HP Photosmart Premium All-in-One Printer

By Leonard Goh, CNET Asia
Nov 6, 2009

Printers in the past used to have dull designs and needed cables to connect to the computer in order to print. These days, printer manufacturers are trying to makeover inkboxes into lifestyle products rather than drab machines for printing. The HP Photosmart Premium All-In-One Printer is such a device. Its sleek aesthetics should sit well with those concerned about design, and the tech-savvy will appreciate its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity options. Treehuggers will also be glad to know that most of the accessories which come with the HP printer are stored in a reusable bag made from recyclable material. Not to mention that performance lives up to expectations. So what's not to like about this printer?

Design And Features

The Photosmart Premium All-In-One Printer is probably one of the more well-designed inkboxes we've seen in our Labs. Decked in a classy black chassis, the printer oozes style with its rounded edges and clean facade.

The front of the machine has a simplistic design with minimal buttons. This is because most of the navigation tools are relegated to the touch-sensitive buttons or 3.45-inch color touchscreen (more about it later) on the front panel. At the bottom left of the printer you will find a USB port, SD/SDHC and Memory Stick card readers (for direct printing), though we were quite surprised that there isn't a CompactFlash card slot. So it seems quite clear that this printer is targeted at consumers using point-and-shoots and entry-level dSLRs.

Ports for power, Ethernet and USB are located at the back and are clustered on the right to minimize clutter. The hinged scanner module flips up to expose the ink cartridge wells and we have to say the hinge quite well-built.

We were glad to see that the Photosmart Premium All-In-One Printer has dual paper trays. The top story houses 20 sheets of 4R photo media, while the lower deck accepts up to 100 sheets of A4 paper. This removes the hassle of having to load different-sized paper into the inkbox when there are print jobs of different sizes in the queue.

The large touchscreen is an important aspect of this printer as most of its functions can be accessed only through it. There is plenty to explore from the display, such as connecting to SnapFish (HP's online photo gallery) or using the Quickform feature to print out ruled sheets or even Sudoku puzzles. Almost every option has an icon to represent it, making them easy to identify and use. However, the soft buttons on the side of the touchscreen were a tad less responsive and we had occasions when we needed to tap harder in order to return to the previous menu.

This HP printer is Wi-Fi-enabled so multiple users can share it. The initial setup has to be carefully performed as instructed in the manual (or installation disc), especially if you are running on a secured network. Once the printer is hooked up to the wireless network, it's only a matter of getting the other computers to recognize it, which should be a breeze if you follow the steps on the installation disc.

Printing via Bluetooth is easy, too. We used a Nokia E71 to send a picture to the inkbox and it was promptly received printed soon after. However, we noticed the Bluetooth range is rather limited. When we stood more than 3m away from the HP, we had issues locating the printer on our handset using Bluetooth.

Overall, we are very satisfied with the HP Photosmart Premium All-In-One, but we think it could be better off with a CompactFlash card slot which most multifunction AIOs on the market now have. Other than that and the spotty Bluetooth (which we doubt most people will use), we have to say this HP inkbox is one of the most easy-to-operate printers we've tried.

Tags: Scanner Module, Printer, Photosmart Premium All-In-One, Photosmart Premium All-In-One Printer, Quickform Function

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