HP’s Photoprinter

This printer is the elder brother of the Photosmart 130 reviewed on page 116. It’s also a photo printer having a 24-sheet 4”x 6” inch photo paper tray and another 100-sheet tray for A4 sheets. It also offers PC-free operation with its 1.8” color LCD display which allows you to view, select, edit and print images directly from a digital camera memory card, which can be inserted in the provided slot. It supports compact flash, memory stick, multimedia, secure digital, and smart media. There are buttons to navigate though the printer menu and images from the memory cards. They let you zoom and rotate the images on the LCD and a “SAVE” button even saves the images from memory card to your PC. The printer supports USB 2.0 and has 16 MB built-in RAM. It also has automatic paper-type sensor to sense correct paper size and prevent paper jam.

The Photosmart 7550 supports a maximum optimized print resolution of 4800x1200 dpi. It provides seven-color printing with three cartridges. The printer gave really good quality printouts. We could read text down to point size 2, and the line, curves, and fountain fills (a smooth gradient of gray) also printed smoothly. Full color image on photo paper was also very good, though it took 9 Min 47 seconds to print this in best mode. The printer gave a print speed of 8 ppm in fastdraft mode for a full-page document. Cartridge costs are the same as the ones mentioned in the HP Deskjet 5550 printer review in this issue.

The Bottom Line: A great printer for PC-free operations. Print quality on photo paper is also very good. 

Amboo Srivastava and Sanjay Majumder at PCQ Labs