Quality photo prints and much more
With a bulky but attractive design, the Photosmart C6380 is HP's latest combined printer/scanner (and copier).
The paper tray, which juts out at the front, handles both input and output. It also has a smaller 20-sheet tray for 7x5in photo paper.
A tilting screen on the left lets users preview photos to be printed direct from memory cards (all major formats are supported) and allows for basic image editing such as cropping, brightness and red-eye reduction.
The printer can access a home wireless network and will scan for nearby networks without having to be attached to a computer. It can also, of course, be attached using USB, but a network socket is also included so you can attach it to a home network directly or using Homeplug, for example.
With clear, on-screen instructions, we had no problems marrying the printer to our network, although each networked PC also requires HP's software to be installed.
Five individual ink cartridges are used (cyan, magenta, yellow, photo black and a standard black for text), with replacement inks costing £8 for colour (300 pages) and £10 for black (250 pages). Higher capacity cartridges are available too.
The photo print quality was very good, with very little speckling and with rich colours. Using the best quality settings, a borderless A4 colour photo took just under four minutes to arrive, while our draft-quality text test saw the printer run at 13 pages per minute. If you haven't used the printer for a while, though, it will first go through a noisy one-minute warm-up session.
Indeed, the Photosmart C6380 isn't the quietest printer we've tested, clunking and grinding both before and after print sessions, and even the scanner made a fair old racket. Scans of up to 4,800dpi can be saved to memory card, a networked PC or alternatively printed in photocopy fashion.
The Photosmart C6380 has a list price of £249, but there's no need to spend this much. Various stores sell it for around £150, which is better value considering the high-quality photo prints of which it's capable.
