HP Photosmart A636 review

Dedicated photo printers have been surprisingly successful.

Although they can't print on plain paper or A4 sheets, they're easy to use, portable and quick for printing photos. HP has a good range of small, toaster-style dedicated photo printers, but there are a couple of things different about the Photosmart A636.

For a start, there are no physical buttons on this printer. The top of the black and grey machine is taken up almost entirely by a 120mm touchscreen, which can be used either with a finger or with the supplied stylus that's tucked into a slot to the right of the screen. Although the touchscreen is 120mm, the LCD display at its centre only has an 85mm diagonal - the rest is taken up by a set of illuminated icons down either side. The rest of the design is conventional by HP's standards: a set of memory card slots and a PictBridge socket are set into the front panel; a slim, 20-sheet feed tray hinges out from the back panel; and a front cover folds down to receive the finished prints. There's a fold-up handle for carrying the A636 and space for a Lithium-ion battery pack, although this is only an option. A Bluetooth adaptor is also optional.

Like other HP photo printers we've seen, this machine can take 18 x 13cm photo paper, as well as the more standard 15 x 10cm. Effects and projects can be produced directly from the touchscreen, without any help from your Mac. You can rotate and zoom images, print them in black and white and sepia, as well as full colour and add frames and captions.

To use the printer with a Mac, you simply connect the two with a USB cable. A CD icon appears on the Desktop and clicking this installs a printer driver directly from firmware in the printer. This is a considerable innovation, as it means you can connect to any computer - the same procedure works on a PC - without having to carry around an installation CD. Standard 15 x 10cm photo prints, from whatever source, take around 90 seconds, which isn't the fastest photo print the world, but is quick enough. You can print faster than this in draft mode, but the print quality isn't as good. Larger, 18 x 13cm prints take closer to two minutes. Print quality in normal mode is excellent, with good detail and natural colours. There's no noticeable colour cast and using HP's Advanced paper produces prints that dry quickly and have many years fade resistance.

The cheapest way to buy consumables is in a Photo Pack, which contains sufficient three-colour cartridges and 15 x 10cm photo blanks for either 55 or 140 prints. The 140 print pack, the more economical way of buying, costs around £15, giving a cost per print of under 11p. This compares well with most of the printer's main competitors.

This is an excellent little photo printer and HP has integrated the touchscreen into its design so that it's much more than a gimmick. It's a genuinely easier way to select and edit images and the no-CD installation is something else that adds considerably to the machine's flexibility.