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  • Introduction

  • Product Tour

  • Setup and Software

  • Print Speed

  • Color Performance

  • Detail Performance

  • Inks and Media

  • Controls and Connectivity

  • Sample Images

  • Canon Pro 9000 Mark II Comparison

  • Epson R1900 Comparison

  • HP B8850 Comparison

  • Conclusion

  • Introduction
  • Product Tour
  • Setup and Software
  • Print Speed
  • Color Performance
  • Detail Performance
  • Inks and Media
  • Controls and Connectivity
  • Sample Images
  • Canon Pro 9000 Mark II Comparison
  • Epson R1900 Comparison
  • HP B8850 Comparison
  • Conclusion

Introduction

Product Tour

Product Tour Summary
  • Fold-down LCD touch screen
  • Paper trays protrude from the front of the printer body

Front

Side

Back

Ink Cartridges

The D7560 uses 5 ink cartridges: photo black, cyan, magenta, yellow and a standard black. These cartridges can be swapped individually, and the standard black is much larger than the others. HP quotes the print life of the standard cartridges at between 250 (for the black) and 300 pages (for the colors), but also offers larger capacity versions of these cartridges called XL cartridges, which can provide between 750 (for the colors) and 800 pages (for the black).

In the Box

As well as the printer itself, you get: 

  • Set of 5 standard ink cartridges
  • Power supply
  • Print head
  • pack of 5 sheets of 4 by 6 photo paper
  • Single printable CD
  • Installation CD and basic user guide

Not included is a USB cable or any paper larger than 4 by 6 inches.

Setup and Software

Setup & Software Summary

Setup & installation is simple and straightforward Includes a good printed setup and basic user guide

**Setup & Manuals **

We found that the Photosmart D7560 was a very easy printer to set up, thanks to the excellent Start Here fold-out guide, which is he first thing you see when opening the box, and which details the process of unpacking and setting up the printer. This is also helped by the instructions and indicators that appear on the LCD screen on the top of the printer. A printed basic user guide is also included, and a more advanced user's guide is available on the CD as a PDF.

**Drivers **

Windows users get a pretty standard set of options from the printer driver. The screen shown below are accessed by hitting the properties button in the print dialog. The Mac drivers are broadly similar, but with a slightly different set of pages.

Overall, the drivers are very simple and straightforward to use, but provide the ability to do a lot of tweaking.

**Software **

Both Mac and PC users are provided with HP's own Photosmart Studio software, which is a basic but usable photo editing and cataloging program. This can also connect to HP's own SnapFish online photo hosting service, but not to other services.

Print Speed Summary
  • Printing both photos and documents in the highest quality modes is slow
  • Faster draft modes are available for both, though

Photo Print Speed

Printing at the best image quality setting on HP's own Advanced Photo Paper, we found that the D7560 was a slow printer: it took an average of 5 minutes and 24 seconds to print a photo onto 8.5 by 11 inch letter sized paper, and 1 minute 29 seconds to do a 4 by 6 inch print.  To be fair, both print times were in the maximum dpi print mode, which deliberately slows the printing down to get the maximum resolution: the printer was significantly quicker in the Best photo print mode, which only took 2 minutes and 30 seconds to print a letter sized photo and 52 seconds to produce a 4 by 6 print. For more on how we test print speeds, see this page.

Document Print Speed

Printing in its best quality print mode, the D7560 is not a fast document printer either: printing onto plain paper, we measured it at a rather slow 1.8 pages per minute (ppm). This can be somewhat speeded up if you can settle for one of the lower quality modes: putting it into the standard print mode sped it up to 5.17 pages per minute, and the fast draft mode positively zipped along at 15 pages per minute. We did notice some quite considerable banding on the Fast mode, though, so that's not really recommended for anything but draft work.

Compared to other photo printers, you can see that the D7560 is right in the middle: it is faster than the Canon and the HP, but slower than the Epson.

