HP’s convenient lunchbox printer
Stephen Withers03 March 2008
With a look reminiscent of an 80s boombox, the design alone tells you this small printer can be easily carried around to wherever you have a photo printing project.
It can be directly connected to a computer via USB or used as a standalone printer. Photos can be directly printed from memory cards (Compact Flash, Memory Stick and Secure Digital/MultiMediaCard), direct from a PictBridge camera or from a USB stick, and the software provides the ability to use the printer as a card reader. A USB Bluetooth dongle can be attached for wireless printing from phones and other devices.
As a standalone, printing is easily executed through the use of a stylus on a screen that’s reasonably large (4.8in) given the small size of the device. Navigation through menus is easy, and you are able to ‘get creative’ with your photos, quickly adding frames or captions, and even drawing onto the image with the stylus.
Print quality in comparison to an older ‘lunchbox’ model, the Lexmark P350 was favourable. Apart from a tendency to lose detail in shadows, we found the A626 to be a convenient and flexible photo printer that produces attractive images.