HP Photosmart A526 Portable Printer
Photosmart A526 is a very affordable product of HP. This product aims at simplicity. Its ease of use and portability are A526’s major advantages.
Design:
A526 is fairly compact. It is very light-weighted, Weighing as low as 2.7 pounds. Its flip-up carrying handle makes it very easy for you to carry it around.
When its blue front panel is opened, the output tray, along with its media slots and USB PictBridge port is revealed. This also makes the input tray to unfold automatically from its back. The input tray allows 4 X 6”, 4 X 8” photo stock and 4 X 12” panoramic stock. The input area can hold up to 20 sheets of photo paper.
The media slots can read the major formats though some formats may require the usage of an adapter. A PictBridge-compatible USB port is also available. The tri colour ink cartridge can be easily loaded into a lidded bay on the right side.
Features:
The control panel is very simple. The 2.4 LCD screen has an adequate size to have a preview of the photos. The buttons available includes right arrowed button & left arrowed buttons that flank the print/OK buttons. One button for reducing red-eye and one for cancel are only other options available. Its menus are very informative but it has very less printing options. These few on-board features, makes A526 lag behind when compared to its competitors.
Photo Fix automatically improves sharpness, lighting and print quality of the photo. This functionality can also be disabled. The print quality level and the options of border or borderless printing can also be selected. For perfection, you can connect your printer to your PC and use all of HP’s Photosmart essentials software. HP Photosmart A526 Compact photo printer can also be used to transfer photos from memory card to your PC. By pressing the print button continuously, you can have multiple copies of the same photo.
An optional Bluetooth adaptor is provided that can be connected wirelessly to print wirelessly from a Bluetooth device.
Performance:
The images look satisfactorily good. Installing the printer into the system takes a while. This delay is caused because of the time it takes for loading the software provided by HP.
The issue of very big concern in A526 is its printing speed. The colours produced by it are pleasing but lacks sharper details. Canon selphy CP740 is a little ahead of A526 in its performance.
Extras:
Hewlett Packard A526 photo printer comes with one year warranty. The box includes Printer, Setup guide, HP Photosmart software and help CD, Adapters, Tri-Colour print cartridge.
HP Photosmart A526 photo printer Technical Details
| Manufacturer | HP |
| Model Name | PhotoSmart A526 |
| Dimensions (W X D X H) | 22.7 x 11.6 x 13.7 cm |
| Display | 2.4 LCD - colour graphics |
| Printer type | Colour inkjet Photo Printer |
| Printer technology | HP thermal inkjet technology |
| Printing speed | 0.65 min/page - photo draft - (101.6 x 152.4) mm 1.27 min/page - photo - (101.6 x 152.4) mm |
| Printing resolution | Black and white: 1200 x 1200 dpi Colour: 4800 x 1200 |
| Borderless printing | Available up to 4" x 12" |
| Direct photo printing | Available using memory cards and PictBridge cameras |
| Paper type and capacity | 4 x 6", 4 x 6.5", 4 x 8" PhotoCard, 4 x 12" Panorama Capacity: 20 sheets input tray |
| Memory card support | Compactflash Type I and II Memory Stick Memory Stick Duo Secure Digital MultiMediaCard Secure MultiMediaCard xD-Picture Card Mini SD |
| Technologies used | HP Auto Red-eye Removal Photo Brightening HP Smartfocus HP Adaptive Lighting Digital Flash |
| Connectivity | USB PictBridge 4 memory card slots |
| Compatible cartridge | HP 110 tri-colour Inkjet Print Cartridge (5 ml) |
| Language simulation | PCL3 |
| RAM | 32MB |
| Interface type | USB port |
| Supported OS | Windows XP Home Windows XP Professional Windows Vista(TM) Mac OS X v 10.3.9 Mac OS X v 10.4 |
| Weight | 2.69 lb |
| Warranty | 1year |
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