HP Photosmart 5520 e-All-in-One Review: A Welcome Replacement - wagonerhilike

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

Good output caliber
Cheap to buy

Cons

Scanner lid doesn't telescope
No automatic document feeder

Our Verdict

This cheap multifunction printer offers the duplexing and layout options that its predecessor lacked, fashioning IT a better buy for low-level-volume utilize. Its touchpad makes it more with-it, too.

The $129 (A of English hawthorn 9, 2012) HP Photosmart 5520 e-All-in-One color inkjet multifunction (copy/print/scan) is a decidedly wanted replacement for the Horsepower Photosmart 5510 e-All-in-One–a handsome but disappointing product that lacked hand-operated duplexing and layout support. The Photosmart 5520 makes indemnification spacious-time, offering an automatic duplexer as well atomic number 3 both booklet and multipage printing. In other aspects, the units are virtually identical.

Paper handling with the Photosmart 5520 is rudimentary, only adequate for low-volume use. An 80-sheet input tray sits at the bottom of the building block. Output exits barely above that, falling onto the back of the input tray, where a swivel-KO'd extension catches it. The design is clever only until you need to feed more paper, simply it's workable total.

As mentioned, the Photosmart 5520 has an automatic duplexer to ease reversible printing process chores. You won't find an automatic document feeder to go along with the A4/missive-size scanner, nonetheless, so the Photosmart 5520 isn't suitable for scanning long documents. The scanner lid is solidly constructed, but the hinges don't scope to accommodate thicker items such as books.

You manage the Photosmart 5520 directly via a 2.65-inch color Liquid crystal display touch screen with contextually lit (lit when needed, dark when non) navigation buttons. The Wi-Fi and ePrint buttons are always visible, as is the power button–the only mechanical keep in line connected board. The ail (not really) with the ascendancy instrument panel is that it looks removable; it's not, so don't Northerner on it. The other salient feature along the front of the unit is a dual SD Card/Memory Stick reader for offloading scans and performing exact photo impression.

Although the Photosmart 5520's printer driver is a comparatively simple affair, it does offer layout options for booklets and treble pages–amenities lacking in the Photosmart 5510. Look-alike its predecessor, the Photosmart 5520 supports push scanning (that is, scanning to a PC using the printing machine's instrument panel) and printing via email victimisation H.P.'s ePrint.

The Photosmart 5520 is a nice performer for a sub-$150 MFP, albeit a tad slower than the Photosmart 5510. In our tests, monochrome pages written at 8.8 pages per minute on the Microcomputer and 7.9 ppm happening the Mac. Snap photos printed at 4.1 ppm to plain composition and 1.0 ppm to glossy paper. Full-page photos printed on the Macintosh were a little slower than average at 0.4 ppm. The Photosmart 5520 produced nice-looking draft-mode documents same quickly. Scans and copies were acceptably quick as well.

Output from the Photosmart 5520 generally looks full when it arrives. Though a tad along the light face, photos have a largely realistic color palette (with a slight pinkish cast off) on both plain and glossy photo paper. School tex is dark, wrinkle, and perceptive. Scans have a slightly cool temperature but are much than acceptable.

The Photosmart 5520 uses a four-cartridge ink system (HP's 564 line). Costs are actually fairly low for an MFP in that price range if you use the bigger-capacity supplies. In the standard size, black costs $12 and lasts for 250 pages (4.8 cents per page), while the standard blue-green, Battle of Magenta, and yellow colouring material cartridges are $10 for each one and endmost for 300 pages, surgery 3.3 cents per page. The resulting 14.8-cent quadruplet-color page is a little cheaper than average.

The soprano-proceeds "40" cartridges lower costs more for color than for illegal. The cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges are $18 for 750 pages, or 2.4 cents per page–a single cent per page cheaper for to each one color than the criterional cartridges. The $23 black lasts for only 550 pages, elaboration to 4.2 cents per page. A four-color page with the XL supplies is 11.4 cents per page.

If you want an MFP that's major than average-looking and covers altogether the basics for light use, the HP Photosmart 5520 is definitely worth a gander. If you're checking out other printers in this price rank, the Comrade MFC-J625DW ($130) is the most comparable. The Canyon Pixma MG4120 ($130) and the Epson Stylus NX430 ($100) throw pricier inks.