- Thermal Inkjet Printer with Direct Printing Capabilities
- Up to 4800 x 1200 Optimized dpi Using 1200 x 1200 Input dpi Print Resolution
- Simple-To-Use Touch-Screen with 3.4 inch Image Display
- Up to 32ppm Black and 31ppm Color With 6 Individual HP Vivera Inks
- 17.60 lbs (WxLxH) 9.20" x 18.20" x 9.30"
The touch screen makes printing from memory cards very easy. It also reduces the number of buttons on the printer itself -which accounts for its sleek Mac-inspired styling. The printer can also fix exposure and red eye right in the printer! No need to connect it to your computer. In fact, I find myself copying photos from iPhoto to my memory card and then printing directly from the card (it seems easier than going through all the options in the print dialogue box). You can even print photos directly from your iPod with your USB dock cable! (Now, if I only had an iPod!)
The D7360 also uses HP''s new inexpensive 6 color "02" inks -which means you only need to replace the inks you use, and they won''t cost a fortune. It''s a fast printer -but I take points off because the printer really shimmy and shakes your desk when it''s printing -like a little earthquake! Also paper handling is a mixed bag. There is a nice built-in tray for 4x6 photo paper as well as one for everyday 8.5x11 paper. Unfortunately, the paper trays do not fold up when not in use. And it''s a bit of a hassle to remove paper when you just want to print one envelope or 5x7 photos. Lastly, the printer itself is rather large considering HP''s all-in-ones add a scanner but are the same size.
Buy HP Photosmart D7360 Printer Now
I was deciding between this printer and a few others that were older models while at a popular brick and mortar store. The tipping point for this model was the speed of prints, ease of printing 4x6 photo''s "stand alone", as well as the innovative LCD touch screen. The ease of use factor is very high, which means the rest of my family should be able to figure it out and print the millions of photos that we have had sitting on the computer for the last 3 years. I am a long time buyer of HP productsthis is my 3rd HP printer.I got this printer home and unpacked it promptly. There are 6 cartridges that you have to put init was very simple to do so. The 6 cartridge design seems like a good ideayou only replace what you need to. I still think it ends up netting out about the same price as a printer with combined cartridges, because the individual cartridges are $10 each. You can also buy them all in a pack for approximately $8 each.
Getting connected to my PC was the next step. This is why I gave the review a 4 start as opposed to 5. Prior to installing this HP printer, I was upgrading my older 932c printer which ran fine on my PC. My PC happens to be running Windows 2003 Server, which I found out is NOT supported by this printer. I never could have imagined that HP would specifically disable a printer from running under Windows 2003 serverI guess it is because they think that they can get more money selling server grade printers. After trying to install the software, I got a message saying I needed to be running a supported OS (basically any desktop OS since Windows 98). I went to the HP web site to see if there were any "work arounds" to getting it working on a Windows 2003 server OS, but nothing was listed. I then tried the online chat. I got in right away, but had to ask my question 5 different ways before the support person understood what I was trying to do. Her first answer was "install a supported OS". Great suggestion! NOT. She eventually gave me some instructions on how to install another driver for a 990c printer. I did not bother with her instructions as this was for a different model and I wasn''t sure if those were good instructions. Instead, I tried to add the printer driver from the CD manually using the add hardware wizard from the conrtrol panel. The driver added just fine, and my printer now works in both black and white and color mode. However, I am still unable to install the software under windows 2003 as there is a restriction built in to the software. That means that I will not be able to take any advantage of the HP software (such as easily printing 4x6 photos from my PC).
Problems w/ the OS aside, I am still extremely pleased with this printer. I was able to print my pictures directly from devices that had USB 2.0 cablessuch as a camera and even my personal GPS-r device. You can also pull out the memory card and plug it directly in to the printer, but it''s easier just to plug in a USB cable to the front. The nice thing about it is, there are plenty of options. Just about every popular memory card is supported.
So far I have printed out 21 pictures in batch mode off a portable device using the USB cable, w/o using my PC to print. It took about 30 minutes to do soand that was at the best quality. Using a "Better" setting on my 5.0 megapixel camera, the pictures were as good a quality or better than what I''ve seen from going to photo places. You can''t see the "dots" on the picture unless you look extremely close. I was using some fuji film gloss 4x6 paper, which worked really well. 30 minutes to print 21 pictures seems really fastdefinitely faster than driving to the local store and paying 37 cents a photo. I''m guessing the cost per picture is probably around 20 cents (HP says 24 I believe).
