HP Photosmart Premium All-in-One Printer (CD055A#ABA)
by Hewlett Packard Office
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Category: CE
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Digital Photo Product Details
Manufacturer: Hewlett Packard OfficeModel: CD055A#ABA
Color: Black
Product features:
- Print, scan and copy from a single, energy-efficient device with 3.45-inch touchscreen for printing directly from Snapfish
- Connections include Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n) and Ethernet networking, Bluetooth, USB, and PictBridge
- Rotate and crop, adjust brightness, or apply color effects before printing with TouchSmart control panel-no PC necessary
- Up to 33 ppm black and 32 ppm color print speeds, Scans up to 4800 x 4800 dpi (8.5 x 11.7 inches)
- Borderless photo printing up to 8.5 x 11-inches, 125-sheet input tray and 20-sheet photo tray
- Adobe Acrobat X Standard
- Adobe Acrobat X Professional
- HP Business Communications Inkjet Paper, Bright White, Letter Size (8.5 x 11), 500 per Ream (20300-0)
- Encore Print Shop 23 Pro Publisher Deluxe [Old Version]
- FileMaker Pro 10
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of HP Photosmart Premium All-in-One Printer (CD055A#ABA)
Customer Review: Terrific choice if you don't demand photographic perfection
Summary: 5 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Take a look at the customer images showing the print output from this HP all-in-one!
Quick summary: I like this HP PhotoSmart all-in-one! Setup was very smooth (except for HP's bloatware causing my browser to not work), the photographic output was good for a 4-ink system, scans were bright and crisp, and using this HP all-in-one was very easy to do using the brightly lit touch screen. Highly recommended!
I just finished writing a review for a competing product, the Epson Artisan 710 Color Inkjet All-In-One Printer (C11CA53201). After using that all-in-one for over a week, it didn't take long for me to realize how much more I prefer this HP all-in-one. Although the feature set for both are very similar, the HP is much more intuitive to use. Read on to learn more.
*** INSTALLATION:
Unpacking the HP was easy to do. I was very pleased that it came with a package of 100 4x6 sheets of photo paper, so I could immediately begin printing some favorite family shots. Shame on other vendors (think: Epson) who include only a "sample" of a few sheets of photo paper! This model uses a 4-ink system (1 black, 3 color) but the package includes an extra, high capacity black ink cartridge, too, for everyday printing. Nice!
I use my home network to connect to this HP. The HP PhotoSmart C309 easily recognized my discoverable network, and it was very easy to use the touch screen to enter the 26-character key I have for my network. Once entered, the printer was given an IP address by the router and it was ready to work after I installed the drivers on my computer.
I really like how easy it was to insert paper into the front-loading tray. Just raise up a lid, insert paper, put lid back down (for both general-use 8x11 paper and also for inserting 4x6 photo paper). Later, I did experience a problem where the HP couldn't properly load the 4x6 paper into the printing mechanism. Hopefully that's an anomaly.
Installing the HP drivers was a breeze to do on my laptop. It includes out-of-box support for Windows 7 on the enclosed CD-ROM disc (no searching HP's website for Windows 7 drivers!). HOWEVER, by just quickly clicking through the installation windows, I inadvertently loaded seven other HP programs beyond the required drivers to support printing and scanning. Among these were the HP Solutions Center, a program to help re-ordering HP supplies, a Customer Feedback program, HP Print Projects, and a customized Yahoo! toolbar for Internet Explorer. I was thumping myself for not paying attention to the installation process that loaded all this crapware on my computer. Very soon later, I really regretted it because after it was all loaded, my Internet Explorer wouldn't work (even after rebooting my computer). I tried uninstalling the Yahoo! toolbar, and still IE8 wouldn't work. Finally, I used Windows 7's restore feature to return to the last restore point before I loaded the HP drivers and programs, and that removed whatever was causing IE to not work.
From that experience, I paid much closer attention to the 2nd attempt at installing the drivers. HP doesn't make it obvious how to customize the install -- you must look closely for a link on the window that asks you to accept the EULA -- but you *can* deselect all the bloatware and install just 2 programs (the printer and scanner drivers), which is all you really need. After those two programs were installed, the HP C309 was fully functional on my WiFi home network -- and IE was working, too!
