Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 335 review

If you're a keen photographer, you'll want to get the fruits of your labour printed out as quickly as you can.

That's where a portable photo printer comes in handy. HP's Photosmart 335 is a dinky little photo printer that's small enough to carry about, and allows you to print your photos when you're away from your PC. Finished in off-white and pale grey, it looks very cute - although strangely reminiscent of a kitchen appliance.

Getting the Photosmart up and running was pleasingly straightforward. Plug it in, choose a couple of language and country options and then put in some paper so that the HP can align its print heads. You don't even need to connect it to your PC. It has a range of slots that let you print directly from a digital camera's memory card. It can also print directly from a USB Flash memory drive or a PictBridge-compatible digital camera.

An optional battery pack allows you to print photos even when you're nowhere near a mains socket, but this is a pricey £54 extra. A little 3.8cm LCD screen makes it easy to preview and select the photos you want, even if the buttons feel overly spongy.

The Photosmart uses inkjet technology, but only uses a three-ink cartridge. Printing photos was pretty quick: a single, borderless print took a reasonable 1 minute 48 seconds. Print quality wasn't so impressive though, with colour in photos being noticeably oversaturated. Close examination revealed graininess. Photos containing natural skin tones ended up looking like the subjects had slapped on some fake tan!

With HP's Photo Pack providing a colour cartridge and 100 sheets of glossy photo paper for £28, running costs end up at an unremarkable 28p per print. To get you started, HP supplies only five sheets of photo paper and its smaller tri-colour ink cartridge.

Even though it lacks the 335's colour display, we'd plump for Epson's PictureMate, instead. Its six-colour cartridge offers better print quality for the same sort of money.

Author: Sasha Muller