The name says it all HP

Since the days of my first computer, a Pentium 2, Hewlett Packard has always been a printer name I trust. When I think of HP, I think of printers....not computers. After owning a HP Photsmart printer for 5 years, I decided its time to upgrade my printer because it now longer printed pictures properly. Despite that, it printed fine when printing documents.

I came upon a very cheap Epson CX5000 at Frys for $39.99 and thought it was a great steal...LOL, yeah, a great steal alright...Epson and Frys was doing all the stealing. This model is nortorious for sucking up ink like a camel in death valley. After less than 20 pages of prints, my ink ran out. I did a quick review and came upon many bad reviews.

I decided to go back to what I know and that was HP. After much research I decided on the HP Photosmart D7160 for the price of $120 at Staples. Prices may be found as low as $89 now. The set up is very easy. Pretty much just insert CD and follow the instruction until installation is complete.

Picture Printing:

I needed to test its ability to print pictures with a regular paper. So I printed a wallpaper from www.lineage2.com. WOW!!!! What an amazing print. The details says it all. This picture looks so awesome. The colors are right on. It blends very well with each other. It is a picture of an elf girl standing in front and behind her, a light shines through an opening. The Elf looks life-like, it captures her curves and almost makes her clothes real. The “black” is a little disappointing. It looks more brown than black, not sure if the picture was suppose to look this way or the black didn’t print out well or due to quality paper. Even though I have owned this printer for 4 months now, I have not tested this printer with fine paper. It is recommended that this printer uses HP photo for best quality.

Document Printing:

Takes a about a minute to power up every time but once powered up, it prints really quickly and very well. There is not a single faded word on a printed document. I have tested on regular paper and resume paper and both the outcome was excellent.

Ink Costs:

Colors: $9.99 per cartlidge
Blacks: $17.99
Photo paper Color, Black Cartlige combo: $35.99

HP D7160 specs:

32 pages/minute black, 31 color
have a 4X6 slot for printing pictures
prints 4X6 as fast as 12 seconds
6 individual inks
Ability to print directly from memory cards, digital cameras, or camera phones.
Borderless Printing
XP and Vista compatible

Build: 10/10. It’s HP. No problem with ink or printing problems yet. Never had any problems in the past either.

Picture Print: 10/10. For around $100 for a printer, I can’t ask for anything more. Haven’t tested on a HP photo paper yet but so far, excellent with just regular paper.

Document Print: Excellent, the blacks are really blacks…not a single fade.

Speed of Print: 10/10 Excellent in documents and picture printing. Much faster than most other printer I have used before.

Speed of warm up/start up: 7/10. It is much slower than most printer I have own in the past. It takes about 1 minute to set up and be ready to print.

Features: 6/10: Just a printer, not an all in one printer: not a scanner, fax, or copy machine. Despite its claim that it holds 100 pages of paper, the paper holder looks extremely compact especially with the built in 4X6 slot.

Overall, a great buy for such a printing machine. 9/10 if you just want it as a printer but if you wanted all those other features 8/10