HP Photosmart 475

One of the biggest advantages of digital photography over film is the ability to review your shots instantly on your camera’s LCD screen. But when it comes to editing, printing and copying images from the memory card, you’re stuck until you can access your PC at home. There are no such worries with HP’s new photo printer, as you can perform all these tasks and more while on the move, with nary a computer in sight.

Features
Despite its compact size, the PhotoSmart 475 packs in a wealth of features, most notably 1.5GB of internal memory. This allows you to store up to 1,000 photos, transferred directly from a CompactFlash, Memory Stick, Secure Digital or xD card. Equally useful is the printer’s 2.5in colour display, which flips up for easy image viewing and editing. Enhancement tools such as red-eye removal, cropping and brightness adjustment are complemented by creative options like adding frames, creating greeting cards and assembling slideshows. There’s also a Bluetooth function for printing wirelessly from camera phones and PDAs, though this requires a separate adapter.

Performance
The 475 is an impressively smooth operator, printing pictures both quickly and quietly. We printed our test photos onto the supplied 7 x 5in HP Premium Plus photo paper and obtained excellent results. The level of detail is excellent, and colours are rich and vibrant, though dark areas tend to suffer from the lack of black ink (it uses only one colour cartridge). Cleverly, the printer automatically recognises the type of paper you insert and adjusts the output resolution accordingly, taking different formats such as panoramic images and passport photos in its stride.

Ease of use
It would be difficult to design a clearer menu system than the 475’s, which provides easily understandable options and a logical layout. One-touch buttons on the top of the device let you delete, rotate and assign keywords to images, as well as zoom in and out, and of course print. We particularly like the way the back and front of the printer pop open when it’s turned on so you can immediately insert your paper and memory card.

Value for moneyAs rival portable photo printers from Lexmark and Epson can be snapped up for less than £100, the £200 asking price for the 475 seems rather steep. Its size, convenience and multi-functionality undoubtedly give it a ‘gadget factor’, while a special Photo Pack featuring 100 sheets of paper and a cartridge brings prices to 23p a picture.