HPSmart Tank 5103No product photo yet

HP Smart Tank 5103

Ink tankBottles

Two years of ink in the box, a hundred sheets of 4 × 6 photo paper beside it, and no cartridges anywhere — the pitch is aimed squarely at the people HP's cartridge printers drove off, and the bottle arithmetic behind it is real. HP 31 colour bottles are rated 8,000 ISO pages each, the highest colour yield of any four-ink bottle set here, which puts a full-colour page a shade under 1.2 cents. Smart Tank models are also sold outside HP+, so nothing commits the buyer to Original HP supplies for the life of the printer the way the DeskJet and OfficeJet 'e' models do. The machine around the tanks is deliberately plain: one 100-sheet tray that will at least take legal paper, manual duplex, no document feeder, and a 1.2-inch icon display that pushes almost every setting into the phone app. The awkward part is the price. At what HP asks for this, the Smart Tank 6001 beside it adds the automatic duplexer for much the same money.

Approx. price: ~$269
Cost per mono page: 0.40¢
Cost per colour page: 1.2¢
Cost to own, 5,000 pages: ~$297
Print speed, mono: 12 ISO ppm

Best for

Someone leaving cartridge printing behind who prints documents and family photos and does not need a feeder or a duplexer.

marks an estimate. Computed from the consumable's ISO page yield and its list price. An estimate. Purchase price plus ink or toner over the pages shown, assuming four mono pages for every colour page. Price is an approximate snapshot from our last catalogue update.

What it costs to own

Black consumable: HP 32XL black bottle · 6,000 ISO pages · ~$23.89
Colour consumable: HP 31 colour bottles · 8,000 ISO pages · ~$21.89 each
Cost per mono page: 0.40¢
Cost per colour page: 1.2¢
Cost to own, 5,000 pages: ~$297
Cost to own, 200 pages/month for 3 years: ~$309 (7,200 pages)

Computed from the consumable's ISO page yield and its list price. An estimate. How this is worked out

Cost to own · 5,000 pages

HP Smart Tank 5103~$297
~$269 printer + ~$28 supplies
HP Smart Tank 6001~$297
~$269 printer + ~$28 supplies
HP Smart Tank 7301~$407
~$379 printer + ~$28 supplies

purchase priceink or toner. An estimate: purchase price plus 5,000 pages at each printer’s computed cost per page, assuming 4 mono pages for every colour page. Printers whose consumable price we could not source are left out.

Specifications

Manufacturer-published figures. Cost lines are computed from the consumable figures above and are estimates.

Approx. price: ~$269
Cost per mono page: 0.40¢
Cost per colour page: 1.2¢
Cost to own, 5,000 pages: ~$297
Cost to own, 3 years: ~$309
Technology: Thermal inkjet
Ink system: Bottles
Inks: 4
Black consumable: HP 32XL black bottle · 6,000 pages
Colour consumable: HP 31 colour bottles · 8,000 pages
Ink in the box: 6,000 pages
Third-party ink lock: No
Ink subscription: None offered
Print speed, mono: 12 ISO ppm
Print speed, colour: 5 ISO ppm
Functions: Print · Copy · Scan
Two-sided printing: Manual
Document feeder: None
Paper capacity: 100 sheets
Max paper size: Legal
Borderless photo: Yes
Resolution: 4800 × 1200 dpi
Connectivity: Wi-Fi
Mobile printing: AirPrint · Mopria
Display: 1.2" icon LCD
Dimensions: 17.1 × 14.2 × 6.2 in
Weight: 11.1 lb
Released: 2024

Features

Four refillable tanks using HP 32XL black and HP 31 colour bottles
Colour bottles rated 8,000 ISO pages, the highest here on a four-ink set
Not an HP+ model — no obligation to use Original HP supplies
Two years of ink and 100 sheets of 4 × 6 photo paper in the box
Flatbed scanner and standalone copier
Borderless photo printing up to 8.5 × 11
Legal paper in the 100-sheet tray

No ink lock Borderless photo

In its favour

The 8,000-page colour bottles give the cheapest colour ink of any four-ink tank set here
No HP+ enrolment, so third-party bottles are not blocked
Ships with about two years of ink and a hundred sheets of photo paper
Owners rate the photo output highly for a printer at this price
Slightly faster than the comparable entry EcoTank at 12 ISO ppm

Against it

No automatic duplex, and the 6001 that has one costs about the same
Owners report printing and scanning being slow in normal use
A 1.2-inch icon display, so most settings need the phone app
No document feeder
HP's app is more insistent about accounts and sign-ins than its rivals'

What owners say

Distilled from owner discussions and long-term published reviews

The Smart Tank line is HP's answer to the people its cartridge printers drove away, and the first question those people ask is whether the supplies are locked. They are not: Smart Tank models are sold outside HP+, so there is no lifetime commitment to Original HP ink, and that single fact is what makes them worth considering at all.

The bottles are genuinely good — 8,000 ISO pages per colour bottle is the highest four-ink colour yield in this catalogue — and there is enough in the box that the first refill is a long way off. Owners are also warm about the photo quality for the money. What they are not warm about is speed: printing and scanning are both described as slow, and the app wants an account even though nothing here is subscription-locked, which irritates people who came specifically to escape HP's ecosystem. The last thing to weigh is the price. HP asks about the same for the 6001 beside it, and that one has an automatic duplexer.

What owners like

Not sold through HP+, so there is no lifetime Original-HP-supplies commitment — owners moving off cartridge HPs check this first
The colour bottles are rated 8,000 ISO pages, the highest colour yield of any four-ink bottle set here
Enough ink in the box that owners report a long time before the first refill
Owners rate the photo output well above what the price suggests

Common complaints

Slow. Owners describe both printing and scanning as sluggish, and it is the first thing they say about this model
Owners find HP's app insistent about accounts and sign-ins even on a model with no subscription attached
No automatic duplex, while the 6001 that has one sells for about the same money
No document feeder
Ordinary tank-inkjet behaviour when left unused — owners across the 5100 series report streaking blacks that need head cleaning

Questions that keep coming up

Is this locked to HP ink like the DeskJets?

No. Smart Tank models are not sold through HP+, so there is no lifetime Original-HP-supplies commitment and no firmware refusal of third-party bottles. It is the reason the Smart Tank line gets recommended to people who have sworn off HP cartridge printers, and it is worth confirming on the box before buying, because HP's 'e' models do carry the commitment.

How does the ink compare with an EcoTank?

Favourably on colour. HP's 31 colour bottles are rated 8,000 ISO pages each against Epson's 6,000 or 7,500, so a colour page costs slightly less here. Black is roughly level. The bigger differences between the two lines are features — duplex, feeders, screens — rather than ink.

Does it print on both sides?

Not automatically; the driver walks you through flipping the stack. The Smart Tank 6001 beside it has a real duplexer and, at the moment, costs about the same, which makes it the obvious comparison before buying. Anyone printing documents longer than a couple of pages should make it.

How slow is it, really?

HP rates it at 12 ISO pages a minute black and 5 colour, which is ordinary for the class — but owners report the machine feeling slower than that in practice, particularly when scanning or copying. If speed matters more than ink cost, a mono laser will beat it comfortably for documents.

Computed from the consumable's ISO page yield and its list price. An estimate. Owner notes are a summary of what people who own the machine report, not a test result — there is no lab behind this site.