HP Photosmart 375
Review Date: 10th March 2005
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Ease of Use
The HP Photosmart 375 resembles a high-tech toaster that won't look out of place in your modern loft apartment - quite a feat for a humble printer! Installing the HP Photosmart 375 is incredibly easy, especially if you don't connect it to your computer, and after just 5 minutes I had printed out my first image. You just need to to connect the power cable, turn the printer on, fit the supplied faceplate on top of the printer, install the colour cartridge and print a calibration chart. The supplied Quick Install Poster and built-in Help system made it a very simple process.
To print a photograph from a memory card, simply insert it into the relevant slot on the front of the printer. I used a variety of card formats without any problems. The HP Photosmart 375 recognises that you have inserted a card, briefly displays the message "Reading Card", then displays the number of photos that it has found on the card. The first photo is then displayed on the LCD screen for you to edit and select for printing. This is as easy as pressing the large Print button, which will automatically print the image that is currently displayed. You can use the four-way controller to scroll through the images on the memory card and display thumbnail versions of all images.
The HP Photosmart 375 has a very logical control layout that will perfectly suit the beginner photographer. HP's cameras are extremely easy to use and the Photosmart 375 printer is no different. Selecting which photos to print, zooming in and cropping, and finally printing them out couldn't really be any easier. If you do get stuck, there is a Help menu option that contains most of what you will find in the printed User Guide. The HP Photosmart 375 really is extremely easy to operate.
In terms of speed, the HP Photosmart 375 took 1 minute 50 seconds to print out a 5Mb image when it was operating in standalone mode. The HP Photosmart 375 has 32Mb of built-in memory, which limits how fast it can process the image and make the print. The standalone print time was calculated from pressing the print button to the final print arriving in the paper tray. Print times also varied depending on how big each image was. When it was connected to a computer, the HP Photosmart 375 took around 1 minute to print the same 5Mb image. Print times did not vary, even if the image was bigger or smaller - it consistently took 1 minute to print each image.
Overall the HP Photosmart 375 was extremely intuitive to use and didn't suffer from any problems throughout the 2 week duration of this review. The printer is very well built and all of the features work well. Note that I wasn't able to test the black and white cartridge or the optional Li-ion rechargeable battery and DC car power adapter, as HP didn't supply them.
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