- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 17 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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2 out of 2 people found this review helpful
3.5 stars
"Good all-around but not best at any one thing"
Pros: photo paper tray, text speed
Cons: slow photo printing, skin tones not exact
Summary: Opening the box, I was disappointed with HP cutting corners not including a USB cable and with the cheapness of the power cable. Since the printer has no printer cable port (USB only), I was forced to connect wireless by my WIFI network. It would be nice to also have it connected via USB so that, if my WIFI network went down, I wouldn't also loose my ability to print. Since HP was to cheap to include one, I will have to buy one myself. If I wanted to save every possible penny by putting up with missing parts/cables, I would have bought a printer off eBay. The (over) commitment to inexpensive also shows with the power cord which was a ridiculously short few inches from plug to transformer. The (cheap) cord from the transformer to the printer was longer but the short AC cord forced me to mount the transformer on the back of my desk with duct tape because the cable wasn't long enough to reach from the power strip through the hole in the desk to the printer area--a reasonably short distance away. The ease of setup was impressive although the software was slow installing. If you want to print photos and text and need an all around printer, this is a very good one. If you want top quality photos or professional looking text documents, there are probably better options. I first printed a city scene. The print time was a bit slow but the rendering was nice. The next test was a close-up face shot. The blacks in the background were impressively deep but the skin tones were not true to the monitor, biasing slightly towards yellows and reds. Could this be a monitor calibration issue? Its possible but without an expensive calibration kit, I trust my $900 monitor out the box more than a $150 printer. Text printed much faster. It looked reasonably crisp at first glance but close examination reals slight smudging and artifacts. These were most noticable when printing an email from Outlook. The black line Outlook prints across the top of an email in the default view was definately more gray then black and more fuzzy than crisp. Feature wise, the touch screen is nice, providing detailed feedback instead of the blinking light on my old Canon iP400 which provided no information except to check the computer for the detailed error message. The ability to have paper and photo paper always loaded and have the printer automatically switch between them is very nice. I can also see how the ability to insert memory card, select photos from the memory screen, and even do very basic editing such as red-eye reduction all from the printer's touch screen would be very popular. I can't see ever using it because I do more advance touch ups in photoshop but its advanced enough that should your computer ever crash, you could select and print some of your raw shots before you fix/replace your PC. The features are 9+. Photo quality 7-8. Text quality 6-7. Quality 5. This leaves me to say, the HP Photosmart is pretty good at everything it does but not exceptional at anything it does.
HP Photosmart D7460:
