HP Photosmart 3310 All-in-One Printer review

The HP Photosmart 3310 ships with starter, or "initialization," ink cartridges. Oddly, the black starter cartridge holds 6ml more ink than its 10ml replacement. Replacing all six of the inks will set you back about $70.

Speed
Inkjet multifunctions are less than speedy, and the HP Photosmart 3310 is no exception. In CNET Labs' performance tests, this printer produced 5.26 pages per minute (ppm) of normal quality black text, slower than the 6.45ppm of the Canon Pixma MP760 but faster than the 2.10ppm of the Epson Stylus RX620. On the other hand, HP 3310 dawdled by printing a letter-size photo in 81 seconds; the Epson RX620 took just 41 seconds, and the Canon MP 760 did the same in 57 seconds.

CNET Labs all-in-one speed tests (page per minute)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Copy

Color scan

Grayscale scan

Photo

Text

HP Photosmart 3310

2.17 

6.11 

6.22 

1.21 

5.26 

Canon Pixma MP760

3.93 

5.23 

5.25 

0.57 

6.45 

Epson Stylus Photo RX620

1.49 

3.08 

4.15 

0.41 

2.1 

Quality
The HP Photosmart 3310's text print quality on HP Premium paper was great for an inkjet, on a par with that of the Canon Pixma MP760. Letters looked dark black and easily legible, even at 2-point size. The 3310's color graphics enjoyed smooth gradients and excellent details but suffered from inaccurate color matching due to an overdose of cyan. Printed on HP Photo paper, CNET Labs' letter-size test photo looked good, with bright colors and accurate details. However, dots were visible up close, especially in skin tones. The quality of the HP Photosmart 3310's grayscale and color scan was only fair, suffering from washed-out or absent light grays as well as halolike bright spots around bold black text. The color scan had a similarly overexposed-looking appearance.

CNET Labs' all-in-one quality tests
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Grayscale scan

Color scan

Photo

Graphics on inkjet paper

Graphics on plain paper

Canon Pixma MP760

Good 

Good 

Excellent 

Excellent 

Good 

Epson Stylus Photo RX620

Fair 

Fair 

Good 

Good 

Excellent 

HP Photosmart 3310

Good 

Good 

Good 

Fair 

Fair 

The HP Photosmart 3310 comes with a one-year limited warranty; 90 days only for the software. Free technical assistance is available 24/7, toll-free by telephone, in English and Spanish for the life of the warranty. More assistance is available at HP's Web site in the form of software updates, software and driver downloads, setup help, manuals, answers to FAQs, and e-mail chat.