Fantastic Good Quality Printer (HP Photosmart A516)

Member Name: jenki2

Product:	HP Photosmart A516
Date:	16/12/08 (107 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: quiet and fast with a very good print quality

Disadvantages: Cartridges and good quality paper can be quite pricy

Brought for £39 from Currys Digital last year.

I brought this printer to be able to create a scrapbook of photos for my wedding.

For an excellent price you get a fantastic little kit. The box comes with the printer, Software CD, a sample pack of paper (5 sheets) and an ink cartridge (mine hasnt run out yet) oh and a huge user guide.

The printer is so easy to use. You switch it on and it prompts you to enter your language. You then need to put the ink cartridge in, which really is a doddle, you just open the ink door at the front and slot it in.

There are 5 buttons, if i remember correctly, the main one being the "navigating" buttons which is a left arrow, right arrow and an "OK" button. You also have a big printer button, which as it suggests you use to print.


Then you are asked to enter paper so it can print an alignment page. This again is easy to do, you open the slot at the back and place the paper in.

After that you are free to print what you like. You have the following options

1) Enter your memory card into the printer, there are four slots at the front, all labelled and you just push the card in.

2) You can connect it to your PC with a USB Cable (not provided) and print from the PC.

3) You can use a bluetooth adaptor (not included) to print from any bluetooth device. You can buy the HP one but i used my partners bluetooth dongle and this worked fine, my phone recognised it ok.

You can choose whether to print 1,2 or 4 pictures per page or alternatively you can choose passport pictures or even stickers. You then cycle through your pictures on the LCD screen (not moveable). Select the ones you want to print by pressing OK and then finalising with the Printer button.

In my experience it takes just under 2 minutes from start to finish for a picture. The first minute or so is taken up with the "fix" it automatically adjusts brightness, blur, and detects red eye. This is a feature you can turn off, but i cant think of a reason why you would.

The print itself, is very quiet, and very quick.
Borderless prints are produced, dry to the touch, so no hanging around waiting for ink to dry. They look stunning and professional.

I recommend purchasing the HP Advanced Photo paper, this produces spot on results! You can get paper and ink replacements for around £20 total.

All in all a brilliant printer. It doesn't have onboard facilities to edit pictures, but personally if i want to edit i'll use photoshop on my PC.

Summary: Good Value,Very reliable compact photo printer! Borderless photos at the touch of a button.

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