The HP PhotoSmart 7960 is a Color Photo Printer Plus a Black/White printer!
Written: Oct 02 '03
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Pros: It prints excellent black and white photos!
Cons: The replacement cost of all the cartridges!
The Bottom Line: If you want to print some exceptional black and white photo prints even from a color photo then this is the printer made for you.
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| surferdude7's Full Review: Hewlett Packard PhotoSmart 7960 Thermal Inkjet Pri... |
The HP PhotoSmart 7960 is designed for excellent Black & White photo prints as well as color. The 7960 comes with 4 different cartridges that give you a total of eight different colors.
The printer is real quiet, you do hear when it loads the paper and ejects it. Printing quality is up to 4800 x 1200 optimized dpi colors. It has built-in slots for most memory cards and prints borderless prints in a beautiful color or an exceptional black and white.
~`` Ink Cartridges ``~
The HP PhotoSmart 7960 gives you four cartridges but you can only use three at a time. For photo printing you use the HP # 59 Gray instead of the HP # 56 Black, for documents the HP # 56 is recommended over the new HP # 59 gray. In the upper left top of the printer is storage for the cartridge not being used. All three slots must have a cartridge in it for it to work, the # 57 Tri-color and # 58 Photo cartridges have to be installed at all times. The only cartridges that can be switched are the # 59 Gray and # 56 Black.
All ink cartridges have their own printing head built-in, so when you replace a cartridge you are also replacing the printing head. This brings up the cost of a cartridge but it gives you new clean printing heads every time you replace a cartridge.
New HP # 59 Gray The new gray cartridge is what produces some of the best black and white photos that I have seen printed by an ink jet printer.
The gray cartridge consists of a three ink storage of light gray, medium gray and photo black. Most ink jet photo printers produce around 17 shades of real gray, other grays are made up from the color cartridges, the HP # 59 gives you 4097 shades of a true gray. This produces consistently neutral black and white prints that are the best from any ink jet printer.
Now for color prints the HP # 59 gray gives photos greater depth then using the back cartridge.
Average Cost about $25 for the HP # 59 Cartridge.
HP # 56 Black is used only if you do a lot of text printing or printing that requires a lot of black.
Average Cost about $20 for the HP # 56 Cartridge.
HP # 57 Tri-color has three chambers with the colors of cyan, magenta and yellow.
Average Cost about $35 for the HP # 57 Cartridge.
HP # 58 Photo has three colors, light cyan, light magenta and black. If you don’t need a lot of black then there is plenty in the photo cartridge and the HP # 56 is not needed.
Average Cost about $25 for the HP # 58 Cartridge.
~`` PhotoREt technology! ``~
The HP PhotoSmart 7960 uses PhotoREt Pro technology for eight ink printing of 289 levels of primary colors and 4097 shades of gray. With halftoning and all eight colors you get about 72.9 million colors.
PhotoREt Pro controls the amount of ink applied to each print position with up to 32 layers and 4 to 5 pl drops in a single dot. This produces grain free prints with smoother gradations between tones. Bottom line; prints are brighter and clearer.
~`` Card Slots! ``~
The PhotoSmart 7960 on opens up to give you access to the memory card reader and storage for the extra cartridge. Many HP digital cameras can be directly connected to the printer using the cable that came with the camera. There are four slots for memory cards, a slot for SmartMedia or xD-Picture cards, a slot for Memory Stick, a slot for CompactFlash Type I or II cards and a slot for SecureDigital or MultiMediaCard. Even though there are four slots, only one slot can be used at a time.
~``With or Without a Computer ``~
You can use the 7960 with or without the use of a computer. They include a nice sized LCD screen of 2.5 inches for photo display and printer settings. It is easy to use with a 4-way controller button like on most digital cameras and a menu and cancel button.
If you insert one of the media cards it will tell you it is reading the card and then it will shortly display how many photos or videos are on the memory card. The first photo will show up, now you can edit it, print it or scroll through all the photos till you find the one you want.
On an 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper you can print up to 63 thumbnails with the file name printed below each one.
Now to get the most out of the printer I do like having it connected to my computer with a USB cable. The editing program that came with the printer is alright, remember once on the computer you can use any editing program that you have.
~`` Trays! ``~
Like most of the PhotoSmart printers there is a main tray for holding up to 100 sheet of paper and a small tray above it made to store up to 20 - 4 x 6 inch photo papers.
The 7960 prints borderless prints on both 4 x 6 inch prints and 8.5 x 11 inch prints.
~`` What You Get! ``~
The HP PhotoSmart 7960 printer
Power supply
Print cartridge protector and a Faceplate
Four ink cartridges # 56 Black, # 57 Tri-color, # 58 Photo and # 59 Gray
Quick setup guide & Reference manual
Sample pack of paper and a blue storage bag for the paper.
A CD with software and drives (Made for Windows 98 & up plus Mac OS 9,0 & up)
~`` My Printing ``~
Print times here are my printing times and do vary depending on what type of photo you print. A photo with a lot of white background will always print faster than one full of colors.
Though the printing times are slower than some other printers the quality is well worth the while to wait.
I printed several 4 x 6 inch borderless prints and the printing times were from 2 minutes and 10 seconds to about 3 minute. The 8.5 x 11 inch borderless prints varied from 6 to 7 minutes.
All printed in the best setting for color and the best setting for black and white prints. Both produced almost the same time to print.
~`` Overall ``~
The HP PhotoSmart 7960 is an exceptional photo printer with the best printing quality from an HP printer yet and something that the competitors will have to strive for.
The printer is similar to most other PhotoSmart printers except this one had a bigger LCD, more memory card slots, better color photo quality and the best black and white photo printing that I have seen from any ink jet printer.
Setting up the printer to a computer is easy with well illustrated instructions. Using the printer without a computer is very easy to learn and understand.
Bottom line, it produces some nice photos in color or black and white!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 299
Operating System: Windows and Macintosh
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