I got a new LG Env3 with Bluetooth, so I tried printing a photo taken with my phone using Bluetooth. Setting up Bluetooth was easy! What I learned from the experience is that you must FIRST set the HP to look for Bluetooth devices, THEN place your phone in discovery mode. Once my LG Env3 was paired with this HP, it was easy to print 4x6 photos. And they looked terrific for a camera phone!
*** USABILTY AND PERFORMANCE:
Using the HP was a joy to do. The photographs I printed were very, very good-looking, but depending on the photo, they were sometimes inferior to the six-color print output from the Epson Artisan 710. The Epson's photos have very deep, rich colors and vibrancy, while the photos from this HP were sometimes not so rich in color depth, and not as vibrant. I found that it depends on the photo whether the differences were apparent or not. In some photos (lots of sunlit trees and grass), the differences were very slight. When I printed a studio portrait of my in-laws, the result from this HP unit was as good as my other 6-color printer. In other photos (for example, photos with a deep blue sky), the differences were more apparent (see the customer images I loaded showing this difference). Camera flash-lit faces look a little yellowish coming from this printer. Grass and trees have more yellow in them than what I'd expect, too. If you're wondering whether a six-color printer can really print better than a 4-color printer, the answer is, **YES**, it can...but *not* always! So if you want to print the absolute best photos possible -- all the time -- look to a different all-in-one than this HP PhotoSmart C309. If you're not *that* excruciatingly picky, then this HP will do a very, very good job (especially if you're not contrasting photos printed from this HP with photos printed on another, 6-color machine).
I used the "Copy" function to see how well the HP could duplicate a photograph. Ideally, if you place a photo on the flatbed scanner and press Copy, the copied photo would be indistinguishable from the original, right? Well, there was a definite difference between the copy and the original. The copy was auto-cropped so it lost about a quarter-inch off the border of the original photograph. The colors on the copy were less vivid, too, although the copy was more faithfully reproduced on this HP C309 than what the Epson Artisan 710 could achieve.
Scans taken with this HP were very bright and vivid -- more so than what the Epson Artisan 710 could achieve. The background white on my daughter's drawing was a very bright white, and her ink colors were rendered brightly and sharply on the scanned image. (Keep in mind, I'm using all default, automatic settings -- I could achieve better results if I tried customizing the scan settings). One thing: some of the faint black lines on my daughter's drawing weren't picked up properly on the scanned image. In all, I liked how the automatic scanned image looked. Another perk: The software creates a folder under My Pictures on your computer, and stores the scanned image inside that folder (rather than just adding it to My Pictures alone).
I haven't used the HP long enough to speak to matters pertaining to ink usage. Once I get more experience, I'll re-edit this review to include those details.
SUMMARY:
The HP PhotoSmart C309 is a terrific multifunction choice. If you demand the very best in photographic output, look to a different model that uses a 6-ink system. If good-looking photos is "good enough" for you, then be assured that this printer will print good looking photos. The touchscreen interface was easy and intuitive to use, and loading paper into the front-side slot was no-hassle at all. Aside from HP's bloatware during the software installation process (which you now know how to avoid after reading this review), I like everything about this HP model. Highly recommended!
*** NOVEMBER 16, 2009 UPDATE
I just ordered 2 replacement color ink cartridges for this printer. After printing 21 4x6 photos and maybe three dozen sheets of everyday 8x11 (mostly black text and a little color), the yellow and cyan ink cartridges dipped into the "replace me" levels. The magenta and photo black inks are about one-half spent.
Taking the advice of another reviewer, I opted to order 3 "XL" cartridges for quite a lot more than a regular 3-pack of the color cartridges. I don't know whether the value equation will be favorable or not, but I'm hoping that the cost to print 4x6 photos will go a little lower than what it is currently (which by my calculations, each 4x6 photo costs about 50 to 75 cents to print).
Description of HP Photosmart Premium All-in-One Printer (CD055A#ABA)
The HP Photosmart Premium All-in-One Printer comes with built-in Wireless Printing and Wired Networking. The Two sided printing saves paper with add-on features like memory card slots and Color LCD Screen.Digital Cameras & Photo Categories
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