Customer Reviews

HP D5460 Photosmart Printer

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

I purchased the Photosmart D5460 as a replacement for my five year-old DeskJet 5650, mainly for CD/DVD printing capability. Here are my notes:

Setup/Installation:
- Large footprint at 18" wide x 15" deep, plus 6" more required in the rear when using the CD/DVD tray.
- Basic driver from HP's web site has all necessary functionality, just without pop-up ink level displays. I use Nero Cover Designer for CD/DVD labels, so I didn't bother with the bundled software and its limited functionality.
- Driver has "Printing Shortcuts" to create presets for different paper and quality combinations. Nice concept, but see below about the ink volume setting.

Ink usage:
- Performs very frequent and lengthy "preparation" routines that consume ink. If the printer has been idle for a while, it goes through a 95 second routine before printing. The printer then runs another 30 second routine after finishing the printout.
- Default driver settings use too much ink - enough to bleed through my paper.
- "Printing Shortcuts" feature doesn't save the ink volume setting. I created a few shortcuts with reduced ink volume, but any time I selected them, the driver returned the ink volume slider back to the default.

Print quality:
- Good results in Normal and Best modes - as good as my old printer, but no major improvement.
- Below average results in Draft mode - worse than my old printer. Vertical lines on the page are very jagged.
- Inks are not water-resistant at all. Any moisture will cause colors to lift off the page and smear/run. Black is better but still problematic. You must use HP Advanced Photo Paper for water resistance, but obviously that isn't reasonable or practical for non-photo use. Epson and Canon use water-resistant inks, why not HP?

One final thought:
- The print head (part# CB326-30001) is removable, but it is NOT available for purchase from HP or any retailer. The only way to obtain it is via HP Warranty Repair. In other words, when the print head clogs or wears out after warranty, the printer is going in the trash because HP doesn't sell the print head separately. So much for HP being "green".

This Photosmart Printer is the best. It makes pictures so good you won't believe they came from an inkjet printer! It also prints in color on CDs/DVDs - a real plus. Another plus is the replaceable printhead. Instead of trowing away the printer, you can replace the head if it becomes clogged.

The only complaint is the the ink gauge - it doesn't work. The software said I was out of colored ink but I am still printing! I have printed 20 photos and some labels and still going strong. There seems to be no way to tell the actual ink levels - even a reasonable close estimate!

Based on manufacturers' specifications, this printer has incredibly low per-page printing costs, provided you use the 564XL ink cartridges. They're hard to find, but well worth it.

The print quality looks great for photos, text, or printing on CD, but then again I've only had this printer for a month. Every printer generates great output when it's new. The second black ink cartridge theoretically produces crisper text, and indeed the text output is crisp, but again: it's a new printer. Ask me again in a year or two.

I bought this to replace an Epson Stylus R300 for printing directly on disks. Since this printer was designed after that California class action lawsuit, hopefully it won't start screaming for cartridge replacement when there's still 25% left.

Unlike the Epson Rxxx series, this printer comes with a slot for storing the disk printing tray, which is a great feature. My old Epson printing tray got warped from bad storage over time.

There's a separate paper tray for your 3x5 photo paper, so you don't have to remove your 8.5x11 paper any time you want to print a photo.

The LCD panel is backlit, so you can see error messages even in a poorly lit room.

Printing seems to be faster than on my old Epson, but I didn't exactly time it to be sure.

The print to disk software that comes with this printer is -- like most HP applications and drivers -- bloated and useless. HP must be hiring programmers from Creative Labs or something. It may actually be useful for novice users, but the rest of us aren't happy about being forced to use a small number of templates with no ability to customize the layout. While the printer itself is great, I would suggest looking for a 3rd party application for designing and printing disk labels. The free utility that comes with both the OEM and retail versions of Nero works quite nicely. In terms of disk printing software, the Epson Rxxx series beats this printer hands down.

The web printing software was cumbersome, didn't do much, and only works in Internet Explorer.

As with most HP products, install the drivers only.

Replaced a 4 year old Epson R300 Printer with The HP D5460.

