Hands-on Review: HP Photosmart Touch-Screen Printing

If you've ever used any of the photo printers at a retailer like Kinko's or Wal-Mart, you know that a touch screen can provide a very friendly user experience. HP's Photosmart D7360 brings that experience home.

The touch-screen control panel and the variety of ways to transfer a photo for printing without ever turning on your PC put this printer high on my list. The photo quality is exceptionally good and it's a speedy performer as well. At an unbelievably low $200, it's great to see HP provide a state-of-the-art printer without asking you to pay a premium for innovation.

The centerpiece of the D7360 is a 3.4-inch touch-screen color display whose menus walk you through everything from viewing, editing, cropping, adding creative touches, and even organizing and sharing your photos. Normally this kind of control would take a PC and dedicated software (the HP comes with plenty of additional software and uses a USB connection to the PC to provide traditional PC to printer control), but the touch screen offers remarkable capabilities. You can, for example, choose to print borderlesss photos, choose a photo layout with multiple photos, or convert a photo to black and white or sepia tones.

Simulating the "walk up and insert" photo kiosk experience, the printer accepts a variety of different memory cards (SD card, CompactFlash Memory Stick, Memory Stick Duo, xD-Picture Card) or a USB flash disk through appropriate slots on the front of the printer. There's an optional Bluetooth adapter as well and a connection for any camera that is PictBridge compatible to hook up directly to the front of the printer.

HP is billing the D7360 as the world's fastest photo printer, boasting 12 seconds to create a 4x6 print. And according to benchmark tests from PrinterSpot, HP's claims are not just idle boasting.

The paper handling is pretty remarkable as well. There's an additional paper tray specifically for 4- by 6-inch paper, and you'll get LCD displayed messages if your print and paper are not a match. If you use HP's Advanced Paper, the printer recognizes watermarks on the back of the paper and can optimize the size of the print for the paper. The LCD display will also give you feedback based on your situation; for example, it shows you an animation of how to clear a paper jam.

The ultimate test? The print quality is, for the most part, excellent. The D7360 uses six separate ink cartridges (cyan, yellow, magenta, light cyan, light magenta, and black), now standard on the best quality inkjet printers. And according to HP, its new Vivera Inks create a more pure and vibrant print and last longer without fading than other inks on the market. The photos I printed looked quite vibrant. In addition to photos, printed documents look sharp and clear, too.

There are only two obvious downsides to buying the printer. One is its size. This is not a tiny printer. It weighs 17 pounds and takes up a foot of length on your desktop. The second is how you like to print. I do most of my photo printing from a PC that's in a room far away from my shared printer, so the touch screen becomes less of a selling point unless I decide to change my habits. And, given the D7360's prowess, I might just do that. For anyone who's ever wanted to walk up to a printer and get nice-looking prints in a variety of sizes and styles just by pointing a finger and touching a screen, consider it done.