Overall, the HP Photosmart C5280 offers a full and balanced feature set, but we'd like to see HP rework the Photosmart Express menu to make it more logical and easier to use (like putting the Print All option at the top-level menu). We'd also like to see some of the features we've found on similarly priced printers, including the ability to designate where to save photos to, sort memory card contents by date, and so on.
Performance
Compared to similarly priced inkjet multifunctions, the HP Photosmart C5280 is a middle-of-the-pack performer with printing. It produced black text at a rate of 5.53 pages per minute, slower than both the Canon Pixma MP510 and the Pixma MP600. It did beat both the Dell 966 and Kodak EasyShare 5300, though. It produced color graphics prints at a rate of 2.07ppm, a little slower than most, but not by much. It scored 0.76ppm for 4x6 photo prints, which again, was the second-slowest performance of the group. The Photosmart C5280 was the slowest of the bunch by far at grayscale scans, but then turned it around with color scans, beating the others by a wide margin.
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The Photosmart C5280 was a mixed bag with task quality. While its black text prints turned out a deep, pleasing black, we saw a lot of wicking and jagged edges. Also, the printer tended to cut off parts of the character descenders (parts that drop below the baseline, as in the lowercase g and y), which is a major issue. The color graphics print was impressive, with smooth gradients, smooth color saturation, and sharp and detailed photo elements. The 4x6 photo print was equally good: sharp details and pleasing and believable skin tones, though we would've liked to see a bit more warmth and brightness to the colors.
The grayscale scan was sharp and nicely detailed, but we did notice some compression on both ends of the grayscale. The results include overblown highlights and lost details in shadows. The Photosmart C5280 did its best work with the color scan. Colors were true, details were sharp, and elements such as barcode patterns were nicely rendered.
Overall, the Photosmart C5280 is better with graphics and photos than at text, so you shouldn't rely on this machine to produce a lot of text-heavy reports or documents. But for a $150 multifunction, we were impressed by its graphics print quality. If you need better and faster text prints, go with the Canon Pixma MP600.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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Service and support
HP backs the Photosmart C5280 with a standard one-year warranty. Toll-free phone support is available 24-7, or you can chat live online with tech support, also 24-7. HP's site has drivers, software downloads, FAQs, and troubleshooting guides, as well.
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