The Photosmart Premium Fax AIO, is a high performer for a home office inkjet printer. It’s capable of up to a 33 ppm black printing speed, and 32 ppm color printing, and faxes are transmitted at 3 seconds per page. The resolution is high with a black print resolution of up to 600 x 600 dpi, and a color print resolution of up to 9600 x 2400 dpi. The scanner is highly capable as well with a scanner bit depth of 48-bits, and a scanner resolution of up to 4800 dpi, 19200 dpi in enhanced mode.
A much more important aspect of the printer than speed is the quality of the prints produced by the Photosmart. With the printer capable of crisp, clear lines and natural, smooth color transitions, photos are beautifully reproduced and live up to the Photosmart name, with even color distribution and a nice broad contrast range allowing for color perfect matches between prints and source.
Users rate the Photosmart highly as well, impressed with the intuitive nature of the printer’s controls, pleasing color resolution, and the wide range of features. The main drawback to the Photosmart seems to be the same complaint aimed at all inkjet printers, the high cost of ink, which drives the cost per page up significantly.
The HP Photosmart Premium C309a Fax All-in-One is HP’s solid entrant into the home office environment. With a combination of a strong feature set and high quality prints, the Photosmart is hard to resist for those looking for an all-in-one solution. The final determinant of a buy or no buy would be the price. At an online price point of about $299 the HP falls well into the affordability range of most of the targeted customer base.
The costs per page are high, even when using the high capacity inks which HP prices at $18 for color, and $35 for the black replacement ink cartridge. Tests performed at CNet labs calculated a price per page at those rates of 2.4 cents for color, and 4.3 cents for black prints, though the high cost of the black ink remains unexplained as the both color and black cartridges yield about 800 pages. Still, it’s the same story as found with all inkjet printers, the cost savings in the hardware comes at the high price of the ink.
The Photosmart comes with a standard one-year warranty with 24-hour phone support, and an option to extend the warranty for two more years at an upgraded price. HP service and support has generally been known for a consistently high level of quality, useful should anything go wrong. On the whole, the HP Photosmart Premium Fax All-In-One at its current price-point is a good buy for the consumer looking for a versatile easy to use, quality printer.