Very Average Printer For Home Use

I just bought this printer yesterday and I've been running tests on it all day. The following is my evaluation of this printer after printing photos, business cards and letters. The usual stuff you expect any home printer to be able to do with decent quality although not at a professional level.

The structure is good and not flimsy as in earlier models. I found the paper trays quite hardy enough. Ink installation was quick and easy and ink usage is conservative and cheap to purchase so it should be an economical printer to run. Easy to operate and straight forward and easy to get up and running.

My last printer was a HP 1000 and it's been great for over 6 years years. I had to replace it as it was on its last legs just through age but I've found this new D7160 model doesn't print as nice as it's predecessor, the 1000. One would expect a later model printer would print higher quality prints but not so in this case.

Firstly the photos are way over saturated and I had to set the ink volume to it's lowest setting to get anything close to what was showing on my monitor and get the photos to a more realistic level of colour. I have my monitor Adobe Gamma calibrated so I would like to get the same results in my prints as I see on the monitor. If I left the printer at its default settings it was, as I said, over saturated, had a strong magenta cast in some parts of the print and other parts of photos were washed out so I couldn't achieve a happy medium with photo printing. I could make do with that but I'm used to better quality from the 1000 model and I don't like to go backwards in quality.

Further to that every print has vertical streaks every half inch across the page. Although they aren't readily visible at first glance they are still there none the less. These vertical streaks aren't printing bands from poor ink distribution but more like heavy rollers taking very fine lines of gloss off the page. These lines can be seen under light and even though the layman may not pick it up, I and others I have shown it to can see them and they shouldn't be there.

When I tried to print business cards the print was totally washed out when left on default settings. When I adjusted the settings the black print was still not black but gray. I couldn't print business cards at all. I had to print business cards on glossy photo stock paper and even then the black still isn't a nice sharp black.

Letter printing is just as disappointing with all the text being more of a charcoal gray than a nice sharp black. The colours on a plain piece of paper are washed out looking and not vivid in color or contrast. The text is fuzzy and not clean or sharp. Once again the HP1000 from over 6 years ago has a much higher quality printout than this new model.

I had to drive over 2 hours to get to the store to buy this printer. I chose this one because I was happy with my last HP printer for over 6 years and the other 2 reviews in here wrote it up as a great printer so I based my decision on previous HP ownership and what I've read here.

If I was only going to use this for home use photo and occasional letter writing I'd probably keep it but we're on the verge of opening a business so will need to be printing up business stationary as well as photos.

I'm considering returning it but weighing up whether it's worth the 2 hour drive back to the store then having to pay a 15% restocking fee.

Bottom line - If you aren't used to very nice quality photos or know the difference between a nice sharp black text print and an average print then this printer is good on price and will be economical to run. If, however, you are more discerning about your photos and print quality then keep looking and pay a few more dollars for something better as I don't think you would be happy with this printer.

I've stated all the pros and cons as I see them. I may be a harsh critic because I used to run a graphic design business and know better quality but the thing that strikes me as most odd is that an earlier model printer is much better than this one which came out years later. You'd think (and expect) over the years that a product would improve in quality, not deteriorate in quality as has been the case here.

Good luck in choosing your printer. It's a daunting task.