HP Photosmart D110 All-in-One Printer

Though the HP Photosmart D110 series sounds like a dedicated photo printer, it's not quite that; rather, it's a fax-less all-in-one that's fairly lightweight and compact, while not as portable as HP seems to think. It has a decent sized LCD screen (not a touchscreen, however, like its photo-printer counterparts), it does print photos nicely, and is wireless and has customizable apps to allow printing from sources such as USA Today. Still, though inexpensive, it's in a crowded HP marketplace of similarly priced printers with similar functions, and it's hard to see how it distinguishes itself from the pack.

HP has at least eight other printers in its photo and document all-in-one line, and at least half of those compete with the Photosmart D110 all-in-one printer in terms of price (as well as basic functionality). That's basically good news for consumers, who can pick and choose some excellent printers for under $100. It's a bit tougher for reviewers to distinguish one from the other. So in a sense, the HP Photosmart D110 is a victim of HP's own success.

It's a very good printer at an excellent price. It has a decently sized LCD screen (though not really a touchscreen like the Photosmart A646, a feature I like quite a bit--rather, only the OK, Back, Forward buttons are touch sensitive, not the Copy, Scan, Apps, or Scan icons). It takes advantage of HP's ePrint Center, meaning that it can connect (in this case, wirelessly) to the Internet and download customizable apps that allow printing of coupons, news summaries, games, and so on. And it does all this with respectable speeds, putting out a 4x6 photo in just under a minute, or documents in about 17 seconds per page (with first pages out in about 17 seconds as well).

Print quality was uniformly good, and photos were impressive, given that the D110 uses only two ink cartridges. Photos printed with excellent clarity and sharpness, with good colors though not as bright as with most dedicated photo printers. Colors were good on documents as well, nicely nuanced and rich. The ink did tend to saturate cheap copy paper, leaving it sometimes limp and with small color images less than sharp at normal quality.

I guess I'm getting spoiled with HP's Plug and Print offerings (such as with the HP LaserJet Pro M1212nf), where there's no need for installing software from a CD. Instead, the Photosmart's CD applications and drivers took a good deal of time to install. Wireless setup was, however, quite easy, and the printer was able to find the ePrint Center quickly. Those apps, such as a daily summary of news from Yahoo!, were easily set up and printed without any issues. While this is not HP's problem, I was left wondering just how useful it was to have a one-page summary of news that included only 10 stories, half of them entertainment-related.

One function that does work quite well and could potentially be very helpful is that these Web-enabled printers allow you to send the printer an e-mail to be printed. As soon as the printer receives the e-mail, it prints it out. That could certainly be useful if you, say, receive at work an interesting e-mail that you want to print at home.

The printer comes with a heavy-duty carry bag and a handy pouch for storing cables and power cords. That's putting a good face on things, perhaps with a bit too much enthusiasm. While the printer is certainly not huge, it's also a bit large for carrying around (it's over 10 lbs).

Disclosure: Review samples were provided by the manufacturer. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.