HP Photosmart

In HP's large family of Photosmart printers, this one is the only one without another name.  The Photosmart is a multifunction printer which uses separate ink cartridges for each colour of ink, and is a carbon copy of the Photosmart Wireless without the WiFi connection.  Everything else is absolutely the same though, so both products offer identical printing quality and running costs, and print at almost exactly the same speed too.



Handling

Part of the small screen is touch-sensitive: only the white controls you can see below are actually active, and are used to choose from the options shown on screen.  You might prefer the screen on the Photosmart Plus, which is not only larger at 2.4'', instead of 1.4'', is also entirely touch-sensitive.

Speeds

The results are identical to those produced by the Photosmart Wireless.  We measured speeds of around 12 pages per minute using our test document, making these some of the fastest printers we've seen in any category so far this year.

A 4 x 6'' colour photo print takes 31 seconds, which is a more average result, but still a little faster than the Wireless (46 seconds) or the Photosmart Plus (39 seconds).



Quality

The printing quality is exactly the same as on both the Wireless and Plus versions of the Photosmart, and is also comparable to what all of HP's multifunction printers have produced since the manufacturer moved over to separate cyan, yellow and magenta cartridges.  Our four star rating in this section cover office documents, as well as colour and black and white photos.  The colours are accurate, but the ink drops are visible, both in graphics (especially large areas of colour) and in some photos. 

Energy and noise consumption

The printer uses 15 W while printing plenty of documents but only 2 W when idle.

The 50.6 dB we measured while it was printing means this printer will keep your office a little quieter than the Photosmart Wireless.

 



Scanner and copier

Scanning a 4 x 6'' photo at 300 dpi is fast, and takes just 12 seconds.  However, you'll need to set aside 22 s for the pre-scan, which is longer than average.

As usual, the scanner that HP has included is more of a fallback than an everyday model.  We can't really see professionals using it because of the rather pronounced colour discrepancies and the noticeable sharpening of lines within photos, as this example shows well.

For copying, choosing colour doubles the time it takes from 9 s in black-and-white to 19 s.  If you're copying a longer document, you can reach speeds of 7 ppm.

Cost per page

Two types of cartridges are available: standard and XL.  XL cartridges cost more to buy, but last longer and are a worthwhile investment if you print a lot.

Cartridge	Price	ISO Lifespan	Cost per page
364 (black)	£11	250	4.4 p
364 (cyan)	£9	300	3 p
364 (magenta)	£9	300	3 p
364 (yellow)	£9	300	3 p

That means you can expect to pay around 13 p per page using the standard cartridges.  That's a lot more expensive than using XL cartridges, which bring that down to 7.4 p per page.  That's pretty standard for HP's latest generation of printers.  For the time being, only the Canon MP620 and Kodak ESP 7 can do better.

Cartridge	Price	ISO Lifespan	Cost per page
364 XL (black)	£28	800	3.5 p
364 XL (cyan)	£17	750	2.3 p
364 XL (magenta)	£17	750	2.3 p
364 XL (yellow)	£17	750	2.3 p