Ratings: Ease of Use, Performance: 20/25, Look & Feel: 23/25, Features & Software 22/25, How much I enjoy 22/25
Total: 87/100
Hewlett Packard is a huge company that manufactures computers, printers, digital cameras, well just about all your electronics for home and business. I own several Hewlett Packard computers along with other devices and am quite happy with all of them. The Photosmart line of printers is a very good one and so impressive that I made the switch from an Epson to the Photosmart D7360 for my home and office use.
The Photosmart C4280 is an All-in-One printer that prints and scans with very good quality photo and general printing.
Here are the features straight from HP:
Super photos
Preview and print photos in a snap, without a PC, using a memory card and the 1.5″ display
Edit, print, share, and organize photos with the included HP Photosmart Essential software
Print and copy snapshots with or without borders on standard size (up to 8.5 x 11″) and panorama paper
Preserve your memories with photos that resist fading for generations
Versatile functionality
Print, copy, and scan with one versatile, compact machine
Make sharp copies in color or black; enlarge and zoom with the easy one-touch buttons (no PC needed)
Get outstanding scans with the 1200 x 2400 dpi optical resolution, up to 19200 dpi enhanced, and 48-bit color (depending on computer memory, disk space, other factors)
Optimize the quality of prints and copies on various papers with the automatic paper type sensor
Print and copy fast-at up to 30 pages per minute in black, and up to 23 in color
Save space in your home or office by combining print, scan, and copy functionality in one compact machine
Stay on top of ink replacement with HP Suresupply: receive alerts when a cartridge is low, monitor its remaining life, and order online or check stock at stores
Access printing supplies in one click: sign up at our My Printing Supplies Store and save a list of your printers for hassle-free ink and paper reordering
Hewlett Packard has a very good track record with printers and the C4280 is a very good versatile All-in-One printer and scanner. The C4280 comes with the printer, one black and one tri color ink cartridge, driver CD, power cord with power supply and all kinds of paperwork and pamphlets. You will need a USB cable to connect the printer to your computer as the printer does not come with one.
Connecting the All-in-One device was very easy and setup for my Windows XP computer was hassle free but not for my Vista system. I could not get Vista to recognize the C4280 at all when using the regular device driver setup from the CD. Letting Windows install the device for me worked but I had to tell Windows to use the CD a few times. I really do not believe this is a problem with the printer or drivers but with Windows Vista. I continue to find things that do not like to play nice with Windows Vista and probably will for several months to come.
The printer uses two ink cartridges which is about the biggest drawback to this Photosmart printer. I like the separate ink cartridges for each color to maximize the ink that is for each color. The cartridges with three colors will not be empty of all the colors at the same time so you end up throwing ink away when its time to change out for one color being empty. The C4280 prints at 23 pages per minute in color and mixed pages. I took the C4280 for a test drive and found the specifications to be quite true. I printed out several pages of a PDF document that has very mixed graphics, pictures and text. The document is an instructional book that includes graphics and very bright colored charts with actual photos and text, a very good mix that is perfect for testing the actual speed of a printer in real world conditions.
I had no problem testing the printer and ran through several minutes of printing and found that it did actually print at about 23 pages per minute. It prints text and black and white even faster but that is to be expected. There are several features of this printer that I really enjoy much more than my current printer. The front has a fold down tray that many of the previous Photosmart printers did not have. This tray folds up for better portability and so you don’t get dust and dirt into the printer when not in use.
The scanner is on top of the printer and works very well, much faster than my older scanner. It scans pictures almost as good as my previous scanner but not quite that well. For copying pages or pictures it does a very good job but you can still tell it is a scan and not an original. Connecting the printer/scanner and having Windows recognize the two functions worked flawlessly in Windows XP and I did have to tell Windows it had a scanner as well as the printer for Vista, again the problems with Vista.
I had no problem using the printer and scanner in conjunction for a clear and good looking copy. Scanning images into a file worked fine but again the quality is not fantastic as in my stand alone scanner. But the Photosmart C4280 worked well enough for regular scans and copies for most uses.
The Photosmart software that the C4280 All-in-One comes with is easy to use and works great. You can use it for all your picture scanning, printing and even editing for simple tasks such as cropping resizing or simple editing. The editing works well enough for basic uses but for anymore advanced editing for digital images I would recommend something like Photoshop Elements.
The C4280 also prints without using a computer by plugging in your Secure Digital, MicroSD using adapter, Compact Flash, XD Picture Card, Memory Stick Duo or Pict Bridge capable camera. Using either the cards or a camera and USB cord with Pict Bridge you can print directly and you can preview your image on the small 1.5 inch screen. This handy feature makes the Photosmart C4280 a perfect portable printer for printing fun pictures anywhere, or almost, you do need a power outlet.
Overall the HP Photosmart C4280 All-in-One is a very good printer and scanner. It prints photo quality pictures at many of the common sizes and prints normal letter size very well. It is a good fast printer and the scanner function works fairly well for an All-in-One. I recommend the Photosmart C4280 as an excellent printer with a pretty good scanner function as an add on.
