HP Photosmart Premium All-in-One Printer
Posted by Notcot on Apr 2, 2010 in Photography |
5 CommentsReply |
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I wanted a wireless printer that was going to be cheaper to run than the three separate printers connected to Apple Macs in my house. I originally considered laser printers, but the smaller cheaper units cartridges are expensive. I picked mine up at half price by trading in an old printer at Staples. I was concerned about the networking aspect, as I had read reviews about other makes where you have to use a static IP address. I was amazed how many printers get back reviews and this printer was to replace a Kodak which died after the first paper jam, as does lots of other peoples apparently.
After pulling the printer out of the box and unpacking I was impressed with the build quality. The extras come in a zipped bag plus you get a USB cable, which is almost unheard of these days.
After installing the cartridges I went straight for the wireless option rather than USB. It was so easy, the printer guides you all the way with instructions and animations. You then insert the CD in you PC and follow the instructions. The printer was found straight away and the whole process was idiot proof. I then went and installed on the other two Macs with the same ease. My network uses a BT Hub (the old white one).
Printing is quick and it knows what paper to use, so you can have A4 and 4X6 paper loaded at the same time and it picks the right one. Not only that but if the glossy photo paper is upside down it tells you after rejecting the first sheet, so you don’t waste any paper or ink by printing on the wrong side. Duplex printing is an added bonus as is bluetooth. You can easily scan remotely from your PC using the HP utility software.
If you have an iPhone you can install a free Ap which allows you to print your photos direct from the phone. It’s fast and very good quality. Prints are borderless.
I have to say that I’m very impressed with this and can find nothing to criticise at all. Black cartridges are less than £10 each and last for approximately 250 sheets and there is an economy setting as well which is perfectly good for black and white docs.
In summary I can thoroughly recommend this printer, but do shop around for the best price.
Rating: 5 / 5
Excellent quality printer, good looking and easy to use, but shop around as prices vary enormously (I bought mine from John Lewis, which was the cheapest at the time). I have it set-up on my wireless network and it works very well; although it did take me a few goes to get my router to recognise it (with the orange livebox you must press button 1 on the router to enable new devices to pair with it, a fact I forgot.)
The printer comes with a USB cable, external power transformer, all 5 ink cartridges and 3 sheets of 10x15cm HP Advanced Photo Paper as well as the usual plethora of paperwork.
Large quantity double sided printing is fairly slow as it waits for the ink to dry on the first side before dragging it back in to print the other side; however, I guess this is unavoidable with an ink-jet. It is certainly not the smallest all-in-one on the market, with the paper flipper (duplexer) attachment on the back. However its clean lines and unfussy design mean it doesn’t take over your home-office.
It uses 5 different ink cartridges, with a separate photo black to that of the normal text black, which should keep the usually ridiculous ink-jet running costs down a bit. I’ve had outstanding results in black and white and the boarder-less colour photos have so-far come out very well too.
The touch-screen control panel is easy to use, even for big fingers, although I find most of the printer functions end-up being conducted on your computer (because why have a wireless printer if you are always right next to the printer?).
Rating: 5 / 5
This printer is very easy to set up and link to an existing network (I used the wireless set up). The photo quality is just as good as you would get from an external printers such as Snapfish. The text quality is cleaner than my old HP Photosmart 2610. However, I bought this printer primarily for it’s wireless capabilities and duplex printing. The duplex printing works fine. It is slow. As is the printing of the first page of any document. I have had numerous issues maintaining connectivity while printing. It seems that the document is not spooled into printer memory so if the link wavers at all, the printing stops completely. If you restart it will restart from the beginning, not where it failed so you have to delete and resubmit the print job minus the pages already printed. In the end the only way I could print a duplex document was to sit my laptop on the printer and switch to USB. That worked fine. I have not tried Ethernet. Scan quality is good, but again, connectivity has been an issue when trying to do it wirelessly. On a positive note, I have changed my router and had less dropouts, but they do still occur. If you search the Internet, there are people that describe similar issues.
So if you printing demands are not high, and your network connection is stable, you will love the ease of use of this printer and scanner. The separate photo tray makes photo printing easy, but make sure that you select the correct print options to make sure that the printers uses the photo black ink not the text black ink. On a PC/Mac this is pretty much automatic, but if printing direct from a device that cannot set print settings I found photos were printed using the text ink.
If you are looking to print sizeable documents this may not be the printer for you.
Rating: 3 / 5
After some bad luck with another make of printer – I bought this printer and it was dead-easy to set up wirelessly. So I would give it a very high recommendation for this point. Thus far over the past couple of weeks, there has been no problem with the wireless but I will add my router is about 4.5 meters away in direct line of sight to the printer.
So far, it seems to work very well and has what I think a very easy to use software package as well. I have used it to scan, copy and print family photo’s and print documents as well.
An added bonus along with being wireless, it also has bluetooth, so with kids mobile phone pictures this is also simple to use as well.
At this point, I have used the touch screen a couple of times and is pretty straight forward – possibly what some would say is a gimmick? But handy at the same time if you don’t need to use the computer to print items.
The only thing I cannot really mention is how quick it will go through the print cartridges, they are a bit on the pricy side, but you get what you pay for..or so they say.
Rating: 5 / 5
This printer is the best one i have ever purchased and i can recommend it to all and sundry, i had a HP Photosmart 1000 before and had great faithfull service from it for over 8 years and when it came to replacing it (by the way it still works) i looked at all the other printers and compared them to what i would prefer and most suitable to me,kept coming up with this printer, I MADE THE CORRECT DECISSION BUYING HP AGAIN AND ESPECIALLY THIS MODEL WITH WIRELESS CONNECTION. “BUY WITH CONFIDENCE”
Rating: 5 / 5