If you’re a photography enthusiast looking for lab-quality prints at home, as well as copy, scan and fax capabilities for your home office, check out this duplex A4 inkjet printer that comes with wireless connectivity.
RRP: S$339 (incl. GST).
HP Photosmart 7520 e-All-in-One inkjet photo printer.
The Photosmart 7520 e-All-in-One printer is HP’s top all-in-one home printer for lab-quality photos.
Other models in the Photosmart series of AiO printers are the Photosmart 6520 and 5520.
Photo quality
The Photosmart 6520 and 5520 uses only four ink cartridges (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Matt Black).
Basic specs
Print speed:
- Black: 14 ppm
- Colour: 10 ppm
Dimensions:
- 454 x 455x 220 mm
Weight:
- 10.63 kg
The Photosmart 7520, however uses an additional ink cartridge – Photo Black – that’s dedicated to printing photos, and which enhances the quality of photo prints.
The print quality on HP’s Photo Paper was superb, with vivid accurate colour and no sign of banding.
What I was particularly impressed with was the print quality on normal paper, be it from a digital file or from a photocopy.
The copy looked identical to the original for both photos and colour illustrations.
Print quality for text documents and powerpoint graphics was also very good, although not as fast and pro-looking as most laser printers.
Paper input trays
The Photosmart 7520 has a 125-sheet input tray, a dedicated 20-sheet photo tray and a 25-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF).
Rear view of the HP Photosmart 7520 AiO printer.
The 125-sheet input tray may be small for the regular office but is adequate for the home office.
Having a separate photo tray (for photo papers up to 5×7 inches) saved the trouble of swapping out the regular paper and photo paper from a single tray when printing on different media, which can be quite a nuisance.
The ADF allows automatic multi-page duplex scanning/copying but not faxing. Multiple pages can be scanned into a single document file.
Faxing can be sent either from the front panel or from a computer and can be done over a wireless network as well.
HP Photosmart 7520 AiO printer has three paper trays and ADF.
Touch-screen control panel
The Photosmart 7520 features a large 4.33-inch colour control panel that was a pleasure to use – the touch-screen was responsive to taps and swipes and clear to view – while the user-interface was intuitive and fast.
4.33-inch colour touch-screen control panel.
I had no trouble getting the AiO through all its functionalities without having to read any manuals or open any Help files.
That said, the help files include very detailed and clear animated videos showing how to use the device, right down to how to load paper in its many input trays.
The control panel can be swiveled to adjust for the best viewing angle but I do wish it was mounted slightly lower – I find it gets in the way when copying/scanning from a large format book because the protruding control panel prevents the book from being pressed flat onto the flatbed.
The fixed hinges of the flatbed cover does not adjust/stretch to accomodate thick books so you’re better off leaving the cover up when copying/scanning from thick tomes.
Connectivity
The Photosmart 7520 features HP Wireless Direct – which enables the printer to be connected directly from a smartphone or a tablet – without having to connect via a computer or a router.
Print directly to the Photosmart 7520 from USB storage devices and Flash memory cards.
It also has memory card slots below to the front of the printer that enables direct printing from Memory Stick Duo, SD and MultimediaCards, or USB devices.
You can scan-to-email directly, and access Web Apps from the Control Panel to print news and puzzles etc.
Unfortunately, there isn’t an Ethernet port for LAN connectivity.
Tags: copy, fax, HP, inkjets, multi-function, photos, Photosmart, print, printers, scan
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