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08/08/2004 |
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HP Photosmart 1218 David Dorn gives HP’s dedicated photo printer a good workout and concludes he likes it – with reservations
I’m very keen on good quality photos – I’ve spent almost all my life with a camera in my hand, and my photo library is vast! So, digital photography is an area that I’ve followed with great interest, combining, as it does, two of my favourite pastimes – photography and computing. So, it was with great interest that I took the wraps off Hewlett Packard’s Photosmart 1218 printer-cum-card reader, for herein lies the capability to print out digital photos without even powering up the PC. The printer itself has very smart livery – an
all-over dark grey highlighted by a small silver “Print” button
and HP logo, with a lighter grey underbelly. To the right of the
paper input tray(s) sits the clearly labelled and eminently usable
control panel – a vital array of controls for use in its
standalone photoprinter guise – including a clear and informative
LCD display. Just around the corner are two slots – one for
SmartMedia and the other to accept Compact Flash and IBM Microdrive
cards (but only the now outmoded 170MB Microdrive – it won’t
play with the 1GB unit I use extensively). These are the handiest slots you’ll come across, but more of them anon. Hidden beneath the standard HP paper output tray is a small 6x4 inch photo-paper tray, which can be slid back and forth by means of a small thumb-button in the output tray itself. It’s easy to load it with a full box of 6x4 paper and leave it disengaged, ready to be used as and when needed. Otherwise, it’s pretty much standard HP fare – lifting the lid brings the ink cartridges to the middle to be replaced/cleaned, and the usual parallel and USB connections are in their usual slot at the middle back of the unit. Power is wall-wart free figure-of-eight mains. And sensibly placed. Setting Up HP’s setup is usually straightforward – you plug the printer in, install the print cartridges, and then attach the USB cable to your PC (and you really do want to use USB with this printer – parallel cabling, even with an ECP port, hogties it more than somewhat). Windows 98/SE/Me detects it, and, once you’ve slipped the supplied CD into your drive, just gets on and installs everything for you. A quick reset, and Robert is your father’s male sibling, as they say.
Photos are selected by index number, hence the index sheet, and can be selected individually or in ranges, using the “Choose Photos” rocker button immediately below the LCD. As with all of the rocker buttons on the panel, this is a little bit fiddly to use until you get a feel for it. You can also select how many copies of the photos you want printed as well as the sizing. The “yes” and “no” buttons act (and are also labelled as) OK and Cancel buttons respectively. Once you’ve completed your selections, a quick dab at the “Print” button, and you can sit back and watch the process in action. The clever part is that the Photosmart 1218 is capable of auto-recognising the paper you’ve inserted into it – so, if it’s plain paper, you get the right amount of ink delivered. This is achieved by dint of a small light sensitive unit at the side of the print-head. It’s actually quite interesting to stare up under the top cover and watch the calibration process happening as each sheet approaches the print platen.. OK, I know – I’m very, very sad! Quality I have to say that I’m impressed by the output in the standalone mode, especially onto photo-quality glossy paper (which, let’s face it, is the raison d’etre of this particular beast). Even from the relatively duff and outdated Sanyo 640x480 digicam (the naffest I happened to have to hand), the results are very good on 6x4 paper, and acceptable at 10x8 (which is really pushing a 640x480 image to the outer limit). At more realistic image sizes, such as you’ll get from a 3.4megapixel camera, the results are superb. Printer As a PC-based printer, the Photosmart apes its recent brethren in terms of print quality – it’s very hard to fault, and print times are quick. Better yet, it comes as standard with an automatic duplexing unit, which means that printing to both sides of the paper is an absolute doddle. We like that! Verdict This is a printer that is only really going to appeal to someone who is into digital cameras – its additional functions over and above a normal printer are such that you wouldn’t buy it if you didn’t have a digital camera or three anyway. As such it’s very difficult to fault it – more or less everything the digital photographer is ever likely to need is here – printing direct from the memory card, memory card reading, and output from the PC. What more could you want? |
Being
somewhat blasé about printers, having reviewed so many over the
years, my first port of call was not to the PC, but to slip a
Smartmedia card into the upper slot and check out the standalone
facilities on offer – and they’re not only numerous, but also
well thought out. As the card is recognised, the LCD panel counts up
how many photos are available to be used. Unfortunately, the CF card
slot won’t handle Microdrives above 170MB, but handles all the
other CF media we’ve thrown at it nicely. The sensible course of
action at that point is to print out an index page, such that you
can see exactly what you’re doing, as you can, from that point on,
select any number – or all – of your photos to be printed in
just about any size up to A4 (10x8, really) that you can think of.