Review: HP’s Photosmart All-In-One Is a Fanzine Publisher’s Wet Dream
11:59 pm, October 4th, 2009, Leander Kahney
The best thing about going to the office is having access to the copier in the mail room. Sneak in at the weekend, roll off hundreds of color copies for your secret art project.
But HP has a fantastic home-office alternative: the Photosmart Premium Fax All-in-One Printer, Scanner, Fax, Copier. It does everything the industrial ones do, yet costs less than $200. A snap to set up and prints from the iPhone. It’s the best printer I’ve ever had. Weird, I know, but I really do love this baby.
Hit the jump for the full review.
Company: Hewlett-Packard
Model: HP Photosmart Premium Fax All-in-One Printer, Scanner, Fax, Copier
List Price: $367.00
Compatible: All Macs and PCs. Wireless photo printing from iPhone.
Buy Now: The HP Photosmart Premium Fax All-in-One Printer, Scanner, Fax, Copier is available from Amazon for $164.99 with free shipping.
What it is: This baby is what it says: an all-in-one printer, scanner, fax and copier. Its print everything, from envelopes to photos and printable DVDs. The built-in sheet feeder is great for hands-free copying and faxing multipage documents. There’s several separate paper trays so you don’t have to swap photo paper in and out when you’re printing snaps. And it has every connection on the planet: Bluetooth, WiFi, Ethernet and USB.
Why it’s cool: Ever since my fanzine days, I’ve fantasized about my own sheet-fed color copier. It’s everything you get at the office, but for a fraction of the price. The Photosmart Premium used to cost around $370, but it’s now $199 at Apple’s retail stores and about $165 from Amazon.
First thing you notice is how well-built it is. There’s no flimsy paper trays that will snap easily. Even the pull-out paper guides feel beefier than average.
Then you’re impressed by everything it does. This Photosmart is pretty versatile, great for home or a small office where you’re printing one day and faxing the next. It whips out black-and-white Word docs in a jiffy, but also does a great job printing snaps. Photos are as good as lab prints, especially if you’re printing iPhone snaps of the kids to put on the fridge. It even prints on printable CDs and DVDs, so chuck the Sharpie.
Set-up over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth was the easiest ever. So too was putting it on a small Ethernet network. I gotta admit though, set-up over USB was initially a horrible nightmare. The install disk gave me a couple of errors. Then printing worked, but scanning over USB didn’t. I don’t know if it was the long string of connected USB cables I used (it’s across the room); a cheapo USB hub; a flaky connection on my ageing Mac Pro; or all the above. It works fine now — thanks, I suspect — to Snow Leopard auto-downloading the latest drivers.
To my surprise, wireless printing was so easy, I thought I was dreaming. I flipped open my MacBook and hit print. I didn’t have to install any drivers — OS X detected the Photosmart on the WiFi network and installed the drivers itself. Even scanning works wirelessly.
Printing from the iPhone is even easier. I downloaded HP’s free iPrint app, and I can now print snaps wirelessly from within the Photos App by hitting a button at the bottom of the screen. The App auto selects the printer, and the printer auto selects the photo paper tray. Easiest print job I’ve ever done.
The interface is dead easy and well-laid out. The buttons have a nice, quality clickiness to them. And it makes pleasing beeps and bleeps when it’s finished a scan or turning on and off.
What’s not cool: I’ve had a couple of sheet-feeder problems. It doesn’t like slightly glossy sheets. And it ate half the color ink on the first big photo print job: a 16-page blow-up mosaic. The black ink tank seems to be holding up pretty well though. Still more than half-full after several weeks of light/medium usage.
I’ve got to say, HP’s Photosmart Premium All-in-One is my favorite piece of office equipment. Better even than the coffee machine. I actually enjoy using it, and I get pleasure sometimes just seeing it sitting there, ready to print out an envelope.
Posted by Leander Kahney in Hardware, Macintosh, Reviews | Comment on this article
As a publisher of short-run booklets, my biggest question is the cost per page. A real we dream is something that gets that cost way down. I don’t think this does that.
Drew Caster, on October 5th, 2009 at 1:13 am
I’d love to buy this machine for my HomeOffice based on your review but HP prevents amazon.com to ship to Europe for the low pricing of currently $185 ish (126 Euro). The german amazon price is somewhat 269 Euro which equals $395…
Enjoy.
bo, on October 5th, 2009 at 6:57 am
Hey!
Where’s today’s completely unfounded iPad story ?
CaryMG, on October 5th, 2009 at 11:52 am
More like a nightmare. I am sure the 98 gigs of software you have to load on your computer to print a page is worth it to some people. I am not even discounting the 9,000,000 dollars worth of ink it will take to run this so called wet dream a year. Buwhahaha…..HP printers? I wish truly that they still made decent printers. Somewhere along the line they stopped. Tat isn’t to say the other brands are any better.
Look ma there is ink in them there hills….
Harden Stuhl, on October 5th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
More like a nightmare. I am sure the 98 gigs of software you have to load on your computer to print a page is worth it to some people. I am not even discounting the 9,000,000 dollars worth of ink it will take to run this so called wet dream a year. Buwhahaha…..HP printers? I wish truly that they still made decent printers. Somewhere along the line they stopped. That isn’t to say the other brands are any better.
Look ma there is ink in them there hills….
Harden Stuhl, on October 5th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
What… you guys actually got a new HP product to scan under OS X? Please, for the love of all that is holy, tell us the secret! I’m on my second HP AIO (the lower C4100 and C4400 series) under OS X 10.5.8, and I’ve *never* been able to make the darn things scan using HP’s software. I paid almost as much for VueScan (*fabulous*) as I did the HP AIO itself, just to do something that HP claims it can do out of the box. Yeah, right….
Marek, on October 6th, 2009 at 12:32 am
HP makes great printers and awful printer drivers.
Are Canon or Epson any better?
Don Pope, on October 6th, 2009 at 6:52 pm