HP PhotoSmart 7550 Inkjet Printer (HP-Q1605A)

WHAT'S HOT: With the Photosmart 7550 you don't need a PC to print photos from a digital camera. Instead, you can connect an HP camera with direct-printing capability, such as the HP Photosmart 320, to the USB 1.1 port on the printer's face, or you can slip any camera's flash media into one of the printer's four card readers, which together can accommodate all widely used flash-memory card formats. An on-board control panel with a flip-up LCD screen provides menus for selecting the images; setting the number of copies to print; zooming in and rotating images; stamping the date and time on photos; grouping images into albums with decorative frames; and even modifying the colors. Despite the plethora of features, the menus are easy to use. If your PC happens to be hooked up and running, you can also zap an image from the printer to your e-mail program. That's a lot of functionality for a $299 printer.

The Photosmart 7550 prints glossy photos with intense color saturation; we found that bright parts of its images were sharp, though in darker areas the details tended to be obscured. Thanks in part to a design that uses two black inks, the 7550 prints clean black text that preserves fine detail such as serifs; on coated paper it prints text superbly. It also prints narrow parallel lines almost perfectly.

WHAT'S NOT: The 7550's color and black ink cartridges cost $35 each. Monochrome prints run 28 cents each, while color pages run a pricey 56 cents apiece--much more than any other ink jet we reviewed in our January 2003 roundup. HP's printed documentation gives short shrift to the control-panel menus and could provide more information on how to attach a camera directly; it gives good basic information on setting up and using the printer, however.

WHAT ELSE: The 7550's print speeds are middle-of-the-road compared to other photo printers we've tested: 4.2 ppm for text--fast enough for an occasional home-office job--and 0.8 ppm for graphics. Photos scroll out at a pokey 0.3 ppm. Its paper path provides a kangaroo pouch under the main tray for 4-inch-by-6-inch snapshot-size media. HP sells an $80 duplexer attachment to automate printing on both sides of the page, and bundles several pieces of software, including Memories Disc Creator, for making albums or slide shows.

UPSHOT: The 7550 supports your camera's flash card format--whatever it is--and offers the versatility of both great photos and text.

SUMMARY

Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 7550 Rated 17 ppm for text/13 ppm for graphics (draft mode), 16MB of RAM standard, 1200-by-1200-dpi maximum resolution black/4800-by-1200-dpi maximum resolution color, 100 sheets input, 50 output. $299 800/752-0900 www.hp.com