DesignThe HP Photosmart 475 wins the prize for the portable printer that most resembles a toaster. A bit smaller than an actual toaster in size, it will fool you when the smooth, clean side panels are closed, as its upright, 250 x 226 x 170 mm rectangular shape and rounded edges present no clue to its functionality.
It's only when you see the top of the device, where control buttons, as well as a carry handle and a 2.5 inch colour LCD screen, give away that you have a photo printer on your hands. The top panel includes dedicated buttons (duplicated on the remote control) to print, cancel, rotate picture and delete image. There's also an image zoom rocker switch and a four-way menu cursor array with an embedded OK button.
To get underway, you simply plug in the power cord, flip up the LCD viewfinder, and open the front and back panels. The back only opens about 30 degrees and serves and a feeder tray for the photo paper. The front panel folds flat to the table to cradle the finished prints and it also reveals the IR receiver for the supplied remote control, multiple cards slots and the print cartridge tray. The Photosmart 475 uses a single tricolour (cyan, magenta and yellow) Vivera ink cartridge or you can buy the optional Gray Photo cartridge for monochrome prints.
No matter what flavour memory card you photos are on, the 475 should have you covered as there are built-in slots for Compact Flash Type I and II, MicroDrive, Memory Stick, Secure Digital/MultiMedia Card, SmartMedia and xD Picture Card media. There's a PictBridge port and if you want to print photos from your Bluetooth camera phone, you can invest in an optional wireless adapter. An optional battery pack is also available if you want to print your photos where there's no mains power, say at a picnic, for example.
The easy-to-see LCD tilts to give you a clear image to navigate the menu system or view your images before printing, either individually, in slide shows or via nine-at-a-time thumbnails.
There is also a handheld remote, which is useful if you decide to view slide shows of your photos by hooking up the HP 475 to your TV screen through the supplied AV cable. The remote works, but we found it needed a very accurate alignment with the IR receiver, so we eventually gave up and pulled a chair up next to the printer to work the controls from the top of the unit.
Features
HP built-in a 1.5GB hard disk in the Photosmart 475, so if your memory card fills up and you have the printer handy, you can use the printer to store your photos and clear your memory card. Depending of the file size of your images, the 1.5 GB disk should store between 1,000-1,400 images. You can keep track of stored images with its keyword entry system and 10 predefined keywords like Vacations, Holidays, Birthdays, Family, Friends or Pets can be assigned to each image stored on the hard drive, then retrieved according to the categories you've applied.
Photosmart 475 features limited but practical onboard editing features. It can reduce red-eye, apply auto-enhancements, adjust brightness or crop your images. There is a Get Creative option in the menu system that gives you over 20 options each to add frames, clip art or a text greetings before you print. As well as 4 x 6- and 5 x 7-inch prints, you can also print any photo with a 3:1 aspect ratio in panorama mode onto 4x12-inch paper. Other alternatives allow you to print photo stickers, multiple passport photos on a single sheet, and colour effects such as sepia, antique and black-and-white. Layout options include two-up, four-up and index sheets.
It works quite nicely as a standalone printer, but if you want to hook it up to a computer, the 475 is compatible with both PCs and Macs. The HP printer driver offers basic printing and printer-maintenance options, including saturation, brightness and colour-balancing sliders, or you can share your shots by e-mail using HP Instant Share. The supplied HP Image Zone application offers additional image-editing options.
Performance
We were pleased with the crispness and clarity of the prints, which were remarkably clean for a snapshot printer using a tricolour ink cartridge. We put it head-to-head against the Canon Selphy DS700 and the HP Photosmart 475 emerged the clear winner in overall print quality. The 475 had a more discernable bluish tint to greys and neutral colours, but greens and reds were much more vivid than prints from the Canon. Overall contrast was better on the HP, with cleaner edges and more subtle variation in colour shades.
No portable printer can be considered speedy, but the Canon Selphy DS700 produced the prints approximately 30 percent faster than the Photosmart 475. The print time for 4 x 6 borderless prints on the 475 was a ranged from 2 minutes 48 seconds to a full 3 minutes. HP brochures claim it prints in as little as 45 seconds, but the fine print reveals the condition that they are bordered prints printing from a PC. Clearly you must have lots of patience if you want to use the 475 without a computer, which diminishes its appeal as a device you'd take to a party to share prints immediately with friends.
The only other niggle we'd report is the difficulty we experienced in navigating through a large group of images in the menu system. We inserted a memory card with 380 images taken over several months. The printer automatically dumped them into small files by date. You can view nine subfiles at a time, but only the first image from each file is shown, so finding what image is where can be a bit of trial and error. The visible image may be of a birthday party, for instance, but all other images in the subfile may be of another occasion completely, so you would only be able to find them by opening every subfile until you found what you were looking for.
Similarly, we did not store a large number of images to the hard drive, but suspect that if there were several hundred photos coded only by the key word Family or Vacation, drilling down to the exact image you want may be quite a pain, as you would only have the month and first/top image of the subfile as a guide.
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25/04/2006, 09:09 AM
great output, no need to be connected to a PC
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Norma Gonzalez
28/03/2006, 02:49 AM
fantastic photo size options! from wallet on.
I love this printer! I scrapbook and love that I can print out smaller photos and be able to get more on a page. The 4 photos per sheet and 2 photos per sheet are outstanding!!
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