HP PhotoSmart 7550

Author's product rating:   

Picture quality	Excellent
Printing speed	Very fast
Colour sensitivity	Excellent
Ease of use	Very easy
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Fantastic Quality
Disadvantages:	Little too pricey

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Photosmart 7550

Ok I have no will power, and as of today I have no money. Foolishly a few years ago I made “National Jilly Day” (the other half) because she was feeling down and its stuck, the rule on this day is “Whatever Jilly wants Jilly gets” (somebody shoot me now!!). Guess what we decided to go shopping, one expensive trip to a pine shop later we have a complete set of bedroom furniture……but noooo she’s not happy with spending money on that she wants more….enter PC World

We had been thinking of getting a new printer for a while, one that could do photograps to a high quality as Jilly loves messing with all those pictures she takes and saves some money on developing. Browsing over the shelves we came across two that caught our eye, the more expensive HP Photosmart 7550 or another printer at £100 less. (I will give you two guesses what one she wanted.) Anyways, this printer came in at a whopping £300 but those nice people at PC world were having a sale and took £50 off, but this offer will not be on all the time.

Layout

It is quite bulky for a printer, but the amount of toys you get with it its worth the little bit of space. It stands a mighty 513*164*386cm in size and weighs a hefty 6.5kg.
Looking at the printer straight on the first thing you notice it has a small LCD screen, this is situated in the centre near the top. Underneath this screen you have all of the control buttons and too the right you have the slots for all of the different types of camera media (memory stick etc).

Contents

With the printer you get three ink cartridges (Black, Tri-Colour and photo quality) as well as some free photo paper samples, these were 6*4 Inch samples that are a standard photograph size.

The main item that was missing from the box (which it does inform you if you read the small print on the outside) is that there is no USB connection cable between PC – Printer, so you have to buy one (around the £10 mark).

The printer also comes with a CD containing the “Printer Driver” and all the tools that are required for set-up and self-cleaning.

Functions

Here is the part everyone wants to hear what this baby does, and believe you me it does not disappoint. Firstly it prints out a staggering 4800*1200 dpi, which means its real photo quality, in fact after a proper study of it, you can hardly see the print lines even when straining for them (believe me I have looked).

This printer has a built in memory card reader, what you do is put in you memory card from your camera (it supports CompactFlash, IBM Microdrive, Smart Media, Multimedia Card, Secure Digital and Memory Stick) and you can access the pictures through the LCD screen, after a few seconds wait, the first picture pops up. Using the directional arrows you can cycle through every picture on the card deciding which ones you want to print out.

When you see a picture you want, first thing you do is adjust the brightness via another button, then if you want to move closer to part of the image all you do is zoom into that section (yet another built in function). Then you decide what size you want to print it out on, it supports all of the picture sizes as well as the standard A4, letter etc. Pushing the size button cycles through different possibilities giving a green border around your picture showing what print area is available, this can be moved with the directional arrows. Press print and away you go, it will print it out at such a speed that the ink dries itself before it gets spit out so that it does not smudge (yes this drying time can be adjusted through the menu system).

You can also attach the camera directly to the printer if you do not have one of the supported media, giving you the same range of options as stated above.

Paper Capacity

This beauty can hold more than your standard A4 etc, the input tray is designed in such a way at to hold as many different media types as possible.

100 sheets A4
24 4*6 Inch Photo paper (which has its own section)
15 Envelopes (Own Section)
40 Index cards (Use section for photo paper)
20 Sheets of banner paper (yes you can print out on things longer than A4)
20 Sheets of labels
25 Transparencies
40 Hagaki cards (If you know what they are please tell me)

Machine Specification

Although this printer can act as a stand alone, you can still play with the pictures on your PC, but to print via the PC you need the following system

Win 98, 2000 Professional, ME, XP
P2 or higher
64MB Ram
500MB Hard disk space (this is only because it will slow the printer down if there is not enough space on the pc)
800*600 Video Display
4* CD Rom
and a USB port

Ink

As mentioned previously it uses three types of ink, HP cartridges 56,57 and 58 which come in around the £20-£30 mark (but a refill kit will be more cost effective). To install the ink is simple, you open the small hatch, and lift a compartment door for each type of ink, it slips into place and when you hear a click that’s it in.

Overall

Wow this machine does everything, it acts as a stand alone printer without even switching the PC on, my only gripe is that there is one picture dimension on the printer that is not supported with the printer set-up on the pc, which needs to be looked at, but by no means effects the performance.

It does state that you can buy an extra piece of kit that allows you to print double sided, but any smart people among you will figure out how to put the pages back through but it is a nice added extra.

This is a serious piece of kit and you will never go to get pictures developed again which means sky’s the limit as to what you can print.

-Kobra