Introducing HP Photosmart A626 Compact Photo Printer

With the age of compactness setting in, HP doesn’t want to left out much behind. It has introduced the latest member to the compact photo printer market, the A626. Consumers are presently convinced and hooked onto to the likes of Canon Pixma mini320 and Epson PictureMate Snap.

The A626 can print photos up to 5″ X 7″. There aren’t many compact photo printers that are capable of printing at that size. It uses HP patented Vivera inks bottled in a single cartridge(110) with three colours – magenta, cyan and yellow.

Just like its predecessor A826, the A626 has a sturdy casing and a 4.8″ touchscreen LCD which enables browsing through the menu options using a stylus. As all the functions are bundled up in the touchscreen LCD, the printer features only the power button.

HP claims that A626 has a print speed of 39 seconds but reports are pouring in that suggests that the speed could be in the range of 85 seconds, which puts this as one of the slowest in the market today. Being a new entrant, one would expect the printing speeds to be competitive at least.

Quality of prints is poor and not comparable to those of Canon and Epson. If the output is bad, HP might as well forget making a name for itself in the photo printer market.

The A626 is priced at £100 which is alright for a printer that doesn’t produce exceptional quality. The integrated cartridge 110 is fairly reasonable at £10. I don’t see a bright future for this printer. If the quality isn’t in place, there is no place for it with consumers.