Print Initialization

Like all printers, the D7560 has to take some time to initialize the printing system when it starts up. In particular, it takes some time the first time you print to clean the print heads and make sure everything is working, and sometimes does the same after you have finished a print. We didn't find this to be too much of an issue, though: it did this on the first print of the day and if the printer is idle for more than 5 minutes or so, but it didn't interrupt our work flow too much.

Color Performance

Color Performance Summary
  • Overall color accuracy is reasonable
  • Some colors are inaccurate, though

Color Accuracy

A good printer produces accurate colors that are true to the original image. A bad one produces inaccurate color, turning your auntie Doris green and your uncle Bob blue. In our tests on color accuracy, we found that the D7560 had reasonable color accuracy, with most colors being output pretty close to the original. We test this by printing a color chart containing 24 colors using the default color profile, then measure the colors using a high-end photospectrometer. We then create a custom profile for the printer using the same device, and try printing on both the manufacturer's high end paper and on Ilford Galerie glossy paper.  For more details on how our color accuracy tests are done, see here.

The chart below shows the results: the number in each of the color patches is the color difference. The bigger this number, the larger the difference between the original and the printed color is.

NOTE: Because of the way computer monitors reproduce colors, the images above may not match the results used for evaluating color accuracy. The chart should be used to judge the relative color shift, not the exact printed colors.

Color Gamut

The color gamut is the range of colors that the printer can output. The wider this gamut, the better the job the printer can do of displaying the myriad colors that are captured in photos. We measure this as a percentage of the Adobe RGB color gamut, and we found that the D7560 could manage just over 40 per cent of this gamut. That doesn't sound like much, both most printers that cost less than several thousand dollars can only manage a similar percentage of the Adobe RGB gamut; the biggest that we have tested is the Canon 9500 Mark II, which covered 65 per cent. For more details on how we measure color gamut, see here.

Detail Performance

Detail Performance Summary
  • Produces, solid, deep blacks
  • Details are well rendered, but some prints are slightly soft

Depth of Blacks

In this test, we measure the density of the blacks in prints that the D7560 produces. The denser the black, the darker it will look and the better the images will look, as deeper blacks give images more impact. We measured the maximum density of the images at 2.05, which is a decent result. More expensive printers can produce deeper blacks, but that's a very respectable score for a low-cost printer like this.  For more details on how we test the depth of blacks in prints, see here.

Detail

We found that the D7560 did a very good job overall of rendering fine detail in images. In our test images (which include both high contrast and photo images), we saw a good amount of detail, with sharp edges and fine details in images being well reproduced. You can see scans of several of our test images below, starting with 4 color gradients that show any issues the printer has in rendering shades of colors. All of the prints shown below were produced in the printers Maximum DPI mode, which sacrifices print speed for quality.

We saw no major issues in the color gradients: the printer produced smooth transitions from the brightest colors down to white with little banding. The only area we saw some slight banding was in the black gradient, where there was some very slight banding. But this is a small issue, and is unlikely to be visible in most printouts.

Sample Scan Comparisons

The examples above show a slight softness to the prints from this printer: on the Alice etching, you can see that the details of Sir Jon Tenniels etching on her face are a little lost, as is some of the fine work on her dress. The same is true of the photos: you can see that the details of the dogs eye aren't as striking as they are with some of the other, more expensive printers. That's because this printer has a maximum black resolution of 600 dots per inch, while our comparison printers can produce smaller drops of ink for more detail; the Canon Pro 9000 has a black resolution of 4800 by 2400 dpi.

Inks and Media

Inks & Media Summary
  • Uses 5 ink cartridges that cost $37 to replace
  • Higher capacity cartridges are available that cost about $90 for the set
  • Can print on paper up to 8.5 by 14 inches

Ink/Toner

The D7560 uses 5 ink cartridges: photo black, cyan, magenta, yellow and standard black. The standard black cartridge is used on plain paper prints, and is approximately double the size of the others. A complete set of these will cost about $37 ($10 for each of the color and photo black, plus $17 for the standard black used on documents). That's for the standard cartridges, though: HP also offers high capacity versions (called XL cartridges), which cost $17.99 each for the color ones and $35 for the standard black. So, a complete set of the XL cartridges will cost you $88.99. It might be worth the extra, though; HP's own figures for the standard color cartridges give a page yield of 300 for the standard, but 750 for the XL ones. So, you get around 2.5 times the page yield for less than twice the price.

