copies and prints for a long time.

The 4.3-inch color touchscreen makes operation simple. The display is adjustable, tilting up to 44 degrees from vertical. That makes it easy to see while seated or standing.

Printing performance

HP’s OfficeJet Pro 9730e looks like an office printer and offers enough speed to deliver on that promise. At 22 pages per minute (ppm) in black and 18 ppm in color, even long documents are ready quickly.

I had a few paper jams, suggesting the feed system isn’t as robust as more expensive printers. Fortunately, the front panel allows easy access to the rollers, and clearing a jam is simple.

Draft speeds reach a fast 34 ppm without hurting readability. I did experience some paper feed errors at this pace. The first page takes 12 seconds, so one-offs feel slower.

While it can’t compete with a 35 ppm laser printer like the HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw, the OfficeJet Pro 9730e costs less and allows much larger prints. That opens up new possibilities for colorful folded brochures, menus, signs, and flyers.

Large prints are also a great way to show off pictures, and the best wide-format photo printers draw from a larger palette of inks to deliver lab-quality results. HP claims the OfficeJet Pro 9730e outputs P3 color that is “true-to-screen,” despite its standard four-color ink system.

Prints were good overall, and I enjoyed the bright, vivid photos that popped off the page. However, color accuracy suffered occasionally. On plain paper, contrast is sometimes low, while I often saw oversaturation on photo paper.

As a photography enthusiast, I find the inconsistency troubling. I suspect HP’s algorithm might be weighting colors to achieve a P3 range with cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks. Sometimes a print looks nice, but strays too far from the original photo.

Borderless prints require photo paper, but it’s possible to print full-page pictures on plain paper if you override the warning of a paper mismatch. The print will come out a bit damp, so use caution with this trick.

The OfficeJet Pro 9730e works best as a small business printer with tabloid print capability. It handles photos well, but with enough inconsistency that it’s a better fit for color documents, charts, and reports.

Special features

The HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e is an all-in-one that can scan, copy, and print. HP mentions fax capabilities, but it’s simply mobile fax via the HP Smart app. The OfficeJet Pro 9730e can’t send or receive facsimiles.

The best all-in-one printers process long documents quickly and reliably, and the OfficeJet Pro 9730e handled most documents well. The ADF accepts standard letter and legal paper, and the large flatbed scanner handles 11×17 scans, so I can scan and copy a full ledger or tabloid page.

The full-duplex ADF can scan both sides, allowing double-sided color copies. It’s quick for an inkjet, managing 18 monochrome or 13 color copies per minute. Copies look crisp at 600 dpi, but I did notice horizontal drift at the bottom of some prints.

The OfficeJet Pro 9730e has a convenient USB-A port on the front below the touchscreen. Walk-up printing is simple, but PDFs aren’t supported. I wish it showed thumbnails and gave previews of photos. Since I only see a list of filenames, it’s hard to find what I want to print unless the name is descriptive.

Software and compatibility

The setup was quick with the large color touchscreen and automatic Wi-Fi connection via the HP Smart mobile app. I plugged in the printer, installed the four large ink cartridges, added paper, and was ready to print in minutes.

HP is among the best printer brands, and HP printers support all major operating systems, including Windows, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS,  iOS, and Android.

Support is good, but full functionality is even better. HP’s OfficeJet Pro 9730e can print envelopes from my phone, a feat few printers can achieve. Like most other printer manufacturers, HP limits mobile scanning to 300 dpi, half the resolution I see when I start the scan from my computer.

Overall, the software works well, allowing photo and document prints, scans, and maintenance from any device.

Price

At $360, the OfficeJet Pro 9730e is quite affordable for a fast all-in-one inkjet printer. A free three-month Instant Ink subscription adds extra value.

Still, it’s a cartridge-based printer, so supply costs can have a big impact on the long-term costs. HP includes four standard yield cartridges in the box, which should last several weeks.

HP makes two types of cartridges for the OfficeJet Pro 9730e: the standard HP 936 and the high-capacity, eco-friendly HP 936e EvoMore. Higher yield cartridges typically cost more but last longer.

936 Black prints up to 1,250 pages, and three 936 color cartridges print approximately 800 pages. EvoMore has twice that capacity. HP rates 936e Black at 2,500 pages and 936e Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow at 1,650 pages.

The cost per letter-size page is 3 cents for monochrome and 10 cents for color. EvoMore cartridges shave two-tenths of a cent off monochrome costs and five-tenths of a cent off color document costs. For tabloid prints, those costs double, making the EvoMore savings more compelling.

Is this the printer for you?

The HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e offers good value for a budget-priced 11×17 all-in-one. If you work with tabloid documents. It’s fast for an inkjet printer and copier, and draft mode rolls out pages almost as fast as the best laser printers.

HP had to make some tradeoffs to keep the price this low. It takes about 12 seconds for the first page to print. One-off prints feel slow, but the pace picks up significantly for longer documents. The paper feed isn’t as robust as more expensive printers, so you might get an occasional paper jam or have extra paper pulled through, causing misaligned prints.

In a busy office that accesses a printer frequently, that could impact productivity enough to justify stepping up to a professional-grade wide-format printer. A wide-format HP Color LaserJet costs over $1,800, so it might be worth trying the OfficeJet Pro 9730e before making such a large investment.