First, if you ever used an Epson Printer for printing CD or DVD are you ever going to be disappointed with the HP. You don't have the flex ability in sizing. With max setting I get a hairline area that the printer won't print on up the right side of the disc. Email HP tech support over 2 months ago and there problem solving was worthless. Just very little adjustments. Epson Software you could do just about everything to include move it all around for alignment.

Second, HP Home Essential Software just sucks. I don't know how else to describe it. Very limited software for editing just about everything. You have to use a different program to edit a cd/DVD picture the way you want it then go to HP software to print. You can not even scan cd/DVD's into the HP CD/DVD print software.

Print quality is good if you use high quality printing but you will use ink.

I have used this printer for 2 months before writing a review and I am glad I did. Try to print off size envelopes. A breeze with Epson, not HP. I am going to sell this printer as soon as my new epson arrives. I will never buy HP printer again!

I bought this printer because it was highly rated in Consumers Report. Big mistake. The print quality is great, but you will have to take out a 2nd mortgage on your house to pay for the ink. It goes through ink cartridges ridiculouly fast - I loaded all new cartridges and printed a Xmas letter with pictures - it was out of ink before 20 pages were printed. I think of HP as an ink company that sells their printers for cost just to get you to buy their over-priced ink (kind of like your local heroin dealer). If you buy this model, you will be sorry. I also have a model D 7160 and it is much better.

Picked this up for its cd/dvd printing capability and it works great with my Mac. I also did not have to use the included HP software to print to dvd. I use a program for the mac called DiscLabel and it is compatible with this printer. Printed some photos and DVD covers too and they all turned out great. Awesome little addition for my business.

Have owned several HP printers in the past and always was satisfied....until now. Had to ditch my old 932 model when I switched to a new computer with Vista, and thought that this one would be a good everyday printer. (I use Epson for my photos.) I wanted this one primarily for printing envelopes and labels and email notes. My first snag came when I tried printing an envelope. The printer does not intuitively respond to the settings in the printing software and keeps giving error messages that the paper size is wrong. You have to set the printer and the software program individually, and even then it's time consuming. Also, after each and every little thing that it prints, it spends at least 10-20 seconds moving its parts into position for the next print. What a waste of time!!!! If I had known these things, I would never have wasted the money!

This is the best printer I have ever owned. I usually never buy anything but HP we bought an Epson for the disk printing it sucked. We returned it and bought the HP D5460 it's amazing. The picture quality is WOW! It looks like they were processed at a professional store when you us the hp advanced paper which is a dollar more then the regular. The disk printing is truly cool and is not sloppy like the Epson printer. Great Job HP! I would recommended to everyone

As a rather fast ink jet utility printer, this is a good machine. The direct inkjet printing of CD/DVD inkjet printable disks is a nice feature but is very compromised by unbelievably bad software. The printer must use HP's proprietary software for designing disk labels and this software is very limited. On system start up HP puts an error message on the Windows system log. The message is apparently harmless but its presents is a sign of carelessly implemented software.

As others have said, this is an ink-hog!
I bought this printer primarily to print CDs and DVDs. I'd been using an Epson but it was starting to give me some trouble so I thought I'd go back and try HP again. Big mistake!
1. The software to create DVD labels is extremely poor with no flexibility. I ended up buying Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker but even that pales compared to the abilities of the Epson CD label creation software.
2. I cannot print more than 3 DVDs without the printer coming up with an error condition. The CD/DVD tray then needs to be closed and the printer will wurble away for a couple of minutes "preparing" (no doubt expelling copious quantities of ink) before you can resume DVD printing. When you want to print a few dozen it can be very frustrating and time consuming.
3. When printing black text, it is indeed black. When printing a black and white photo as a DVD label, it comes out sepia. I've tried all sorts of things to fix this but I cannot get black to print as black on a DVD label.

When this current batch of ink runs out I think I'll be back with Epson. I used to like HP so much (sigh).

Update: Now it's dead with an "Ink System Failure." Cleaned, cleaned and better cleaned and it'll print half a CD before failing again. Piece o' crap!