HP Photosmart 5510 e-All-in-One Printer review

Like the print driver, the scan interface is very simple. The first step is to select a preset scan type such as Color Document or Photo, then click Scan, after which you’re taken to a preview screen – unless you feel lucky enough to uncheck the option and simply create a scan. Our main criticism of the software is that, while advanced settings are available, they aren’t particularly advanced; there’s no option to turn off the processing that’s automatically applied to images, for example, and you can only select certain resolutions. The resulting image quality was reasonable, aside from the unwelcome evidence of sharpening we’ve seen from many other HP scanners.

The HP scan (top) has excessive sharpening, which leads to an unrealistic image (click to enlarge)

The results from the printer were more positive, with crisp text and quite bold colour graphics on plain paper and decent photographs on coated paper. The only problems of note were some loss of detail in the blue sky of one image, and slightly skewed alignment when using 6×4″ photo paper. Overall this is a good MFP for everyday work, but its software is a frustration – Epson and Canon products are far better in this regard.