Club Printer

It’s decided, portable photo printers and digital cameras are now buddies. Some users would rather just get home with their digi cams, upload photos to their computer, share them on the Internet and store them on Cds/DVDs/USB sticks. But there’s just something about photos printed on paper that makes them special, in a way more valuable. It’s probably that you can touch them, see them, add them to albums and share them with special people.
<-336×280 Large Rectangle – center->
While you can do that through e-mail or web albums, for the passionate photographer it’s just not the same. This is why, I guess, photo printers have become so popular; especially portable ones that you can take along anywhere. For some photographers nothing is better in the world than sitting under a tree shooting a perfect picture of the sun going down and being able to print it right there and then.

The HP Photosmart A620 includes quite a few nice and interesting features. This portable photo printer does much more than print photos on the go. You’ll be provided with a whole bunch of features to edit them as well. A function called scribble allows the user to draw on a photo by using the included stylus.

You can obviously customize the line thickness as well as the caller and at the simple touch of the erase button you can remove whatever you don’t like from what you drew. Caption will allow you to add a title to the photo (and users can select from 6 colors and 5 possible fonts). The clip art feature turns your photo into exactly what the name suggests, a clip art.

With the help of ‘album’ you can select your favorite photos and transform them into an album page while ‘design gallery’ will allow you to use different effects on a photo including black & white, sepia, antique or other. As usual, you’ll also be getting frames, with a ton of categories to chose from. To work with all this you’ll get a 4.8 inch touch screen that’s great for previewing pictures as well.

Installing the hp a620 photo printers is easy. You’ll just have to run the software installer. If you want to use the printer with your home PC you’ll have to get yourself an USB cable (since it’s not included) and connect the two devices. Since the printer offers compatibility for multiple memory cards (including CompactFlash Type I and II, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Duo, Secure Digital, MultiMediaCard, Secure MultiMediaCard, xD-Picture Card, Mini SD ) you can also print directly off a card as well.

The HP Photosmart A620 fortunately doesn’t limit you to just one size of media, like many other portable printers on the market. Its user will be able to print photos in 4 by 6, 4 by 8, 4 by 12 (panorama) or 5 by 7 inch paper. You may find better models on the market at the current time, but the HP photo printers A620 remain a good choice for the photo enthusiast.

HP’s first full pigment –based printer was the Photosmart Pro B9180, released back in 2006. It offered good quality prints for both monochrome and color and had a series of very useful features that were pretty new on devices found on the market at the time. The B8550 has a similar purpose, except this printer is HP’s attempt to keep the price a bit lower (it was released with a price tag of $550). There are many similarities between the B8850 and the B9180 as both printers come with the same ink set (Vivera) and both the cartridges and print heads are interchangeable.
<-336×280 Large Rectangle – center->
The capacity is the same as well and both printers can support 200 sheets in the bottom feed paper tray and also offer a special media slot for different media types. HP claims that the maximum size of printing is 13 by 19 inch but if you plan on using the specialty media tray you’ll discover that you can set a custom page size and print panoramic.

The similarities end at the Ethernet port (which is featured in the B9180 only). The B9180 can also handle thicker media than its brother (up to 1.5mm) and has a status display on the front size.

These features were dropped by HP with the idea of cost efficiency in mind. Users who don’t need networking won’t have to pay a higher price for the device. For a long period of time Epson was the ‘king’ manufacturer and produced some of the best photo printers when it comes to pigment ink. Since HP stepped up to produce such devices as well, and pretty good quality to boot, competition boosted the development of new technology a bit.

Just to keep things clear Hp’s B8850 targets the advanced amateur photographer (or photographers that don’t have networking requirements from a printer). Its price is more affordable than products from the competition or even HP’s line. The B8850 is somewhat dependent of a PC. It can work as a standalone but the front LCD display only shows a limited amount of info.  If you’re planning to keep it hooked to the same PC you’ll find that the software it comes with makes up for this little inconvenience and inform you on how low the ink levels are, among other things.

As mentioned before the B8850 uses the same print head cartridges and Vivera pigment ink, eight as number, as the B9180. Just like its older brother it offers excellent quality color prints. It features a simpler closed loop calibration system that works by printing a page with individual color blocks.

It then automatically pulls the page back into the printer where a sensor will scan each color block and measure things like color density. It will then compare the results with the factory calibration settings and decide if they are the same. In case there is a difference from factory settings, the printer will adjust itself as necessary to make sure it provides consistent color.Overall the HP Photosmart Pro B8850 is one of the best photo printers for advanced amateur photographers and will do well on the desk of a professional as well.

