Lets take some pics!!! (HP Photosmart R742)

Member Name: nickbrown60

Product:	HP Photosmart R742
Date:	27/02/09 (178 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quality, ease of use, reliability, looks nice!

Disadvantages: Video camera not great

Well........................I bought this delightful camera last February. It came complete with a Photosmart c3180 all in one printer. All for £99 in Argos!! Lovely!!!

It reall appealed to me as it had some good features.

It has 7MP's, thats really good for the price I paid, it even has anti - redeye and auto focus.


So I returned home with 2 boxes, one was rather large the other a smallish size. The large box contained the All in one printer and the other had the camera in it, obviously!! Box's were very well packaged, the camera was in the usual egg box moulding with lots of wrapping to stop it from shaking around. The printer was also well wrapped.

In the box was - Camera, Battery, USB lead, pc software & charger for camera.

I liked this camera as it had a rechargeable battery, my friend has a sony that takes AA battteries and is quite thirsty. Setup was simple, but before you could use the camera you had to charge the battery until the green light on the charger showed. I thought this would take a while but after an hour the Charger was showing green. So I put the battery in and Went through setup process which was all straight forward. All I had to do before taking pics was to assign the date & time.

My first gripe was that it didn't have a carry case and also there was not much memory on the camera. This was ok as I had a spare 1gb SD card.

Picture quality
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First picture was great. It has a really big screen so easy to view the settings and preview the pic before snapping it! The flash is also great, but if taking pics indoors it makes it all look a bit cold. I sometimes turn off the flash and set it to "steady mode" which gives great picture quality and make the pciture look real. The camera has autofocus so no more blurred pics!! Also there is a macro, great for taking pictures of jewellery and close up items. I am not technically advanced and even I can use the camera menu easily.


Quality & battery
*************

Well for £99 for a camera and printer, I wasnt expecting anything wow, but the quality is really good. Both pictures and the camera. I have dropped it a few times accidentally and it even survived the plane loaders on Ryanair. It is also quite compact so fits into your pocket. The battery life - Well it is amazing! I charged the camera at easter and take about 50 pics every weekend plus my 2 week summer hols and it needed recharging in September!!! AMAZING!!!!

Computer connection
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Firstly I didn't install the pc suite as i was about to invest in a new laptop. So I connected up the lead, the pc found the hardware and opened a folder for me to view my pictures. Also the memory card is easy to remove and pop into the memory card slot on the pc. The pc suite is great, and easy to use, you can also edit pics on there.

Overall I am very impressed with this camera and it even has a video recorder, although quality isnt great.

Hope this is of help to you

Nick

Summary: A great value camera.

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