HP Photosmart C6380 All-in-One Printer

HP Photosmart printers are typically excellent printers, and in most regards the C6380 is no exception. It does everything an all-in-one should do (except fax), and does it well--and, as the name would suggest, it excels when it comes to photo printing. Still, given the competition in this price range, the glitchy software added a level of difficulty where there should be none, and the printer lost some points. Still, I haven't seen any other reports of similar difficulties with this machine, and since it offers easily configured wireless (and doesn't waste space with a fax), it is still an excellent choice.

Setting up a printer should be a relatively quick and easy chore. Sure, there's lots of unpacking and plenty of tape to be removed, and ink cartridges (and in this case a separate printhead) to be installed, but in most cases it can be done in 15 minutes. The biggest drawback to the HP 6380 was that it took multiple attempts to get the proper drivers and software installed--each effort led to "fatal errors" which were well documented on HP's Web site; unfortunately, those solutions didn't work for me. I ended up letting Windows install do the work, and canceled the HP-provided CD before it caused trouble.

Initial glitches aside, the printer worked as well as I expected an HP all-in-one to work. (Note to those who would bandy semantics: This "all-in-one" doesn't include a fax, which will probably not dissuade many people from buying it.) I found the colors of a PowerPoint presentation came out rich and deep, though plain copy paper was left a bit limp but not saturated. The first color page took about 30 seconds to come out, but subsequent pages took half that time. Black-and-white text looked extremely crisp--HP says its comparable to laser quality, and perhaps it is, but it's not wildly better than most other inkjets in the same price range. It did seem to use ink more quickly than I hoped, but with five cartidges only the empty ones need replacing.

Where this printer really shines is in photo printing. A 4x6 color photo took just under a minute to print, and HP's proprietary Vivera ink provided not only rich, warm, and natural colors, but the photo was perfectly dry the moment it came out. Running the photo under water didn't affect it at all. Basic photo-editing options are easily done on the 2.4-inch color LCD screen.