Because of its name HP’s Photosmart 8750 Professional Photo Printer leads you to believe that it’s a device dedicated to the professional photographers out there. In reality the printer is situated more in between professional photography printing and amateur printing and its target market is the advanced amateur photographer that wants a close to professional photo quality device.

<-336×280 Large Rectangle – center->

Like many other photo dedicated devices, Photosmart 8750 offers a lot of versatility when it comes to the device you’re printing from. Its user will be able to print directly from memory cards (the printer supports CompactFlash, Microdrive, Secure Digital, MMC, Memory Stick and xD memory cards), a digital camera (through the PictBridge port), USB via computer or wirelessly (through an optional Bluetooth adapter). If you decide to take a look along the back side of the Photosmart 8750 you’ll discover Ethernet. By simply connecting it to your router (or switch) you’ll be able to use the printer in a workgroup and all the users will be able to access both the printer and the memory card slots.

The Photosmart 8750 makes use of three distinct ink cartridges that include HP Vivera inks. The special Vivera inks are designed to produce brilliant colors that replicate real life colors as much as possible. They provide exceptional resistance throughout time if combined with HP’s special Premium Plus Photo paper. As for the actual inks included with the printer, you’ll get a HP101 photo inkjet, HP 102 gray photo inkjet and a tri-color HP97. This offers the user high quality nine-ink color printing and realistic photographs. For regular text printing you can replace the HP 102 with a black-only optional cartridge. The HP inkjet cartridges feature both the ink and the printhead. Each time you purchase a new one you’ll also get a brand new inkjet.

As opposed to other professional photo printers, you won’t discover a large color LCD on its control panel, but a monochrome one that can’t be used for previewing imagery, but just for navigation and settings. But to help you out, the printer has a ‘thumbnail index sheet’ feature that allows you to pick the images you want to print without the help of a PC. This can be done by selecting the assigned number of the image from the index sheet.

What makes this printer come very close to being a professional device is a smart driver that supports Adobe RGB, sRGB and controls ink saturation, brightness or tone. While it may seem relatively bulky and takes up quite a bit of desk space, it does allow the printing of larger format photographs (up to 13 by 19 inches borderless prints).

The printer is relatively easy to use, has a wide variety of media card slots as well as built in networking and is a pretty good option for a user that loves photography and would like to purchase a nearly professional photo printer that produces vibrant, time-resistant prints.

HP is the producer of some of the most convenient printers on the market. Doesn’t matter if you’re looking for an office printer, a home printer, a professional photo printer, it’s very likely that HP has already designed and is selling the perfect printer for your needs. Like many other manufacturers, HP too has specific product lines and the devices in each line all tend to look just about the same. Improvement usually means a couple of extra features or slight modifications when it comes to design. However, there is one printer that doesn’t look like any other HP product. This is the Photosmart A826.

<-336×280 Large Rectangle – center->

First thing that a potential buyer needs to know about HP’s Photosmart A826 home photo printer is that, while the device is small as size, it doesn’t mean that you can take it around on your trips. In fact, this particular printer measures 14.7 x 15.1 x 10.4 inches and is somewhat larger than most compact printers on the market. The design doesn’t imply portability at all. There’s no handle to carry it around with and no battery pack either included or optional.

The idea behind this design is simple. A826 HP home photo printers are meant to sit on your desk and serve as a personal photo kiosk. The design is more than odd. The A826 actually resembles a miniature photo kiosk. It features a 7 inch touch screen display which serves for all of the navigation. The printer ships with a stylus for people who prefer not to use their fingers and smudge the display.

Right as you flip down the front cover (serving as a paper output tray) you’ll discover the four memory card slots it features and a PictBridge USB port. The menu you get on the screen is highly intuitive and you’ll be able to make quite a lot of adjustments to photos (remove effects or add them, modify the size of photos, check ink levels etc).

HP Photosmart A826 has a tri-ink system (the usual three colors, magenta, cyan and yellow) but no black (which is made out of the three previous colors combined). Since black is processed it obviously lacks the depth and quality that actual black ink would provide. Quality of the prints is however good towards great, despite the less intense blacks. One great thing about the A826 is that it works just fine without a PC. You can print photos straight from a PictBridge compatible device (digi cam, mobile phone) or even wirelessly if you purchase an optional USB Bluetooth adapter.

HP’s Photosmart A826 home photo printers can handle 4 by 6 inch or 5 by 7 inch media. Paper can be inserted through the top (you’ll see a small hatch there). Its paper holding capacity is of about 100 sheets. As a contrast to most other photo printers, the paper is fully contained within the shell of the A826 which also protects against dust. As a conclusion if a personal home photo kiosk is what you have in mind this little photo printer is a great choice. A print will keep you waiting a bit under a minute and the price of the printer isn’t that bad either.

