HP Photosmart A626 By: .gif)
Portability with features
More than anything else, the HP Photosmart A626 is ideal to carry around, as it is lightweight and truly compact. While offering good quality prints, it boasts of a stylish exterior. With a rich feature set and great build quality, it seems like the A626 has much to offer. Let’s find out exactly what it can do.
Features
The A626 boasts features that not many compact photo printers have. To begin with, it has an adjustable 4.8-inch touchscreen and stylus, which can slip into a stand molded into the body. Upon flipping down the front flap, the screen on top and the paper-feed at the back, open simultaneously. A USB port and multiple card readers on the front panel support PictBridge connections from cameras and almost all card formats, including as SD, CF, SMC, MMC, memory stick and so on. The flap to the right of the readers opens the ink cartridge compartment. The printer uses inkjet technology and one cartridge delivers up to 50 prints depending on the size and print quality. The A626 prints in either of two sizes—4 x 6 and 5 x 7 inches— and has a plethora of printing options.
Apart from uncommon features such as red-eye reduction, the printer has picture editing options such as adding effects, frames, captions and clip art images. You can use the stylus to draw on photos too. There are special printing projects as well, where one can print photo stickers, passport-sized pictures, panoramic pictures and CD/DVD labels. Apart from the red-eye reduction function, one can also use the feature called ‘Use Photo Fix’, where the printer automatically adjusts the brightness, contrast and so on, and enhances the quality of your pictures.
All of this can be done without even connecting the printer to a computer, one can connect a computer through the USB port provided at the back. Finally, the printer comes with a driver disc, user manual, two-pin to three-pin converter and a USB cable.
Build quality
Looking at the way the paper-feed opens, the A626 resembles a mini tape recorder, but a stylish one of course. The sturdy build and compact design complement its light blue and solid black body. The quality of plastic used is rather good and the printer seems to be quite durable as well as lightweight. There is also a battery pack at the bottom, so you don’t need any wires or an external power source. This truly is a machine built for printing on the move and lives up to it’s name of being a portable photo printer.
Performance
We printed three pictures using the A626 and noted the time taken for each to print. The average of the three scores is taken as the time taken to print one picture. The A626 isn’t the most impressive when it comes to print speed. The picture quality is good, but not as good as that of dye-sublimation printers. This printer loses points because the sharpness and detail of the prints aren’t at par with other photo printers we have tested. The blacks aren’t very ‘black’. This is mainly due to the ink HP has used.
Verdict
Although the quality and speed of prints isn’t jaw-dropping; for its compact design and good feature set, we would say that it is a good portable inkjet printer.
For: Lovely design and build quality, good set of features.
Against: Loses out on sharpness and picture-details.
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Time taken to print
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Page 1: 1 min 11 sec for a 1 MB JPEG file
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Page 2: 1 min 06 sec for a 3.5 MB JPEG file
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Page 3: 1 min 07 sec for a 5.1 MB JPEG file
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