HP Photosmart D7160 review

Besides the View & Print option, you can choose the Save option. The LCD will refer you to your PC, where you'll find that HP's bundled utility, Photosmart Transfer, has popped up. Select the target location on your PC and with the click of a button, your files will be copied from the card to your PC (without deleting the contents of the card). The final option is called Share, and once again, you'll be directed to your PC, where you'll find the HP Photosmart Premier Share utility called up. Here, you can upload selected photos to Snapfish, send them to friends via email, copy them to a CD, order photo gifts or buy prints from HP.

The Photosmart Premier software is a useful program that lets you view, organise and edit photos (you get a much broader set of editing options here than on the printer); make prints; and create photo projects such as albums, brochures, calendars, CD tattoos and CD/DVD slide shows. It doesn't have the manipulation power of a program like Adobe Photoshop, but it's a broad and useful tool for everyday users who want to do more than just look at their pictures on their PCs.

Performance
The HP Photosmart D7160 made fairly quick work of text prints, even when compared to slightly more-expensive printers. It scored 5.58 pages per minute (ppm) with text, faster than the Epson Photo R380, the Canon Pixma iP6700D and even the HP Photosmart D7360.

It couldn't keep up its brisk pace when printing photos, though, and lagged behind the competition. It printed a single 100x150mm (4x6-inch) photo at a rate of 0.95ppm, behind the Epson's quick 1.83ppm and the Canon's 1.35ppm.

A new test we've added to our inkjet test methodology is the average time per print when making a ten-print job. (Each time you start a print job, there's a certain amount of processing overhead -- the time per print when doing a ten-print job is faster than the time for a single print, because the processing time is spread out over the multiple prints.) The D7160 averaged 1.16ppm when printing ten 100x150mm photos at once. (As this is the first printer we've reviewed using this new test, we don't have comparison figures for the ten-print speed test.)

Photo inkjet printer speed test (in pages per minute)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

4x6 photo speed

Text speed

HP Photosmart D7160

0.95 

5.58 

HP Photosmart D7360

0.54 

5.15 

Epson Stylus Photo R380

1.83 

2.96 

Canon Pixma iP6700D

1.35 

2.86 

HP advertises 'near laser' print quality for the D7160, and we were duly impressed by the text prints. To the naked eye, characters were sharp, clean, consistent and dark. The graphics print showed smooth colour gradients and sharp details, though the colours were slightly washed out. We also noticed some graininess in the photo elements. We found the 100x150mm photo prints acceptable for amateur photo hobbyists, though we would like to see a touch more warmth and brightness in the colours.

Conclusion
It has some odd shortcomings, but overall we liked this printer for casual home users. The slightly more expensive HP Photosmart D7360 offers more features, but slightly slower print speeds and the Canon Pixma iP6700D will give you better and faster photo prints, at the expense of text prints.

If you're looking for a dedicated photo printer that can churn out high-quality photos quickly, this isn't the printer for you. If you need an all-purpose printer that can produce excellent text prints as well as good photos, however, the £80 Photosmart D7160 might fit the bill.

Edited by Matthew Elliott
Additional editing by Kate Macefield