Not So Impressed Now
Written: Oct 28 '01 (Updated Sep 07 '04)
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Pros: Accepts Memory Cards. Quiet, Fast, Two Sided Printing
Cons: Doesn't come with needed Cables. Photo Quality is bland. Single Color Cartridge.
The Bottom Line: Don't waste your time and money on cheap printers... for $200 you can have a great quality printer that will satisfy you for years to come.
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| glennhanna's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Photosmart P1100 InkJet Printer |
I am a former owner of a Lexmark 3200 that I had bought before my Photosmart. The Lexmark was a great bargain, but print quality and cartridge pricing lead me to look elsewhere. My wife and I decided to purchase an HP Printer. I was easily impressed with the HP PhotoSmart P1100 Color Inkjet Printer when I first bought it 3 years ago. It was able to print photographs on two sizes of paper. It also prints on two sides, and prints from memory card slots built into the printer. I bought it at Costco at the time for $200. I'm fairly pleased with the printer today, but because of my profession in film and video, my taste for high quality photo printing has improved, and I would not depend on this machine making the quality prints I desire. I'll explain more about photo printing in a moment. (Below is my previous review 3 years ago, but I'm only going to change the section about color prints.)
It's Fairly Quiet
My old Lexmark sounded like it was loading a freight train while it loaded the paper and then proceeded to print on paper almost as loud as a dot matrix printer. This PhotoSmart printer does make a little noise during initial loading but proceeds to print out the page quietly as if someone was brushing over the paper with a soft paintbrush. All that ends when the paper is finished printing and the printer shoots it out in a hurry which can startle you a little at first.
It's Fairly Fast
Well compared to my Lexmark, this printer is lightning fast, but there are printers out there that can print fast than this one (you'll just need to add hundreds of dollars to the price tag). The PhotoSmart 1100 is rated at 12 pages per minute for black ink printing and 10 pages per minute for color. This is only a rating though, which is probably set up for printing text documents which it indeed does a speedy job of. It is impressive at times to know the fastest time it takes to print a page, most of us would also like to know what the longest time we will have to wait for a page to print. The answer is a hair over seven minutes; I printed 8x10 photo in full color on glossy paper at the highest quality of print. That's about three times faster than my Lexmark. People who need to print several photos under a tight schedule may not be able to wait 7 minutes, but for most people, it is fast enough. I will talk about the stunning quality and detail in a moment.
Two-Sided Printing
Many of the new Hewlett Packards offer two-sided printing. There is a special device that you can choose to install to the back of the printer (it came with my printer, but sometimes it's sold separate on other models). You tell the printer to print a two-sided document and sit back and watch. The first sides comes of the printer as usual and pauses for a brief moment, you may think that it didn't work, but suddenly, SWOOSH! The paper is sucked back into the printer. It gets shot back into the device behind the printer which rolls the paper onto the backside and then feeds it back to the cartridges (the bottom of the page is facing outward now, so the printer automatically adjusts and prints the backside from bottom to top). This is a great feature. I would have to tell the Lexmark to print the odd pages of a report, reinsert the printed sheets to the feeder, and then print the even pages. This got ugly because often times the printer would grab two or more pages at a time (instead of one) and feed them through so that my two-sided documents were out of order. I'm glad these annoying problems are behind me now.
Direct Printing From Digital Cameras
You don't need to flip on your computer when working with your digital camera. The PhotoSmart 1100 has a variety of buttons and slots on the right side of it's face and side. The two slots enable you to insert SmartMedia memory cards and CompactFlash type 1 and 2 memory cards. There is a display on the front that allows you to tell the printer the size and number of copies of each photo. I believe that this may eliminate the need for a memory card reader for your computer but I am not sure. I don't have a digital camera yet, so I haven't gotten to play with this feature.
Why buy a printer with the ability to work with memory cards when I don't even have a digital camera? I may not have one now, but I just may get one down the road. I wanted a printer that would make me happy for the next five years. If I buy a camera down the road, my printer will continue to be up-to-date with my needs.
