HP Photosmart A826 review

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Verdict:

It's a bit Dr Who, this one. Great screen, but not the best value.

Review Date: 20 Jun 2008

Price when reviewed: £138

Supplier: http://www.micom.co.uk

Reviewed By: Kat Orphanides

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

User Rating

Although it can only print 6x4 and 7x5 inch photos, HP's odd-looking blue and white pod is only a little smaller than most of the A4 printers.

One of the reasons for this is that it accommodates an enormous 7 inch touchscreen, which is perfect if you want to print from memory cards.

With a bigger display area to exploit, the A826's direct printing interface includes tools to tweak the brightness of your photos, add light and colour effects, remove red-eye, and even add your own drawings and captions using the touchscreen and stylus. The maximum standalone print quality setting is 1200x1200dpi, but you can print at an enhanced resolution of 4800x1200dpi from a PC.

Printing was slow. Six 6x4 inch photos took 18 minutes and 15 seconds, and six 7x5 inch pictures took over 19 minutes to print. Photo quality was smooth and sharp, and composite black tones from this three-colour printer were good, although less intense than shades from models that use a black photo ink. Bright colours and skin tones were warm and vivid. Although colours weren't quite as natural as in prints from Epson's PictureMate 240, the overall effect was good.

To get the best value prints, we'd recommend buying HP's ink and paper value packs. A 120 sheet pack costs £21, producing 6x4 inch prints at a cost of 17.5p each. Smaller packs cost less to buy but work out more expensive per photo. We got the best results from our photos using HP's Advanced Glossy photo paper. Results were inferior with the cheaper HP Premium Plus paper, which produced prints with oddly metallic reflective properties.

This is a good printer, but expensive to buy.It has fewer features than the A4 HP models here, and doesn't use as many ink colours.

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