Look & feel
The printer is an off-white plastic rectangle with a dark grey base. On the top is a relatively low-key embossed HP logo, and there’s a light-grey HP Tango X label in smallish letters on the front.
The printer measures around 15 inches wide by 8 inches deep by 3 inches high.
The book disguise
The combination of fairly minimalist looks and compact size means that the Tango X is already something that can be tucked away somewhere pretty discreetly, but since even small white plastic boxes aren’t particularly attractive, the printer comes with a linen cover – available in a choice of grey or indigo, which is a rather lovely subdued deep blue color. This looks almost like a dark grey.
The idea is that if, like me, you print so occasionally you’re happy to connect the printer to power when you actually need it, it can just sit on a bookshelf the rest of the time and no-one would even know it was there.
The bad news is that, at 15 inches in the longest dimension, it doesn’t sit upright on most bookshelves. But it does comfortably sit horizontally on our shelves, and yes, you’d never guess what it is. I wouldn’t say it looks like a book, but rather a stylish binder or similar. But it definitely ticks the ‘hide your printer away discreetly’ box.
Set up
Configuring wireless devices can sometimes be extremely fiddly and unreliable, and I sometimes find I need to resort to sacrificing a goat as an offering to the Wi-Fi gods. But getting the Tango X up-and-running couldn’t have been easier.
You need to install HP Smart software on your iPhone to configure the printer. Opening the app, the printer was immediately detected and it asked for my Wi-Fi details. I entered those, then it used animations to show how to install the supplied black and multi-color ink cartridges.
Both software and hardware set up were really easy.