I also tried printing directly from the card. There are features you can go through to print pictures. Supposedly there is a built in red-eye reduction, but when I did "batch mode" I still had a few photos with red-eye in them. There are a lot of settings that you can change on the lcd screen, it''s probably an option that needs enabled that I haven''t found yet. One setting I wish it had was the ability to control how long the printer stays on before it goes into power save mode. It automatically dims the LCD screen after a little while, then it eventually shuts the screen off. I''m not sure what the time frame is for that, but it seems like it could be shorter. Can''t find a setting to change that value.
Overall, I definitely recommend this printer. The convenience factor, speed, and photograph quality are the best features and they are done EXTREMELY well. These features far outweigh the not being able to install the printer software on Windows 2003, which is an annoyance that I hope but doubt will be addressed.
Read Best Reviews of HP Photosmart D7360 Printer Here
First things first if you are a hobbyist photographer get this printer. Now.With that out of the way my opinions on this machine:
The negative reviews of this machine are funny; its as if they bought a basketball, and was stunned to learn it didn''t make for very good tennis balls sure its round, and can be hit just not very far. If your main concern is hitting tennis balls, buy tennis balls.
The Photosmart D7360, despite its capability, is a high-end consumner PHOTO printer. Can it do text pages, sure. But that''s not the reason to buy the machine, and obviously not what it was designed to excel in. If you need a B&W text printer to handle your high volume text-printing needs, get a laser-printer. This thing is designed to print photos period. Anything else is a happy suppliment.
And boy does it print nice photos. I picked this up with a couple packets of 4X6, 5X7 and 8.5X11 paper, and the prints have been excellent. Are there better printers out there of course. But you''re going to pay a little bit more for them as well as the paper to print it on. However, if your goal is to print out excellent photos to be distributed to friends, family or collected in an album this printer will get the job done everytime. I was initially skeptical on the ability of a sub 100 machine (because that''s the price you can get it for lately) being able to give print-shop style prints, but that was laid to rest with my first test: sharp blues in the sky, and nice soft warm tones in the skin. My machine was delivered at work, and we were all absolutely impressed with how quick the machine spit out seemingly complex photographs in seconds. Proofs/drafts are also quick, w/o using lots of ink, but still producing photos that are of good enough quality to see what you''ll be getting on actual photo paper.
As for the negatives:
Long load times: If you haven''t used the machine in perhaps days, and have it shut off, then yes it is going to take perhaps over a minute to boot up because its dumped its memory cache. However shutting it off, and picking it back up a few hours later is not going to result in the (in my opinion) over-exaggerated load times. Or just dont shut it off; its not going to be draining dollars while in power-save mode (similar to your computer).
Installation: With updated Service Pack, Windows installed the printer in less than a minute. No driver conflicts, and the printer was ready for use after that.
The Software: The software is 100% not needed to use this printer, and I would suggest getting Picassa (a free software by Google) to use for picture management. Still install the driver support obviously so that you can adjust page-setup but when it prompts to install the (overbloated 350MB) software, simply hit cancel and finish the rest of the setup. The software should be a non-issue since there will always be better software than the default that comes with any machine.
Photo Paper: The machine will print to ANY photo paper so long as the dimensions are correct. Any suggestion that only HP paper can be used is erroneous (but then HP is pretty good quality and cheap).
No USB cord: Indeed a negative. Not so much for me since I had one laying around, but I can see how this would be a problem. Be sure to order one when you pick this up.
All in all I would effortlessly recommend this printer for someone looking for a photo print option. Do not buy it as an all-in-one, multi-purpose machine, because you will be disappointed and their are cheaper options for this. Buy it so that you can have a dedicated photo printer and not have to head to the lab everytime you want prints of your photographs.
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When I was looking for a printer to replace my Photosmart 1215, I looked at both the Canon Pixma and Epson products before deciding to buy the D7360. This printer produces gorgeous photographs on photo paper, and excellent quality text on normal inkjet paper. Graphics and photos printed on normal inkjet paper also look very good.The printer is very easy to setup and use, and the touch screen makes it as easy to print photos directly from the printer as from the computer.
There are some gotchas, however. Unless you turn off HP''s photo fix, which is on by default, all photographs have a bronze cast, which is especially noticeable in skin tones. There seems to be no way to tell the printer to leave photo fix off by default. Also, although the printer powers up quickly most of the time, every once in a while it goes through an internal setup sequence. This usually takes about 10 to 15 seconds and is very, very noisy.
The printer uses significantly less ink than my Photosmart 1215. HP says you can get 150 4 by 6 photos using one set of ink cartridges, and they sell an ink and photo paper package for $36.00. I found that I had to replace the yellow ink while the other cartridges were more than half full (approximately 80 photos). Maybe I just got a bad yellow ink cartridge.
Other than the issues mentioned, I''m very pleased with the printer, and compared to my last printer, I''m saving a bunch of money on ink cartridges.
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