HP Photosmart 385

The HP Photosmart 385 printer, which is an update to the HP Photosmart 375 printer, is a
dedicated photo printer that can either be used in conjunction with a computer or by itself. You can even take it on the road with you to print photos if you want. Hewlett-Packard has some pretty good desktop photo printers that print with excellent image quality. So lets see how HP did when they made the Photosmart 385...

First of all, the Photosmart 385 is very compact, so you can take it anywhere you go and print pictures on it right from a computer or your camera's memory chip. The 385 is about 4.5 x 8.7 x 4.6 inches big and it weights only 2.6 pounds, which is quite small and lightweight for a compact and portable photo printer. At the top of the printer is a 2.5 inch color LCD that displayed images quite well.

The 8 ounce rechargeable battery pack allows you to print about 70 pictures on a single charge when a power outlet isn't available for use. This can be useful for vacations or road trips when you want to print your pictures while you are "on-the-go" and away from your computer. The 385 will print 4x6 inch prints, but also 4x8 inch prints too. There is even a 4x12 inch panoramic paper for those Grand Canyon shots. All three printing modes feature the borderless printing.

Printing pictures on the Photosmart 385 was a little slow, compared to other competiting compact photo printers. It took us about a minute and a half to print one 4x6 inch color print. The cost per print, according to HP, is about 24 cents, which is relatively cheap considering the ink cartridge and 200 sheets of included paper for the 385 costs $47.99 retail.

One huge problem with the Photosmart 385 is that the inks are not water/smudge proof. This usually isn't the case with dedicated photo printers, such as the Epson PictureMate Deluxe Viewer Edition. When printed on the 385, the prints came out pretty "tacky" and wet. Even after several hours of drying time, the prints could still be smudged by wet and/or greasy hands. Therefore, prints printed on the 385 will have to be handled more cautiously than prints from other printers.

Lastly, the print quality of the 385 was quite nice. We couldn't find any visible flaws in printed tests. On fine detailed lines, they will occasionally look jagged and hand drawn, but this was noticed on a very small percentage of photos. Besides the above mentioned ink-drying issue, the Photosmart 385 performs well and we recommend it to anyone that just wants to print photos casually without buying a full sized printer. We do, however, recommend that if you plan on printing many pictures in a short time period that you do buy a full-size photo printer, such as the HP Photosmart 8250.

Pros: Print from memory cards or computer, color LCD for previewing photos, battery for portability
Cons: Smudgy photos even if given time to dry
Editors' Rating:

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