Review: HP Photosmart C7280

Despite its Photosmart badge, HP’s C7280 is actually a multi-talented device.

In addition to printing it can scan and copy as well as send and receive faxes. That puts it very much in the home office category – after all, very few home users make use of a fax machine these days. Photo quality was extremely impressive – colours were both vibrant and bright thanks to the printer using six individual ink cartridges for photo printing.

With all the quality settings at maximum, we clocked it at six-and-a-half minutes for a borderless A4 print. At default settings it took around two-and-a-half minutes, while a draft colour photo print took 90 seconds.
Text printing peaks at four seconds per page; it took 12 seconds to get through the first page.

At the highest quality setting, text was bold and dark with little bleed, but this took it to about 40 seconds per page.

A good balance is struck in default text mode, at 12 seconds per page. Results in normal mode varied with paper, though, with HP obviously recommending you use their own stock. As expected given its high price tag, the C7280 can be hooked up to a network either via an Ethernet cable or wirelessly; the wireless setup was impressively painless.

It also accepts all manner of memory cards, USB-connected cameras or storage devices and even photos from phones via Bluetooth. The small colour screen is enough to be able to do some rudimentary editing, and it can automatically resize prints in several ways. The duplex unit, meanwhile, is good for saving on paper, and the fax will be useful for some.

The Photosmart C7280 is clearly aimed at home office users who need both a fax and great photos, and with high quality printing, scanning and copying it’s an impressive piece of kit.