The HP Photosmart D7460 offers a lot of great features -- you get a network-ready printer (wireless too!) with a handy touch screen that makes navigating menus a breeze. While we liked using this model, its performance gives us pause. Although it was speedy with text prints, it was much more pokey with 4x6 photo prints, and the print quality could use some tweaking. The Photosmart D7460 is a good fit for casual home users who want a photo-oriented general-purpose printer that can produce decent snapshots as well as fast text prints. If you don't mind slow text prints, check out the Epson Stylus R380: it makes quick work of 4x6 photos and offers the add feature of printing directly on specially coated CDs and DVDs. It's not networked, however.
Design
The HP Photosmart D7460 looks a lot like other members of the Photosmart printer line. The brushed-silver-and-white body stands 46.25cm wide, 38.75cm deep, and 17.29cm tall, and weighs a very manageable 8 kilograms. Protected behind a clear plastic door live four memory card slots that accept most types of cards; some card types require an adapter, which is not included. The front-mounted USB port is PictBridge-enabled, which means you can print directly from PictBridge cameras. You can also use it to connect and print from storage devices such as USB thumb drives.
Although this printer does resembled older Photosmart models, the major difference is the distinct lack of buttons on the user interface. The reason for this is that the 3.5-inch colour LCD is a touch screen. HP has moved most of the direct-print capabilities and functions to the touch screen, leaving the control panel clean. The only buttons are the cancel, red-eye removal, and print photos buttons. The touch screen is mounted in a panel that swivels through a 90-degree range, letting you optimise the viewing angle. The screen is large, colourful, and responsive.
The Photosmart D7460's paper-handling design is typical of HP's Photosmart printers. The unit comprises the output tray and two input trays. The main input tray sits at the bottom and pulls out for easy loading. Adjustable paper guides allow you to load various paper sizes -- as many as 100 sheets of plain paper. Immediately above the main tray is the dedicate photo paper tray that holds 4x6 sheets and smaller. The nice thing about this paper tray is that it engages automatically, so you don't have to push it in manually in order to print from that tray. Above both input trays is the output tray, with an extendable arm for corralling long prints. A clear window lets you see if the photo paper tray is empty, while the output tray flips up for loading photo paper.
This printer uses six-colour printing, with individual ink cartridges for less waste. The number of prints each can produce varies by colour, as some colours are more commonly used than others. For example, the light magenta and light cyan are rated to print more pages because they're used less often than the regular magenta and cyan. Unfortunately, HP does not offer XL versions of these cartridges for this printer.
Features
The Photosmart D7460 not only comes network-ready, but it offers both wired (Ethernet) and wireless (802.11g) connectivity to boot. A wireless setup wizard will search your area for available networks and walk you through the process of connecting to one. A small, blue LED on the front of the printer lights when you're connected wirelessly. This model does not come with an auto duplexer, but HP does offer an optional add-on unit. If you don't care to purchase the auto duplexer, the printer driver will assist you with manual duplex operations.
As mentioned above, you can print directly from a PictBridge camera, a memory card, or a USB storage device. The methods for printing from the latter two are the same. When you plug in either one, the touch screen switches to the Photosmart Express screen. Here, you can start by choosing View, Print, Create, Share, or Save. The View option automatically pulls up a nine-image thumbnail view. You can simply touch one of the images to zoom in on it, or scroll through your images, nine at a time. At this point, you can print all the images by pressing Print Photos button on the printer. Happily, the D7460 asks you to verify that you really want to do this. If you choose to zoom in on an individual photo, you can preview the print or edit the image. Edit options include rotate, crop, red-eye removal, photo fix, add frame, brightness, and colour effect. As you step through the images, you can print them individually or go back and add images to the batch before printing.
If, from the main screen, you select Print, the wizard starts you off by asking you to select a print layout. Options include 4x6, 5x7, 8.5x11, and multi-image layouts on 8.5x11 paper, including an index. Because the D7460 lacks a scanner, the index is for reference only (file names are included). You can fit as many as 63 images on one sheet. After you select the layout, the procedure is the same as outlined above.
The Create option lets you make album pages for a photo album, create panorama prints, print wallet-size and passport photos, and make still prints from your videos. You can play through the video on the screen and stop it at the frame you want printed. Of course, the print quality won't be as good as prints of photos, because video resolution is lower, but it's still a nifty feature.
The Share and Save options both direct you to your PC, where the HP Photosmart Essential software pops up. You can share via HP's Snapfish service or via e-mail. The former is recommended if you're sharing a large number of files, but the latter is fine for a couple of images.
Finally, the Save option lets you transfer images and videos from a memory card or flash drive to your PC. You can't transfer images between a memory card and flash drive, though, as you can on the Epson Stylus R380.
Performance
In CNET Labs' test, the HP Photosmart D7460 proved to be fast with text prints, but slow with 4x6 photo prints. It was the fastest at text prints, by far, of comparable photo inkjet printers, with a score of 6.33 pages per minute. Unfortunately, it dropped the ball with 4x6 photo prints, producing only 0.47 of a page per minute, at least three times slower than both the Canon Pixma iP6700D and the Epson Stylus Photo R380.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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4x6 photo | |
Text |
The Photosmart D7460 did a decent job with text prints: The black were richly dark, and the characters were well formed, but we noticed wicking problems, even with HP's own inkjet paper. The colour graphics print showed the same issues with wicking, though colours looked pretty good, if a little on the dull side. The photo elements were detailed, but we saw some graininess in colour blocks. We liked the detail and the way the colours popped in the 4x6 photo prints but were a bit distracted by the graininess we noticed in faces. Overall, the Photosmart D7460's print quality was pretty good, definitely good enough for casual home users who want to print snapshots and the occasional text print.
HP backs the Deskjet D4260 with a standard one-year warranty. The Web site offers drivers, software downloads, FAQs, and troubleshooting guides.
Pricing for the HP Photosmart D7460 was not available at the time of writing. Please check back soon for updates.
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darkwolf33333
20/12/2007, 07:06 PM
rating
10/10
Being a graphic artist I have used and tested many printers. The D7460 and 260 have by far the best quality prints in the photo printer line.
Pros: Extremely fast printing for 8.5x11 prints, with little quality reduction. Maximum setting displays by far the best looking prints. Easy to set up to wireless network. Ink last a long time.
Cons: Hp and bad ink. Some cartridges you buy may contain less ink. I came across this problem with a yellow. It ran out after five prints. Hp was nice enough to send me a new cartridge free of charge. Sometimes you have to reinstall the printer because it mysteriously uninstalls itself.
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G Patton
22/09/2007, 02:51 AM
rating
7/10
The printer is receiving some bad press regarding photo print quality, but personally, they are comparable to local "one hour photo" prints. They will never match what a professional lab can produce, but can certainly satisfy my needs. Overall quality on printing is very good--photos and text. Speed is fine.
Pros: Easy to set up and many features that allow for printing direct from cards, cameras and even downloading card images to the computer. Text printing is excellent and relatively fast (I'm not in a race).
Cons: Ink consumption is absurd. I purchased this to avoid the ink consumption of an Epson based on reviews of the Epson. As a result, the Epson must DRINK the stuff. In the last 10 days I have replaced a black, yellow and dark magenta. I have printed NO photos and about 100 pages of text and my black is down to about 1/3 remaining with yellow and dark magenta near zero. I'm going back to my HP 5740...and send my images to a lab; it'll be cheaper.
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