Standalone printers are slowly starting to disappear from the market. This is because the prices on multifunction devices have gone down by a lot. When a user goes out shopping with $100 in their pocket, it’s only normal that they’d want to get as much as possible for that money spent. When you can get printing, copying and scanning for a price, somehow you wouldn’t pay the same price for a standalone, even if you never ever use those features. So why on earth would you want to buy such a simple device?

<-336×280 Large Rectangle – center->

Well, first of all, a standalone printer is significantly smaller as size than an all-in-one. HP’s Deskjet D4360 proves this with a size of 128 x 445 x 342 mm. This means you’ll have more space on your desk than if you’d have bought a multifunction. It’s easy to move it from one room to another, if you need to do it, as it only weighs 3.5 kg. And obviously, it is cheaper. Multifunction prices may have gone down, but the price of standalone printers has also gone down as a result. When a more popular product hits the market it’s only normal that older technologies and concepts become more affordable.

As mentioned before, the D4360 is just a printer. You won’t be able to scan, you won’t be able to copy and you definitely won’t be able to fax. Sometimes jack of all trades means master of none, which is generally the weak point of all-in-ones. So by this rule, this HP standalone printer should be great at the only thing it offers. Well, not so much.

HP does advertise it as printing laser quality text, and it does do good for an inkjet, but in reality for a very low price you can get a small laser printer that will produce much better quality and crispiness. Photo quality is also rather disappointing. It’s true that you expect great photo quality just from a popular photo printer that you’ll have to spend a lot on, but a ‘good’ level of quality would have been enough.

A price well under $100 also means you will not get any networking features. You’ll just have to make due with using it on USB. It also doesn’t feature PictBridge so printing from a digital camera will also require a PC. There is also no card reader on the HP Deskjet D4360 color inkjet printer. So no direct printing from anything..but for a PC, obviously. Printing speed is pretty good though, at 30 pages per minute in black or 23 pages per minute in color.

As a conclusion, with the HP Deskjet D4360 color inkjet printer you get exactly what you pay for, which is sadly, not much. Normally standalone printers (ones that have great printing quality) are worth spending money on. In the case of this one, for a few more bucks you’re much better off getting a small, affordable all-in-one that will give much better quality, printing speed and yes, many more features.

Just as important as the employees for a business is the equipment the office has. Many manufacturers are introducing a high number of products to the market in order to meet the needs of any type of user, be it for home use or for professional use. When it comes to the office arena, a person in charge of purchasing the equipment should know by not that the printers and computers should work , be as reliable and efficient as the employees themselves, for everything to work properly and in order to maximize efficiency.

<-336×280 Large Rectangle – center->

HP is a leading company in manufacturing and providing devices, including office printers. One of their printers, The HP 5500dn color laser printer isn’t necessarily the best you’ve ever seen, but can offer most of what an office will ever need. While it’s not the biggest of them, be warned that the HP Color LaserJet 5500dn really is big and will require it’s own private corner of an office.

In fact, before you decide where to seat the printer, it would be highly recommended that you’ll never want to move it from that spot again. The toner cartridges are arranged in a vertical stack which results in a smaller footprint than most lasers have. But what it lacks in footprint dimensions, it makes up for in pounds, so it will take two people to stand a chance in moving it around. It weights just around 132 lbs and measures 22.7 x 27.7 x 25.2 inches. When it comes to setting the printer up, moving it in and placing it somewhere is the hardest part. The rest of it, installing the drivers and the actual printer, is really simple.

Now, when you start printing you’ll notice that its speed is actually great. Not only does it produce 21 pages per minute (it’s true, there are other faster printers out there), but the warm up speed is actually short. Warm up speed is one of the most annoying things when it comes to office printers. Unless you’re printing continuously, the printer will enter sleep mode. Thus, every time you start printing again, it will have to warm up.

With some printers having a long warm up period, you almost never get to feel that the printer is indeed fast, because you’ll be getting warm up time plus actual printing time. Fortunately it’s not the case of the HP 5500dn color laser printer.

While the quality of the prints is good, the biggest problem of the 5500dn is the maintenance costs. While you won’t have to replace all consumables at the same time, they are costly nonetheless. There are three toner cartridges that work for 12,000 pages and a black one that should last for 13,000.Overall, this printer is reliable and sturdy, easy to operate and prints 21 ppm in both mono and color. The not so good parts include it’s big size, high initial cost and high maintenance cost. For offices that need larger format printing it also supports 11 x 17 inch paper.