Color Photos
I am no longer impressed with the high quality photo printing of this printer. When the a print first comes out of the printer, it looks quite good. This is because the ink is still wet. Once the ink dries, and settles into the paper, the dark parts of the images tend to look blue, and dull. You might not notice flaws in the picture unless you have the original image in front of you. I like to shoot on film, and occasionally like a photograph so much, that I want to print copies from my computer. I scan the images at 600 dpi, and then print them out using glossy photo paper. I take the dried copy, hold it up next to the original, and begin ripping my hair out. It won't reproduce the brilliance of the original image. The colors, and sharpness is just not there. By the way, if you accidentally get the printed image wet.... the ink smears.
The printer rarely jams, but I have had problems feeding photo paper through the machine. They give you a special slick sheet of paper to put underneath a glossy sheet of paper, so it doesn't pull an extra piece of paper from underneath. I usually take all my regular paper out of the tray first, then lay a single glossy sheet into the tray, but the printer is never able to grab the single sheet. It needs to be a few millimeters above the tray before the printer feeds it through. I have to put a magazine under the glossy sheet, or I have to leave the pile of regular paper in the tray, and go find the special nonstick page that came with the printer to put over the stack.
The print cartridges are fairly inexpensive compared to Lexmark cartridges. I don't like that the color cartridge is one unit. If you run out of yellow, you have to get the entire thing replaced, or sent in to be refilled. There are printers out there, where the color cartridges are divided into separate ink compartments, so it's cheaper to refill one color, instead of replacing the entire package.
The printer comes with some software that enables the printer to print pictures out in the best quality possible. The software, HP PhotoSmart Photo Printing, also allows you to select different kinds of prints and print layouts with ease. You can print an entire page of wallet sized photos of a single image, or you can print several different images in a variety of sizes in various layouts. It automatically crops the photo to popular print sizes, so beware of the image size and make the adjustments needed in a program like PhotoShop or else you will lose edges of the image. The software does take a minute or two to formulate each photo to a printable format.
Some More Specs
My printer is smoke gray.
Blank pages are stored on the bottom tray (up to 100 sheets) and end up on the top tray after printing.
It has a middle tray where you can insert up to 20 4x6 sized photo paper.
The top tray has a slot to insert mailing envelopes.
It has both USB and parallel connections.
The dimensions are 17 inches wide, 17 inches from front to back, and 7 inches tall.
It is sturdy and weighs about 15 and a half pounds. (a heavy bowling ball).
Buttons that allow you to cancel a print job instead of ripping the power chord out of the wall .
It comes with a color cartridge and a black cartridge.
It comes with a power cable but no cables to hook up to your computer
The rest are manufacturer specs:
Using HP JetSend Technology, transfers photos in only seconds from select infrared digital cameras.
Unrivaled quality for everyday printing- laser-quality black text and brilliant color graphics.
Low-ink indicator so you never run out of ink during a job.
Network-capable with optional HP JetDirect print server.
I could only put up with my $100 Lexmark for two years; this PhotoSmart printer should has lasted me three years, but I'm considering buying an Epson printer to replace it. I'm going to buy an Epson with a combo color cartridge, and one that can print directly onto CD and DVD tops.
This printer won't print on paper wider than 8 and inches. The top flap of this printer is solid plastic, which doesn't allow you to see the cartridges moving side to side while you print; I would rather have a flap that was transparent so I could monitor printing functions. I was disappointed that this printer did not come with a USB or Parallel cable! It's pretty sad that HP sells printers that don't include everything you need to hook it up. Overall, I have enjoyed this printer for the most part, but I no longer highly recommend someone else getting one. I think there are much better printers out there today.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 199
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
glennhanna
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Member: Glenn Hanna
Location: Eugene, Oregon, USA
Reviews written: 34
Trusted by: 64 members
About Me:
Glenn Hanna of Eugene, Oregon. Born 1980.
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