In our informal tests on how many pages we could get out of a set of cartridges, we found that HP's figures for the page yield of the cartridges look to be decent estimates: about 300 pages for the color cartridges.

Ink/Toner Management

Like most HP printers, the drivers of the D7560 do a decent job of keeping you appraised of the ink level. On both PC and Mac, the HP utility gives you quick access to the ink levels, as well as quick access to features such as cleaning the print heads, etc.

Media

The D7560 is not a printer that can handle big prints: the maximum paper size it can work with is 8.5 by 14 inches. But it is capable of handling pretty much everything smaller than this, with options in the driver for multiple sizes, including European A sizes and an number of envelope sizes.

A number of presets for photo paper are also included, and this printer can do borderless prints on photo paper at sizes of up to 8.5 by 14 inches. HP does not give any details on the weight of paper that is supported, but we had no problems printing onto our test papers. However, it does not support a flat paper path: all paper has to come from one of the paper trays, so some thick or glossy papers may not work, as the paper has to be curved while it passes through the printer.

This printer also includes a DVD printing feature: to print to an inkjet-printable DVD, you pull out the DVD holder, put the DVD in, pull down the CD/DVD tray and insert the holder. This ensures that the DVD is correctly placed, and it's a lot easier than using a sticky label. We found it to be easy and convenient to use in our tests.

**Paper Storage **

There are two locations for paper storage: the main tray at the bottom of the front of the printer, and a small photo paper tray above this. The main paper tray can handle 125 sheets of plain paper or about 20 sheets of photo paper, while the photo paper tray can handle 20 sheets of 4 by 6 photo paper.

Controls and Connectivity

Controls & Connectivity Summary
  • Only 5 buttons on the printer body
  • All functions are controlled through the touch screen menu
  • Control system works well
  • No networking features except optional Bluetooth

On-printer Controls

There are only 5 buttons on the D7560:  home, print photos, cancel, red eye removal and the power button. Everything else is handled through the touch screen that is above the main set of buttons.

On-Printer Display

The centerpiece of this printer is the touch screen, a 3.5-inch touchscreen that can be used to control all of the printers features. This screen is clear and bright, with a good viewing angle. HP doesn't disclose the resolution of the screen, but it certainly seems clear enough to get a good preview of images and do basic editing tasks, such as cropping images.

The touch screen is pretty easy to use, although some of the on-screen buttons are rather small, so setting things like the number of prints can be a little frustrating as you sometimes miss the button. The screen also has a tendency to tip backwards if you jab at it too hard: we found that some overenthusiastic users ended up pushing the screen back, so a gentle tough is better.

On-Printer Menus

There are no menus or other controls on the printer itself: everything is done through the on-screen menu. We found this mostly easy to use, with a pretty logical layout for using the printer as a standalone device. As well as controlling the printer, the on-screen menus allow you to perform basic editing tasks, such as cropping images, adding photo frames, adjusting brightness, etc. You can also create album pages which contain multiple photos and crop photos to form panoramic shots.

Media Slots

The D7560 can work as a stand alone printer, so it includes slots for memory cards. The formats it supports include MemoryStick, SD/SDHC,  xD PictureCards and CompactFlash. That will cover most of the cameras and other media devices out there, especially with the widespread availability of adapters for formats such as microSDHC.

Wireless & Network

No support for wireless or network connections are supported on this printer out of the box, but HP does offer a Bluetooth adapter that allows the printer to be wirelessly connected to devices such as cell phones. No price was available for this printer when this review was written.