HP tends to believe in the saying ‘if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it’ theory. The C8180 appears almost identical to all the other printers in the Photosmart series, thus the design brings nothing new to the market. However, if you were satisfied with it so far, you’ll be equally satisfied with this device as well.  What sets it apart from most other inkjet color printers is the new features it has to offer.

<-336×280 Large Rectangle – center->

One interesting feature  that you won’t find in most all-in-ones is the swivel touch screen that the C8180 includes. You’ll be able to navigate, edit photos, set up your wireless and more with the help of that LCD. Including a touchscreen was a good choice because the front panel isn’t completely covered in big and small buttons for every single feature.

Instead, you get a decent, rather simple to use menu, and you can just navigate by using your finger tips. There are still a couple of buttons left, ones that you’re frequently using such as start, stop, cancel and a red-eye removal one. A bit to the side you’ll also find the memory card slots. The printer supports SD, MultiMedia Card, Memory Stick, Compact Flash and XD.

Just to be sure, let’s define what all-in-one means. The HP Photosmart C8180 offers printing, scanning and copying. Moreover, if you fancy printing out photos there are several features for amateur photography as well. The quality of the prints is good towards great. The speed of the printer is a completely different story though.  If we stop to think about where it belongs , that place will most likely be a home office desk, with a user that wants to have many features in one but isn’t in a hurry to print anything.

Due to the included WiFi, this printer can handle several users all queing up their print jobs. You can connect your printer to your PC/laptop either through the USB cable (included in the pack), Bluetooth or WiFi. Setting up the networking or the printer itself is relatively easy and convenient.

The quality of the prints is most likely partially due to the fact that the C8180 uses six distinct ink cartridges (black, magenta, light magenta, cyan, light cyan and yellow). Each cartridge has its own bay underneath the printer’s front cover.  The capacity of the cartridges is decent, and the black one should last for just about 660 pages.  One special feature that the C8180 boasts is the dual paper input tray. You’ll be getting two separate paper trays, a 8.5 by 11 inch paper one or a 4 by 6 inch one.

There are two big fat inconveniences in the case of the Photosmart C8180 inkjet color printer, the first one being the lack of an auto document feeder. Secondly, the printing speed doesn’t really recommend it for a work environment. It’s considerably slower than most of its competitors and you can really truly feel how slow it is when you try and print a photo.

There was once a time when most people owned a photo camera, and they relied on photo studios to get their photos on paper. Some people, who were more passionate about this occupation, even had home photo labs, developing their own works of art. As soon as the photo camera turned digital, suddenly most photo studios discovered they didn’t really have customers anymore.

It was after all more convenient, instead of printing photos, to just store them on your computer’s hard drive or on a CD. You could share it with your whole family via the Internet, or play a slideshow on your notebook or TV screen. After all, seeing a photo on a 21 inch screen sure beats a 4 x 6 inch photo.

But to be honest, back in the day when photos were mostly found in a photo album, people treasured them much more than now. This is, I guess, why many people are interested in photo printers, and why there are so many models on the market at the moment. If you’re interested in a bigger size print, you have somewhat of a problem though. But before you start worrying, consider the option HP is giving its potential customers, the B8550, a large format digital photo printer. What’s so special about this device is that it offers a print size of 13 x 19 inch. What’s even more surprising is that HP has managed to keep the size of the printer relatively small as well.

The printer comes with 3 Vivera color dye inks, namely magenta, cyan and yellow. It also has 2 black cartridges, one that’s a dye and recommended for photo printing and an extra one that’s a pigment and was included for text and document printing. Another great aspect of printing in a larger size is that you have a much wider choice in terms of paper (you can find fine art paper like canvas or watercolor only in a larger format).

Now let’s talk a bit about features. You’ll get your rather small but convenient LCD panel for navigation, a USB 2.0 port, Bluetooth via a dongle (plugged in the PictBridge port) and the mandatory memory card slots that support just about all cards out there (list includes Memory Stick/Duo, Secure Digital, Multimedia Card, xD Picture Card and Compact Flash). You can also use the card readers on the printer to transfer your files directly to the PC or laptop.  A very interesting feature that most recent printers from HP include is the Auto Sense technology.

What exactly does the Auto Sense do? Well, by ‘scanning’ the barcode of the photo paper you just purchased (generally positioned on the back of the package), the printer will identify it and automatically adjust print quality settings.  This means you, as a user will just have to hit the print button, sit back and relax while the B8550 does every setting for you and takes out an amazing quality photo. If large format digital photo printers would cost a fortune not so long ago, right now you could get the HP B8550 for just around $300 (you could probably find it even cheaper if you’re a patient and methodical shopper).

