Great Home Photo Printer
Written: Mar 03 '03 (Updated Mar 04 '03)
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Pros: Spectacular prints rivaling those made from film. Excellent text printing.
Cons: Okay speeds, limited to 10ft max on USB cable to connect to PC.
The Bottom Line: I highly recommend this printer for anyone considering a photo quality printer that prints text equally well.
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| mirandasherman's Full Review: Hewlett Packard HP PhotoSmart 7550 Ink-jet Printer |
This is a wonderful printer for those looking for photo quality inkjet prints and great text printing as well.
Background: This printer is part of Hewlett Packard's new line of photo printers. This is a 7 ink printer using HP’s newly formulated inks. HP stated that the inks, when used with HP's Premium Plus Photo Paper will give you prints that will not fade for 65 years. Wilhelm Imaging Research put this longer that standard color prints at 73 years. See www.wilhelm-research.com and PC World's Article "The Fade Factor" in the Nov. 2002 issue linked here: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,105461,pg,1,00.asp
Description of the HP 7550 - USB only connection (don't use a USB cable over 10ft long), has multi format card reader slots (sorry no xD picture card slots) allowing you to preview and print from your card without the PC. Options include adding frames, adding color effects, slide show, creating album, print index page, print all or select prints, and add date/time stamp. All of which can be done with your image editing program but sometimes you might just want a quick print without waiting for the PC to boot up. The slots allow you to both read and write to your memory cards. You don't have to buy a separate reader/writer. But reading and writing to cards can be slow from a printer so if you have tons of digital images/data to upload/download you may want to invest in a separate reader/writer anyway. This printer holds 3 cartridges - black, color, and a photo cartridge all at once so need to swap out cartridges. The other models only hold two at a time so you have to swap out cartridges depending on what you're printing. It also has and envelope feeder, handles a variety of paper formats, and has nifty little tray to hold 4x6 photo paper. It comes bundled with HP Imaging Software and HP Memories to disc software. The imaging software is very basic, you will need a complimentary program if you plan anything more than basic photo editing. I paid $279 for my printer and received a $50 gift card on the spot at Circuit City. Normal price is $299 so look for specials.
Text Printing - HP printers are not known for their speed but this shouldn't be a problem. Most home users will be perfectly happy. It's twice as fast as my old HP 722C (a great workhorse, still in use after 4 years). Print speed for text is quite acceptable. The quality of the text is almost laser sharp. On inkjet paper the HP text printing is excellent.
Photo Printing - Photos printed on the HP 7550 are spectacular. Colors are even and details are crisp and sharp. They were not kidding when they said that these prints rivaled those from your photo finisher. Color pics printed from the CF card were even and sharp. In fact photos printed right from the CF and/or computer were spectacular. If you print directly to 4x6 photo paper (use the built in tray) you get gorgeous borderless prints. Some old black and white photos I had scanned at 300dpi were enhanced using MGI Photosuite. Printed in both black & white and sepia I had the same fantastic results. Color photos scanned at 200dpi and 300 dpi also were great. Surprisingly the photos scanned and printed on my HP were better than the originals. I imagine that’s something in the scanning process. Anyway, I did use HP Premium Plus paper and printed in the Photo REt mode (I got better results from this than the 4800x1200 dpi that HP hypes on the box). Check out the link above for cost per page to print a color photos. It cost about $1 in paper and ink costs to print an 8.5x11 page. So if you print 4 - 3x5’s to page that's 25 cents apiece and 3 - 4x6’s to a page that 33 cents apiece, and 2 - 5x7’s would be 50 cents each. So the cost is comparable to online photo finishers and digital print developers.
Replacement cartridges cost range from $19-$35. Black cartridges being the cheapest at $19-$22, the color cartridge $29-$34, and the photo cartridge the most expensive at about $32-$35 dollars. Paper is $17-$20 for a pack of 20 sheets of the Premium Plus Paper and $38-$42 for a pack of 50. You can also get 4x6 photo paper. For casual prints you can save money by purchasing one of the less expensive types of HP photo paper but your prints will not last as long as those printed with the Premium Plus paper. But that should be fine for things like wallet size prints, business photos, or anything else where longevity is not a concern. For best quality it is always recommended to use the manufacturer’s inks and paper. It may be more expensive but your results will be much better.
I bought this printer in anticipation of getting a digital camera and I am so very happy with the quality of this printer. I have a Canon A40 (I highly recommend this camera. See my review in the digital camera section) and the prints from my digital camera are awesome! I also needed a printer that would produce great text (needed for our Home-Office). The 7550 is, for me, the best of both worlds. Are there better photo printers out there? Sure! Are there better inkjets out there for text? Probably. But if you need both this maybe the printer for you.
Similar less expensive models: HP 7350 has card slots, no LCD screen hold 2 cartridges at a time about $199. The 7150 is the same as the 7350 but no card slots, about $149. Both of these come with the color and photo cartridge. Black has to be purchased separately. The HP 5550 is the same as the 7150 but it was not marketed as a photo printer. Uses the same inks but it comes bundled with the black and color cartridges for about $129-$149. All of these printers use a 6 ink printing system.
Over the past few weeks I noticed that the prices are falling on these printers so you can get some better prices than the ones I mentioned here.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 279.00
Operating System: Windows and Macintosh
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Epinions.com ID:
mirandasherman
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Location: Cental Valley California
Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 1 member
About Me:
Stay at home mom, enjoy scrapbooking and reading.
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