HP Photosmart A626 review

HP's Photosmart A626 is an incredibly small portable photo printer that can print both 6x4in and 7x5in photos.

As well as connecting to your PC via USB, it can print directly via PictBridge and a variety of memory card formats, including CompactFlash, SD, xD and Memory Stick. However, its highest 4,800x1,200dpi resolution is available only when you're printing from a PC.

The A626 was extremely simple to set up. Paper simply slots into its rear tray, and it uses a single tricolour ink cartridge. Each photo value pack will print 120 photos at a cost of 10p per picture. This is cheaper than Canon's Selphy ES1 (reviewed in What's New, Shopper April 2007). The cartridge has cyan, magenta and yellow inks so blacks are created by combining the three inks.

On the top is a large 4.8in touch screen, which allows you to display and edit images and configure the printer. The editing mode is limited, but simple to use. You can't make major alterations to your pictures, but you can crop your pictures, remove red-eye and add captions, clip art and simple line drawings using a stylus and onscreen keyboard. Changes are stored as a separate graphical layer that can be easily removed if you change your mind. An onscreen preview allows you to view the contents of your memory card individually or as groups of thumbnails, and you can also print a contact sheet.

When our photos had just come out of the printer, dark colours in particular looked faded and patchy, but dried into perfectly consistent colour after about two minutes. Colour prints were vivid and bright, and we were pleased with the detailed shading in our black-and-white photos. Flesh tones were realistic, and light areas showed no unwanted colour tints, but brown and yellow areas were slightly too intense in some of our photos. Once our prints had dried, black areas were clear and well defined, although they looked slightly grey in comparison to photos printed by Canon's iP4500 in this month's inkjet printers Labs.

For the ultimate in portability you can buy an optional battery so you can print photos without mains power. This makes it ideal for events such as holidays and parties, or any occasion when you want to be able to take a digital photo and immediately see the results printed out. HP also sells an adaptor that allows you to print photos wirelessly via Bluetooth, which is particularly useful if you use a camera-phone.

Like many printers without a dedicated black ink, dark tones aren't as vivid as we'd have liked. Print quality was good, although not quite up to that of some of the best A4 inkjet printers in this month's Labs. The main advantage of the Photosmart A626 is that it's simple to use, quick to set up and makes photo printing a stress-free experience. However, unless you really need the portability, there are less expensive printers that create higher-quality photos.