Sample Images

Canon Pro 9000 Mark II Comparison

Performance

Of these two printers, the Canon Pro 9000 Mark II is the superior performer in most of our tests: it has more accurate color, deeper blacks and produces finer detail. The HP is not too far behind, though; it has performance that is not that far behind, considering that it is about a quarter of the price.

Inks & Media

Again, the Canon is the superior printer in terms of flexibility when printing. It can handle paper in sizes up to 13 by 19 and can handle thicker papers. It cannot print directly onto DVDs, though. The Canon also uses 8 ink cartridges, and a complete set of these will cost you about $80.

**In Use **

The HP is the easier printer to use: it is designed more for the general user that wants to print both documents and photos, so it includes features like the media card reader and the touch-screen display that can be used to select, edit and print photos without a computer. the HP is also considerably cheaper: it is available for around $99, while the Canon costs $450.

Epson R1900 Comparison

Performance

The Epson R1900 is the superior performer in terms of print quality: it has better color accuracy, deeper blacks and better detail. But the D7560 is certainly not a bad printer: it is just not as good as the more expensive Epson.

Inks & Media

The R1900 is a media maven: it can handle prints up to 13 by 19 inches (or 13 by 44 inches for banner prints using either the single sheet feeder or the included roll feeder) and has a straight paper path that allows it to print onto thick paper or card. By comparison, the HP D7560 can only manage prints at up to 8.5 by 14 inches, and can't cope with thick paper or card. Both printers include the ability to print directly onto inkjet compatible DVDs, though, which makes printing these much easier. 

**In Use **

The HP is the easier printer to use: it is designed more for the general user that wants to print both documents and photos, so it includes features like the media card reader and the touch-screen display that can be used to select, edit and print photos without a computer. the HP is also considerably cheaper: it is available for around $99, while the Epson costs about $500.

HP B8850 Comparison

Performance

The HP B8850 is the superior printer in performance terms, with better color accuracy, deeper blacks and better fine detail. Both printers had a similar color gamut, though, and they both were about the same speed. Which is to say they were both rather slow in producing photos at the highest quality settings.

Inks & Media

The B8850 is the clear winner in terms of things that it can print onto: it can handle paper at sizes of up to 13 by 18 inches (the D7560 tops out at 8.5 by 14 inches) and can handle thicker photo papers. It cannot, however, handle thick card as the paper has to be bent around to fit into the printer. The B8850 also uses 8 ink cartridges, and a complete set of these cartridges will cost you a wallet-bashing $310.

In Use

The D7560 is the easier printer to use: it is designed more for the general user that wants to print both documents and photos, so it includes features like the media card reader and the touch-screen display that can be used to select, edit and print photos without a computer, which are missing on the B8850. The D7560 is also considerably cheaper: it is available for around $99, while the B8850 costs about $500.

Conclusion

The HP Photosmart D7560 is a cheap printer: at around $100, it certainly won't break the bank. But the quality of the prints it produces is anything but cheap, with very decent color accuracy and good detail. It doesn't produce the same color accuracy and detail as more expensive printers, but it does provide excellent value for money for anyone who wants to print high quality photos without spending a fortune.

Performance:

This printer had good color performance, with just a few issues printing certain colors accurately. The prints it produced also had a good level of detail, although they were noticeably softer and less detailed than those produced by more expensive and larger photo printers.

Inks & Media:

The D7560 uses 5 ink cartridges, which can be replaced individually. It can print on paper up to a maximum size of 8.5 by 14 inches, as well as printing onto inkjet compatible DVDs. It cannot do larger banner prints or print onto thick card, though.

Meet the tester

Richard Baguley

Richard Baguley

Contributor

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Richard Baguley is a veteran writer who has written about technology ranging from Alphabet to Zip file utilities. He has contributed to pretty much every major tech publication, including Amiga Format Magazine, PC World, Wired, CNET, Toms Guide, Forbes, and many others. He lives in the Boston metro area with his wife, dog, and an indeterminate number of cats.

See all of Richard Baguley's reviews

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