HP Photosmart D7460 review

HP's Photosmart D7460 is the most expensive A4 printer here.

It has a lot in common with the cheaper D7260, although its performance wasn't identical. The D7460's photo-printing speeds were quicker, with two 10x8in pictures printing in five minutes and 48 seconds, compared to the D7260's 10 minutes and 32 seconds. Sadly, the D7460's print costs were also high, at 7.5p for mixed-colour documents and 33.3p for each 6x4in photo.

Mixed-colour documents were clear, with vibrant colours and solid, well-defined blocks of colour, despite faded-looking black tones. Normal-quality text looked great at even tiny font sizes, while draft text was laser-fast and looked good enough to use every day.

Photo quality was slightly better than that of the D7260. Low-contrast images were brighter and more defined, but black areas and dark shades still lacked intensity compared to Epson's Stylus Photo R360. Some shaded areas weren't as smooth as similar photos from other printers, but there's very little to fault about the overall quality of the D7460's photos.

The printer has integrated wireless networking, which is far easier to set up than on most printers. Once the driver is installed on the PCs you want to use with it, the printer can search for a router without first being connected to a PC. Once it's found your network, you simply enter your WEP or WPA key using a keyboard display on the 3in touch screen.

The Photosmart D7460 has built-in Bluetooth, which makes it easy to print photos directly from your camera phone. You can also print directly from PictBridge cameras, USB drives and most digital camera memory card formats. The screen makes it easy to preview and crop shots before printing.

It's more expensive to buy and run than many printers in this group and its print quality isn't up to that of Epson's Stylus Photo R360, but HP's Photosmart D7460 can produce good-looking prints from almost any source and it has the added benefit of simple wireless networking.