HP Photosmart 5510 > Reviews (2)

I’ve been out again buying yet another printer, although in my defence I got it at a knock down price due to the fact that it was what they call ‘a display model’, which basically means that I got it without a box as it was the one that was stood in the window of a friends shop for a while and he’d thrown the box out. So I gave him a few quid for it and away I went.
Anyway, I was very pleased with my bargain, even with the months worth of dust on it, and the strange smell of burning, what I hoped was dust, when I plugged it in for the first time, although this smell disappeared pretty quickly and I was left with a rather fine looking, if a bit square, and very cheap three-in-one printer/photocopier/scanner, which I will just call a printer from here on.

The printer itself is from a well known company, whose products I have used many time before, with some good and some not so good points, and the name of that company is Hewlett Packard, or HP, (not the sauce), with the name of the printer being called the Photosmart 5510.

It looks the part, even if it is a bit on the square side, shaping in at a good 325mm by 435mm by 145mm and weighing in at around 5kg so it won’t break the desk it’s sitting on, nor will it rattle about on a windy day.
To run this from you computer you will have to have certain specs on your PC, such as Windows OS XP SP2 or higher, including Windows 7, and Mac OS X 10.5 or above.

It is a Wi-Fi system, running on 802.11 b/g/n/, which means that you can print what ever you want from anywhere in the house, or office, depending where you have this, so long as you have a wireless router joining you all up together. It also has an SD memory card slot on the front for when you want to print from you cards and even a USB port in the rear for direct connection to your PC.
And, as the saying goes ‘ if you can e-mail it you can print it’, which this one can do, so long as you have a wireless internet connection and this printer is connected to it. This is easily explained in the instruction leaflet that comes with the printer and is pretty straight forwards to set up. Even if you do get a little stuck on this there is some very useful help on the HP website.

As for controlling this printer, this is all done by the small, yet very functional 6.1cm full colour diagonal touch screen, which is fitted on the front of the unit, with the screen clearly showing the controls via symbols, those controls being…

On the far left… (these are ‘hard keys’)

• Home… which returns you to the home screen, this being the page when you first turned the machine on.
• Direction keys… helps you move through the two home screen, photos and application.
• Back… takes you back one stage

On the right…_( again these are ‘hard keys’)_

• Help… gives you additional information on using each process
• Direction key… let’s you scroll through home pages.
• Cancel button… which stops any print in their tracks.

On the touchscreen itself… (which has two home screens, giving 7 options to browse through).

On the first screen you get…

• Photo… lets you take a look through the photo’s you want to print, either from a memory card or a wireless PC
• Copy… for copying
• Scan… for scanning
• Apps… give quick access to printable things from online.

Then when you press the direction key to the right you’ll get the second home screen which offers you…

• Set up… opens the set up menu which lets you change the setting of the machine
• Wireless… opens the wireless setting for you to add wireless systems
• Wireless signal… which indicates whether a wireless device is connected
• E-print function… which allows you to use the E-print capabilities

And I nearly forgot, right in the bottom right hand corner of this control panel is the on/ off button, which is self explanatory really.Setting it up was a doddle really, even though I only glanced over the destruction leaflet, I had it plugged in and printing wirelessly within a matter of minutes, having other wireless devices using it a few minutes later.
In fact to be honest I was pretty amazed as to how quick and easy it was to get the wireless printing function working as I have set up several wireless printers, pulling my hair out on some and almost giving up on others.

As I said you can print from a memory SD card which is so easy to do, you just slot the card into the port at the front of the printer and wait for the images to be recognised, this will all show up on the screen by the name of the image.
Then scroll through the images and select the ones you want to print… simple as that really.
Just remember that it’s easier to find the print you want if it has a recognisable name and, very importantly, not just for this printer, make sure that you have paper in the tray before beginning to print…
When you pull out the paper tray there is also an extra section, called the paper tray extender, (not a good name really but does exactly what it says), which helps steady the paper as it sits in the tray.
And there’s no need to worry about running out of paper as the paper tray can hold a massive 80 sheets at a time, although the tray where the finished prints come out can only hold about 15 sheets, which is a bit daft really as I’ve ended up a with paper on the floor when I’ve been distracted for a few minutes and the printers been working away. I mean, when they though of putting on an 80 sheet ‘input’ tray holder then why did they not think about putting on a bigger ‘output’ tray holder to even thing up?
You can even set it to hold, and grip, smaller sheets of paper too, using the adjustable little ‘width guide’ which hold everything in place and helps stops the paper from being sucked into the machine, bunging it up.

How fast can I print my work off..?
The printing speeds aren’t the greatest, and not as the actual information leaflet states either, but they’re not slow so you wont be waiting around for too long to print off that important piece of work or that picture either.
I won’t go into that headache causing technical mumbo jumbo about ppms of dpm at a rate of dfs’s, I’ll just say that it can take around 30-40 seconds for a smaller size full colour picture(100x150mm), about 90-120 seconds for an A4 size picture and only a mere 10-20 seconds or so for an A4 paper with just writing on it.

There’s also more that just a printer on this one, there’s also a scanner and a photocopier.
The scanner can handle up to 1200 x 1200 dpi (dots per inch), whilst the copying can deal with about 4 copies per minute in black and 6 copies per minute for colour, (this info is taken from the lovely little leaflet that came with it).
Using the scanner/copier is a breeze, simply place the piece you want to scan underneath the top lid of the machine, making sure the papers edges are in the right place, drop the lid down gently and then chose where you want to send the copy, either onto paper or onto your PC. All this is done via the touch screen control panel and is really self explanatory, and the more you do it the easier it becomes.

There’s a lot more technical palaver surrounding this printer/scanner/photocopier but this is something that you pick up the more you use it so I don’t want to get into it here as people may accuse me of padding.

The finished prints are extremely good indeed, although this does depend a bit on the quality of the paper as well as the printer. but the colours of most prints I have done have been crisp and clear, without that dreaded smudging which I have found with some other printers. The ink seems to dry quickly enough to stop this smudging mess on glossy paper but to make sure I always try and leave the glossy paper prints to one side so that they have dried properly before handling them more than I should.
As for a basic letter print, well these dry quicker than a bald mans head in a wind tunnel so there’s no danger of smudging there really, although again I try to give a few minutes extra before touching the ink on the page just to be sure.

What about the price..?
This sells for between £40 and £70 which at the lower end of the price scale is cracking value for money, but even at the higher end you’ll still get a great little home all in one which will give you fantastic results over and over again.

Are there any downsides to this HP printer then..?
The printer? No. it works as well as it should and gives great quality prints in quick time, and due to its size it won’t look out of place in either a home or a small office.

But as usual there are issues with the cost of the ink from HP, which as anyone who has owned a printer from HP will know that replacing the inks can be a bit pricey.
The ink itself comes in four cartridges, black, yellow, cyan and magenta so you only need to replace each individual one when that particular colour runs out instead of replacing the entire cartridge. This can cost around £7.00 for black and £8.00 for the colours. Or you can get a four cartridge set for between £20 -£30 which is probably better value for money at the end of the day.