HP Photosmart A826 Compact Photo Printer Review

by Linh Huynh on 8:50 PM in Compact Photo Printer, HP Photo Printer

There are a lot of laser printers in the market, but it's very difficult to find a laser photo printer. For one, most laser printers are used for professional use, but if you want to use it for printing pictures and photographs, you might not get the exact quality that you want. But there's one model that's not a laser printer but can produce laser-quality photos that you will definitely admire - the HP Photosmart A826 Compact Photo Printer. Here is a review that will cover everything you need to know about this model.

This compact photo printer from HP is equipped with a 7-inch full-color touch screen with dedicated buttons on the side. Using the small stylus, you can crop, remove red-eye, add text and doodles, and play with the different frames and album formats. It produces high quality prints in 5x7 and 4x6 sizes, and it is really easy to use.

Viewing and printing photos is easier than ever, using 7.0 inch color touchscreen which you can use to easily navigate and operate the device without a computer. Print photos with ease simply insert a memory card, select photos without a computer. Use your finger or the stylus to hand write on photos before printing. You can add captions and descriptions, create fun, custom photos and personalized greeting cards with more than 200 borders, graphics and more. Print photos in multiple sizes 5 x 7, 4 x 6 inches, wallet size, panorama and more. It has the dimensions of 10.4'' x 9.6'' x 10.8'' and a weight of 5.8 pounds, very easy to travel with and bring around. The device has a USB port, a PictBridge camera connectivity, and four memory card slots for several options of storage media devices.

Printing and Feature

The Photosmart A826 is geared toward standalone, PC-free use, so most of its features are packed right into the touch screen. You don't want set up the A826 to print from a PC, the four memory card slots and PictBridge port make it easy to print from a memory card or PictBridge device like a camera or camera phone. It can print to a speed of 39 seconds per page and it produces photos with a resolution of 4800x1200 dpi. Alternatively, you can view your photos as a slide show for more options. Edit lets you crop, reduce red-eye, and adjust the brightness. The crop feature lets you zoom in and out, rotate the cropped area between portrait and landscape modes, and use the stylus to drag the crop box around the image, so you get just the part you want. The edits that you make to the image aren't saved to the original file on the memory card, which is good in that you can't accidentally change the file, but having the option to would be nice. It also has optional wireless connectivity which you can use to access the device through several computers within a single network. The only drawback of this model is that it's not Energy Star qualified, so you consume more energy by using it. But if you only use it for printing photos alone, it wouldn't really matter much because you only use it occasionally.

What We Liked…

Easy for non-technical users
Fun "creative" modes for editing photos
Excellent screen and interface
Good print quality

What We Didn’t…

Stingy starter ink cartridge
No way to save edits and tweaks to memory cards

Customers Review

Seemore details on Amazon

Conclusion

If you're hoping to find a laser photo printer, you'll be surprised at how difficult it is to find one, and most of them are very expensive too. But if you want excellent laser-quality photo printing, you can always go with the HP Photosmart A826 Compact Photo Printer. I highly recommend this device if you want to produce excellent photos and laser-quality, vibrant, and color-rich printouts.

Check out HP Photosmart A826 at Amazon