HP Photosmart D110A Wireless e-All-in-One Printer (CN731A#B1H) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This is a decent low-end printer with a few very cool features, and satisfactory but not stellar performance. It would be the ideal printer for a small family, especially with children who like to print things (and what kids don't like to print things). I'm going to quickly go through the features and mention what I've experienced after playing with it for a few days; where relevant, I'll compare its features to my slightly more expensive Canon printer.
SETUP:
The printer's nicely packed, and easy to put together. The only trick I had was installing the printer cartridges. Like another reviewer said, the printer cartridges don't go in exactly the way the diagram or the illustrated video on the printer's screen suggests. If you make a mistake, it will say that they're not installed, and then you can't just go fix the mistake because it doesn't recognize you've fixed it unless you power off and power on again. One other thing I like is that the whole thing comes with a handy canvas carrying tote. That'll be nice because I may occasionally bring it home.
WIRELESS:
Setting up this printer as a wireless printer was extremely easy. I've setup about 5 different wireless printers over the past year and this was by far the easiest. What made it simple was that the instructions on the printer's screen show you exactly how to connect it to a local wireless point, and then when you install the software on the screen it automatically recognizes the printer as there to be used. Easy stuff.
PHOTOS:
It's advertised as a photo printer, and it does okay with photos but not great. I printed an 8.5 x 11 glossy of my family on quality photo paper and from far away it looks fine, but if you get close you'll see evidence of print lines. It's especially evident on skin, where you can see the little lines that make it almost look like your subjects had been sleeping on corduroy pants and had little fading line indentations left behind.
PRINTING:
For other kinds of print jobs, where fine details are less important, the printer does a good job and things look nice. It's pretty slow, though. It's not nearly fast enough for most professional office use, so the speed alone pretty much qualifies this as a home use printer. My Canon PIXMA MX860, for example, is quite a bit faster, and prints better photos. Of course, that one is bulkier than this one, and costs a bit more.
SCANNING:
The Photosmart scans just fine, though if you want any kind of control you have to scan from the software that installs on your computer with the driver. I tried scanning a page of text to send to my computer using just the controls on the printer and it ended up scanning only half of the page, and inverting the layout from the way it was actually placed on the scan bed. You can only scan one page at a time - there's no feeding.
Additionally, it only scans things as images, that it can send either as .jpg or .pdf files. That means you can't produce an editable text document from a scan unless you have additional software that can convert the images into such. My Canon Pixma MX860 does give me the option to create .txt files.
COPY:
Works fine, exactly as you'd expect.
FAX:
Doesn't exist. This is not a fax machine, so the "All-in-One" might be a bit of a misnomer - then again, who uses fax machines anymore? I have fax capability on all my other printers and I've never had the need to use it. When I absolutely need to fax, I use my office's dedicated machine. One more reason, though, that this wouldn't work as an all-in-one office printer even for a small office, since sometimes business use requires faxing.
WEB:
There are two web features this comes with. One, apparently, doesn't work yet (as of June 30, 2010) but is (allegedly) coming soon. That's the "ePrint" function, that allows a registered user to print to this printer from anywhere on the web, even if they aren't anywhere close to the printer. I'd love to be able to print out stuff I'll need the next day from home, so it'll be ready for me when I arrive at my office, so this is a feature I'm looking forward to.
The other feature is what's called "Print Apps" - basically, you register for print apps online at HPs site (several will be already set up for you if you accept the Web features during setup ... in fact, right now as far as I can tell every one of the available apps is already set up for you, though it looks like they are planning to have a lot more apps.) Anyhow, the webapps allow you to print directly from the web. I kind of like the Sudoku app, that allows me to print Sudoku puzzles directly from the printer. There's also a Coupon app - so far I haven't found any useful coupons, but this could be nice. My son loves the PBS KIds and Disney apps. Again, this would be cool for families.
OVERALL:
This is a decent, low-end printer, with some novel features that would make it great for some personal and home uses. It doesn't print the best photos and it's not as fast as some. At this price, though, it would be a good deal for many users.

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HP Photosmart D110A Multifunction Printer CN731A#B1H 74

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