The HP PhotoSmart 230xi is made for 4 x 6 inch photo prints!
Written: Mar 02 '03
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Pros: Print photos on the go!
Cons: You are limited to a 4 x 6 inch print!
The Bottom Line: If you need a printer to take with you on trips to print photos I recommend it, if not I recommend one that will print on regular size paper.
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| surferdude7's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Photosmart 230 InkJet Printer |
The HP PhotoSmart 230xi is made for the person who has a digital camera and wants to only print 4 x 6 inch color photos. The printer is small and easy to carry along with you so you can print photos anywhere you travel. It has a color LCD display on the top of it so you can view your photos directly before you print them.
Memory Cards
The 230xi has slots in the front of it for most of the major memory cards today. It will use CompactFlash Type I & II, SmartMedia Memory Card, Secure Digital, Multi-Media Cards and Memory Stick.
I use a 128MB SmartMedia Memory Card, all I do is insert it in the proper slot and then scroll down and find the photo I want to print and hit the print button and then it starts printing the photo.
The Print
HP uses their HP Thermal Inkjet print technology found in most of their PhotoSmart printers with up to a 4800 x 1200 dpi. The only grip I have is it has only one ink cartridge the HP 57 tri-color which has to produce the color black making the printing process a lot slower.
You will have to use paper of the size of 4 x 6 inches and I do recommend the HP 4 x 6 inch paper with the tear off tab, this will give you a beautiful borderless print. It will hold up to 20 photo papers at a time.
Printing time varies according to the color used, if you have a photo with a lot of white in the photo it will print it a lot faster. Printing time will also vary according to the dpi settings you use. My printing times were from over two minutes to around four minutes at a time.
Other Features
The small size of 8.8 inches wide x 4.3 inches deep x 5.3 inches high and weighing less than three pounds makes it easy to take along anywhere as long as you have an AC to plug it into.
The 230xi can also be connected to a computer through a USB connection. It will work on the Macintosh with an OS of 9.0 or better and a G3 processor or better. For the PC you need at least a Pentium II of better and will work with Windows 98 through XP.
The buttons are all located on the top of the printer with the color LCD display making it easy to use.
It has built-in 16MB of memory and comes with a one year warranty.
Pros
1. You can print photos without a computer.
2. It is small and easy to carry with you.
3. It does a fairly good job on photo quality.
Cons
1. You are limited to a 4 x 6 inch print.
2. It only has one ink cartridge.
3. Printing is slower than on the larger format PhotoSmart printers.
Overall
This printer is not for everyone, it is great if you need to print a 4 x 6 inch photo on the go.
The printer is rather quiet when printing and as long as I placed in one photo paper at a time I had no problems. I did at first place 20 sheets of photo paper in the tray and it picked up two at once and it printed a little on each sheet. After that I went to just one sheet at a time and had no problems.
The color looks good but when printing a 4 x 6 inch print on my HP PhotoSmart 1215 Personal Printer and comparing them side by side you could see that my PhotoSmart 1215 produced a richer black then the 230xi.
Read about some of my other Printer reviews.
Canon S 9000 Personal Printer
HP PhotosSmart 7550 Photo Printer
HP PhotoSmart 7350 Photo Printer
HP PhotoSmart 1315 Desktop Personal Printer
Hewlett-Packard HP PhotoSmart p1000
HP LaserJet 1000 Personal Printer
Hewlett-Packard HP LaserJet 4100n
Sony DPP-SV77 Digital Photo Printer
Sony Digital Photo Printer SV55 Desktop Printer
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 239
Operating System: Windows and Macintosh
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surferdude7
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