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HP PhotoSmart 130 Inkjet Printer

HP PhotoSmart 130 Inkjet Printer

List Price: $180.00
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great Printer, Great Price... Cost per photo is really high
Review: I purchased this little printer after my friend gave the printer two thumbs up. I have read many reviews about the printer and agian, two thumbs up. Honestly, the printer does a wonderful job. There are a couple draw backs that people normally do not hear about.

The first draw back, is printing from a media card that you insert into the printer. The printer automatically trims a bit off the sides of the photos. So, you will need to be careful when taking pictures and remember; your printer may cut off some one's forehead.

Another draw back is the lack of instruction for hooking the printer upto the computer. There really aren't any!! The only way to achieve the 4800x1200 DPI is to have the printer connected to a computer. If the computer is not connected, you get 2400 x 1200 DPI. Not to many reviews tell you this little tid bit of information.

The biggest draw back to this printer is the cost per picture. The Inkjet will produce 120 images without a problem. If you consider the cost of the inkjet vs image, it comes to $0.24 per photo. Plus, the printer will only produce good, reliable images on HP photo paper (I have tried 2 other stocks of paper besides the HP paper without a good result) and the HP paper runs $0.29 per sheet here locally. That's $0.53 per photo. My HP stock went up after I purchased this printer.

A wonderful quality about the printer is how easy it is to use right out of the box, and not hooked upto a computer. Without a comuter hooked upto this printer, I had the printer running within a few minutes. The printer came with a large poster style quick setup guide just for people like me.... It is idiot proof(LOL)

The image quality is wonderful. You can barely tell the photo is from a printer. But the price per photo is rather high. You can purchase other prnters for about the same price that have costs per photo half of what this HP product does.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: What a great printer!
Review: I was interested in the novelty of being able to print select pics from my Canon A20 digital camera (a great camera too). I read the reviews on the HP 100, the 130's "little sibling". I tried the HP 100 out at home and although the printer was okay (meaning the concept was pretty cool), I was not impressed with the printing quality. So, I returned the HP 100 and bought the HP PS 130 --what an amazing difference. Truly, the HP PS130 produces professional quality 4 x 6 and wallet size prints. There was no comparison between the output in the 130 compared to the 100. The difference is that the HP 130 has 4800 x 1200 dpi resolution, whereas the HP 100 is 2400 x 1200 dpi.

The printer is relatively quiet, is pretty fast and easy to use. One drawback: I can see where having a screen to view the picture would be helpful, but it is not crucial. Also, like the other reviews for the other photo printers mention, this is not the most cost effective way to print 24 pictures because the paper and the printer cartridge are not cheap, but the ability to print out the pics you want almost instantaneously is very rewarding.

I have not yet tried out the HP software that is included, nor have I connected the printer to my computer. The literature with the printer indicates that when connected to the computer the resolution on the 130 decreases from 4800 x 1200 to 2400 x 1200 dpi which, if true, would be unfortunate. For now, I have no need to attach the printer to my computer, so I have nothing to worry about.

Good luck, and read the Amazon.com reviews, I have found them very helpful.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: new to photo's
Review: I was never one to get into photography but with the gift of a sony digital and this HP130 I am in buisness. I take a whole bunch of photos and when I get the one I like I give copies to the folks I think will appreciate it. No waste of money to develope just to see if I got a good Picture....The people around me especialy like my picture of "grumpy" from disneyland last march...they say he is my patron saint...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: new to photo's
Review: I was never one to get into photography but with the gift of a sony digital and this HP130 I am in buisness. I take a whole bunch of photos and when I get the one I like I give copies to the folks I think will appreciate it. No waste of money to develope just to see if I got a good Picture....The people around me especialy like my picture of "grumpy" from disneyland last march...they say he is my patron saint...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: the best little photo printer for your money
Review: The hp photosmart 130 has the quality of a photoshop. I got it for 150 dollars thinking what the heck. But when I tried it out it was more like wow, this thing is tight. It prints fast, crisp, clean pictures off your memory card. It's very simple. You stick your card in the correct slot, and the printer will read the images. The only bad thing is that the pictures are numbered by the order that they are on the memory card. So you have to know that. BUT, there is an alteritive. You can select a range of pictures that you think the picture might be in, ex:(1-27) and then it will print out little thumbnails of those pictures with a number under it. Then from that you can decide the picture number you want to print. BUT, it is sometimes hard to determin what picture it is that you want because it is so small.

PROS-
-Inexpensive Ink
-Great Price
-Easy to use
-Quality
-Quikness
-Sturdyness
-size

Cons-
-thumbnails are often too small

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great for novices and travellers
Review: The printer is highly suitable for non-PC environments and for those on the go. The HP Photosmart 130's affordable price, support for the main digicam storage media, "no-brainer" operation and quality output also make it a good buy for novice and intermediate digital camera users who are looking for a photo printer.

Pros: Portable, no PC required, quality output.
Cons: Printing costs can get expensive, takes 2.5 minutes to produce a 4R print.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Clumsy Print Options
Review: This is just an okay photo printer. The colors are not vibrant. The main complaint I have is that this printer does not have a screen that lets you preview and select the photo you want to print. Instead, the printer assigns a number to each photo contained on your memory card that is DIFFERENT from the number the camera assigns to each photo. The inconsistent numbering systems make it difficult to select the photo you want to print. If you use a memory card that can contain 100 or more photos, this becomes a big problem if you don't want to print all of the photos on your card. The only way to deal with this issue is to print index cards to discover the number assigned to your photo by the printer, but that means wasting your expensive printer ink and paper. I'd suggest buying another photoprinter that either uses the same photo numbering system as your camera or has a preview screen.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Prints A 4 x 6 In Under 2 Minutes!
Review: When I first set up this printer and printed out a photo, the first thing I noticed was how fast it was. In under 2 minutes, I had an excellent quality 4 x 6. I had been using an Epson Stylus Photo 780 before, and it took 10-15 minutes just to print a 4 x 6. It also used a lot of ink. This printer is very ink efficiant. It's perfect for digital camera users because it has a built-in memory card reader that accepts 5 different types of memory. You can use it to print directly from memory cards or from your computer. One improvement they could make on a future model should be to try to eliminate paper jams, because they are somewhat frequent. A model that would print 5 x 7 would also be nice. Overall this printer is one investment worth it's small price.


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