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37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Nice output, albeit not water resistant, and it's an ink hog, January 30, 2009
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".
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Makes unbelievable quality pictures, November 2, 2008
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!
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good hardware, lousy software, January 10, 2009
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.
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