I’ve been using the HP Photosmart Premium All-in-One for almost two weeks now, and I’d like to share my impressions of this $200 printer.
The Photosmart Premium All-in-One is a clever printer. It features a big touchscreen display that you can use to print directly from a memory card, do photo copies, print some built-in forms (even Sudoku games), set up the wireless functionality (802.11b/g/n), bluetooth etc. Everything is easy to understand and if you use HP’s online services like ’Snapfish’ you can print photos directly from your online collection. For the last few years I’ve been using a couple of Canon printers so it was an interesting experience trying HP for a change.
The setup is quite fast, and you get an excellent tutorial through the touchscreen display of the printer. The only problem I had was that one of my Mac computers had a hard time finding the printer on the wireless network.
What about printing speed? On the feature list you can read that the printer can do up to 32 color papers per minute. I must admit that I was never close to that but a 10 page Keynote presentation, with a fair amount of grapics on it, printed in around 2 minutes. A full page, high quality A4 photo also took around 2 minutes to print – and the result was really good.
And how is the quality? When you have a brand new printer with fresh cartridges, the quality is always excellent. The Photosmart Premium can do really nice looking prints, especially if you give it some nice quality photo paper to work on. But as soon as I started running low on ink the prints started to show stripes and other minor deficiencies. When I exchanged the cartridge that was running low, everything was back to normal again. But, I actually liked that my Canon Pixma printer refused to print when it was low on ink and never delivered a bad print.
Specifications: Resolution 9600×2400 (600x600dpi Black); optical scan resolution 4800dpi; quoted print speed Black: 33 pages per minute, Color: 32 pages per minute; actual print speed, black around 9 pages per minute and color around 5 pages per minute; USB 2.0, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Ethernet; Size: 452x473x199mm; Weight: 7.5kg
The bad: It’s quite noisy and when it printed documents it actually made the whole table shake a bit. I also had some trouble using the wireless printing with one of my Mac computers. Even though you are running low on ink, the printer keeps on giving you prints which might result in discolored prints (if you’re low on the Magenta ink for example).
The good: Lots of nice software. The iPhone app is a lovely example. Separate cartridge. Very good quality prints. Clear screen with clever menus and a bunch of built-in extras.
HP Photosmart Premium All-in-One is a printer that will deliver high quality prints, at the same time it’s really easy to get going with and manage. It’s a bit more pricey than an equal printer from Canon, and it’s also a bit louder, but it’s a competent printer.
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