HP’s Photosmart A646 printer claims its place right in the middle of the photo printer lineup that’s currently available on the market. It isn’t meant to be a pretentious, high-end device, but its price recommends it for the regular user. It also offers multiple options for just about everything, including the device you’re printing from, connectivity or photo formats. The printer is very compact and its design clearly states portability.

If digital cameras are becoming smaller and at the same time offering better specifications, the next logical step for the photo industry would be to provide the quality of professional photo printers in a small portable device, and the A646 is a good start in trying to achieve that.

Unfortunately what HP doesn’t offer for this printer (yet) is an optional battery pack. So if the main idea of the printer is to be portable, and HP has been offering optional batteries for most of its lightweight photo printers, it’s not clear why it didn’t happen for the A646 as well. Most photo printers will only work with one size of paper. The Photosmart A646 however, supports three, including 4 x 6 inch, 4 x 12 inch and 5 by 7 inch. One of the great things about the HP Photosmart A646 photo printer is that it’s so pleasant to use.

Installing it is pretty simple, especially if you’re working with a Mac. On the top of the printer you’ll find a display panel that incorporates a 3.45 inch color touch screen. After you’ve installed the A646 you’ll mainly use the aforementioned LCD to navigate (which can be done by using either your finger or the stylus the printer comes with). Hence it can work just fine as a PC-free photo printer. If you’re using a PC, that won’t mean much to you, but if you’re printing straight from a memory card, you’ll find it nice to know that you have many editing options such as creating photo stickers, greeting cards or panoramas. You could also apply one of the many photo enhancements that the A646 offers.

When talking about connectivity, the A646 offers a Pictbridge port, hence works with digicams that have Pictbridge, and built-in Bluetooth support. You can easily print straight from your mobile phone (assuming it has Bluetooth), digital camera, PC or notebook. On the front of the device you’ll also find two memory card slots, that can handle xD, SD or Memory Stick memory cards. It’s a good choice among PC-free photo printers.

Moving on to consumables, you will find that it’s not very expensive to purchase new ink, so the cost /photo price is more than acceptable. Another nice thing about the printer is that it lets you know how many photos you can still print out of the ink cartridge till it is completely empty. So you will not get caught with an empty cartridge just when you needed to print the most. Now, the only thing you could complain about is speed. But the quality of the prints makes it worth the while, and it’s around $150 price tag, even more so.

The first impression HP’s Photosmart A716 compact photo printer leaves is that it highly resembles a boombox or a portable radio. This is because when closed, all you can see is a white, sleek device with a handle for taking it along with you. The fold up design as well as the optional battery HP has to offer, turns the Photosmart A716 into one of the ideal candidates for photo printing on the go.

If you stop to actually study the printer you’ll notice that it features an adjustable 2.5 inch color display, which serves for previewing and editing photos. When you buy the Photosmart A716 what you will find in the box includes the actual printer, HP 110 tri-color ink cartridge, a setup and a user guide, tv/video cable, the HP Photosmart Premier software (including several useful utilities for editing and managing your photos) and a power supply.

Right in front of the LCD you will find the power button. On the front of the printer (under the flap) you’ll also find the memory card slots and a memory card light that let’s you knowNavigation is made easy by a 4 way arrow button with an OK button in the middle for confirmation.

Aside from portability and good photo quality, what’s also nice is that the prints are instant dry and water resistant. There are several options if you’re looking to make your photos more interesting and you can add an antique, vintage black or sepia style. To ensure that you get good quality photos easily, there is also a HP Photo fix button which will help you remove the red-eye effect, sharpen images and play around with brightness, saturation or contrast.

What’s not so convenient is that it’ll take a while to actually print a photo, but this is a general rule for small photo printers, at least for now until manufacturers manage to improve them even further with better technology. Hence, the HP photo printer A716 will take somewhere in between one and two minutes to print from either your computer, a memory card, digi cam or it’s own hard drive. Now that we’ve mentioned it’s hard drive, it’s also important to know that the A716 includes 4GB of storage space on-board.

If you’re interested in viewing the photos on a larger screen, know that you’ll be able to do that on your pc as well as on the TV. Just connect the printer to the TV, and with the help of the included remote, you can view and skip through a slide show. The HP photo printer A716 is versatile as well, and will allow the user to print from a PC, any PictBridge digital camera or a memory card. Due to the USB port, you may also connect an external optical drive and print straight from a CD/DVD. If that’s not enough for you, there’s also an optional Bluetooth adapter that you can buy. You can get the Photosmart A716 for around $160.