HP PhotoSmart 1215

Digital photography, the next big thing? Maybe, but not if printer cartridges stay the price they are. This machine is no different, but you do get some very good quality prints.

----==Cost==----

On the high street this machine costs about £229. That includes a FULL SIZE (a lot of manufacturers supply half capacity, or starter cartridges) black and colour cartridges, a sample pack of paper (a few sheets of glossy, matt and high resolution paper), and the software driver CD. The only real hidden cost of this, and most other printers is the fact that it does not include a printer cable. This is no major cost though (£8.99 for a USB cable).

When that dreaded warning flashes up telling you that your cartridge(s) are low/empty, should you take out a second mortgage? The simple answer is no. The black cartridge (HP No 45) is £23 and the colour (HP No 78) is £29. The black contains 38ml of ink (enough for about 4-500 A4 pages of text, or 70+ photos), and the colour contains 19ml (again, about 400 sheets of A4, or 50-70 photos depending on colour used). There is also a double capacity colour (HP No 78D), which contains 38ml of ink and costs around £50. I highly recommend this if you are going to be printing a lot of photos.

----==Ease Of Installation==----

Any problems here? No. Just as long as you follow the instructions when installing it, then you will be fine. The main area to watch is the use of the USB installation. It is no different to any other USB device however, so as long as you install the software BEFORE plugging it in, there will be no problems at all. If you decide to use the older parallel connection, then installation is as easy as ABC. Just plug it in, install the software and you are ready for action.

What if I don’t want to connect it to a PC? Even easier, all you do is turn it on, insert the cartridges, follow the on screen instructions to set the language and align the print cartridges, and you are ready to go.

----==Ease Of Use==----

There are a few options as to how you can use this machine. The first is as a direct photo printer, the second as a regular printer, and the third as a photo card reader/printer.

Option 1 - Photo Card Printer

To use this, you don’t even need to turn the PC on. Just turn the printer on, plug in the photo card (smart media, compact flash, or SD card), and it flashes up 2 options. You can either do a direct print, or print a list of thumbnails (small pictures to show you what picture is what number). I always use a thumbnail print to show what pictures I have taken. It takes about 30 seconds to print the thumbnail page, and then you just select print from the LCD menu, where once again you will be confronted with a list of options. It asks you what picture numbers you want to print, what paper type you are using, what size prints you want, and if you want 1 or 2 copies per page. Once you have selected which options you require it is simply a case of setting it to go, and leaving it while it prints away. I can take up to about 2 minutes for a complete print, but this is at highest quality, so it is worth the wait, and is still a lot quicker than taking your film to your local film processor to have developed.

2. Regular printer

Not really a lot I can say here, other than it is quick (about 15 pages per minute (PPM) in black and 11 in colour. These are in draft mode, about half those if used in high quality mode).

3. Card reader

You don’t have to print from the cards you plug in; you can transfer the files to your PC via the USB/Parallel cable. This is very quick if used with the USB cable (a few seconds per photo) or a little slower when the parallel is used.

----==Quality==----

As long as you use good quality photo paper you really cannot fault the quality of printouts. Very smooth, and in no way is it pixelated (you cant see all the dots that makes up the picture). On normal text it is laser quality (this is something that HP pride themselves upon).

----==Conclusion==----

Overall a very very good printer. Loads of features, amazing quality and robust (been using it for about 6-8 months with no problems). The main problem is that due to the cost of paper (about £10 for 20 sheets of glossy A4) and the cost of cartridges it is still more expensive to run than taking your films to be professionally developed. You do however get the luxury of being able to edit the photos before printing them, plus all the other features that are listed above. Overall I’m very happy with this unit.