HP Photosmart 5510 review

£50
Price when reviewed

An all-in-one needn’t be perfect: a low price and adequate quality will suffice for many. Step forward the remarkable HP Photosmart 5510, which manages to retain a good deal of what’s right about the rest of the Photosmart range, but in a device that costs a mere £50.

To hit that low price, HP has stripped it of extras, so there’s no duplex module, the input and output trays hold only 80 and 15 sheets respectively, and its big tablet-style interface looks a bit odd with a tiny 2.4in screen in the middle of it. But that doesn’t mean this is a low-end device. It’s a touchscreen, albeit with a rather cramped menu system, and you get Wi-Fi to go with the standard USB connection. It’s also compact and rather stylish, with its matte finish and rounded pebble shape, which we don’t generally expect for this kind of money.

HP Photosmart 5510

The 5510 uses four inks, and it will accept the XL variety to reduce A4 page costs to a reasonable 2.2p for mono and 6.6p for colour. A 6 x 4in photo costs a middling 19.1p.

But it isn’t quite the same print engine as the dearer Photosmarts: HP makes far lower claims for its speed than with the 7510, and our measured output rates of 10.5ppm for mono and 5ppm for colour bear that out. Where it loses further ground is in the scan tests, with the 5510 taking 26 seconds for an A4 300ppi capture and 43 seconds for a 6 x 4in capture at 600ppi – that’s slow by any standards.

The quality holds up to the budget cuts far better than the pace, with photos looking almost identical to the dearer 7510. Text is the one print test where the 5510 falters, but a bit of minor spidering isn’t a disaster. More importantly, its scans meet HP’s usual high standards, beating far dearer devices for sharpness, colour tone and quality. It’s a superb imaging device.

It’s tempting to say you should spend more on a higher-end device if you can afford to, but the truth of the matter is that for an awful lot of home users the Photosmart 5510 will be more than good enough. It’s compact and stylish enough for a living room, it’s cheap to buy and not too dear to run, and for the majority of purposes its output is great. At this price it’s a steal.

Basic Specifications

Colour?yes
Resolution printer final4800 x 1200dpi
Integrated TFT screen?yes
Rated/quoted print speed22PPM
Maximum paper sizeA4
Duplex functionno

Running costs

Cost per A4 mono page2.2p
Cost per A4 colour page6.6p

Power and noise

Dimensions436 x 325 x 146mm (WDH)

Copier Specification

Copier rated mono speed22cpm
Copier rated colour speed21cpm
Fax?no
Fax speedN/A
Fax page memoryN/A

Performance tests

6x4in photo print time58s
A4 photo print time2min 26s
Mono print speed (measured)10.5ppm
Colour print speed5.0ppm

Media Handling

Borderless printing?yes
CD/DVD printing?no
Input tray capacity80 sheets

Connectivity

USB connection?yes
Ethernet connection?no
PictBridge port?yes

Flash media

SD card readeryes
Compact Flash readerno
Memory Stick readeryes
xD-card readerno
USB flash drive support?yes
Other memory media supportMMC

OS Support

Operating system Windows 7 supported?yes
Operating system Windows Vista supported?yes
Operating system Windows XP supported?yes
Operating system Windows 2000 supported?no
Operating system Windows 98SE supported?no
Other operating system supportOS X 10.5+
Software suppliedHP Photo Creations

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