Review : HP Officejet 7500A wide format printer

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Apr
11

So in a first on McAWilliams.com, I am glad to bring you my review on the HP Officejet 7500A printer.

I was asked as a photographer to try out this printer for the past month, and I must admit I have fallen in love with it, for many reasons. Not only is this a fantastic A3+ printer, but it is also an all in one machine comprising a scanner, copier and fax machine in one, which makes it perfect for the small business or home office.

This was one of the easiest printers I have ever set up and I would think within 10 minutes I had the printer unwrapped loaded with ink and ready to print. One thing that won me over instantly was that I could connect to it wirelessly through the WiFi in the house, allowing me to set it up in the spare room and print from anywhere in the house. Obviously you can connect using wires but who wants that these days. This was a first for me to experience and I honestly can’t believe how quick the data transfers from computer to printer through wireless. Drivers were found easily on my Mac and worked without difficulty.

So as I say even though it can scan, copy and fax, my main reason for testing was to print photos, so I loaded up the printer with some Epson A4 paper (not the best idea using Epson paper with a HP printer but it was in the house) then booted up lightroom, went to print and hey presto within 30 minutes I had my first print completed from taking the machine out of the box, thats how simple it was to get ready.

Another cool feature with the 7500A is the fact it has a touchscreen display for all operations but that also allows you download HP web apps, this was something I saw while I was Turkey at the launch of the new range of HP web enabled printers, and something HP were excited about announcing (you can read about that here). Apps you can download can range from news articles, sudoko puzzles to colouring pages from disney or nickelodeon for the kids. The big advantage of this is the fact that you can print these without the need for a PC or Mac, making printing again so much easier, and I now understand HP’s excitement.

Another thing I was very keen to try out was ePrint, which allows users to print from mobile devices. Again like everything else about this printer this is easily set up, you can go to ePrintcenter webpage and register the printer with your email address or a number of email addresses, creating a whitelist of emails that can use the printer. Then from your phone or tablet you can email a photo, document or what ever you need printed to an email address that is dedicated to your printer. In essence if you can e-mail it, you can print it. Again this worked without any hitches at all, but there would be one thing I have a gripe with which I shall reveal in a minute.

Because this is more an office printer, I was not expecting amazing results for photo printing but I must admit it does not do a bad job at all, there did seem to be a slight redish hue and a lack of contrast on the images but this was easily rectified in lightroom once I realised it was there, the printer can also print full borderless images which I adore. I would not say you should get this printer if you need fine art prints but if you need better then standard prints the printer does an excellent job.

One of my main problems with printers is the cost of the ink, which obviously is important if you are printing photos all the time, cause ink runs out fast. Well thankfully it only uses 4 inks, but it is still expensive to replace all 4 and this is something I wish HP and other printer manufacturers would work to rectify.

Ok so enough of the good stuff surely there are problems too?

Thankfully not many, my main issue is the fact that there is only one paper tray that can hold only 150 sheets of paper. While not an issue if you are only printing a few photos, for the small office this could be an issue. Another problem I had with this is that I would have loved to have had a tray for photo paper and another for plain paper, because as I learnt very quickly when printing an email through the ePrintcenter from town, Photo paper is not necessary for an email print out, but it was left in the tray from the previous nights printing, so that was an expensive but easy mistake to make, but could have been easily avoided if there was a second tray with plain paper in it. I also found that on occasion even though the printer was connected to the WiFi in the house I could not connect to it on occasion from my Mac even though it could have been right beside it, this was rectified with a restart of the printer.

So would I recommend it to photographers as a printer, well as I said if you are looking for professional fine art prints, no. But for me and the fact I am not printing for art galleries but more for prints at home I love the fact you can print A3+ borderless photographs fast and with decent enough quality at a very reasonable price.