HP Photosmart A826 Review
The HP Photosmart A826 Home Photo Center is designed to be a super easy way for you to create fun, personalized photos that you can share with your friends and family.
Now that sounded all well and good, but I wasn’t quite sure about this printer when I took it out of the box. My kids thought it looked like a “space age toaster” or something out of the Jetsons. 
But the set up instructions were extremely clear – plug it in and press the power button. I don’t care how technically challenged you are, the setup on this printer is a no-brainer!
Once we had it set up, we never referred to the instruction manual again. We just popped in the memory card from our digital camera and we were ready to go. The 7-inch touchscreen was easy to use, although I found it was more responsive when touched with the stylus as opposed to my fingers.
The menus were well laid out and easy to understand, even for my 8 year old. In fact, he had this printer mastered in just a few seconds. He pulled up a picture of his 12 year old sister and had a field day. Here’s the result! (Actually, he adores his big sister.) 
Now his artwork is a little rough (and reeks of 8 y/o boy!) but you get the idea.
I liked playing around in the Design Gallery and spent quite a bit of time altering my own pictures with the slimming effect. It looks like you can take off about 10 lbs. before the pictures start looking a bit too squished, but every little bit counts. In my tests, this really only worked well with the full body shots. When I used “slimming” on head shots, they looked a little “off” almost immediately.
My family also enjoyed playing around with the Frames options. They have frames for just about everything, from special events like anniversaries and birthdays, to seasons, holidays and sports.
For those of you who are into scrapbooking, this printer would be a great addition to your creative supplies. You an add clipart and text to your photos, you can draw on them (although I hope you do something more attractive than my son’s attempt) and even apply sepia and aged effects.
And the prints are ready to use as soon as the printer spits them out. No waiting around for drying time. In our house, that’s a real plus. It seems like we only remember to print pictures when we’re all ready to leave the house. You know, “Oh, I wanted to bring Grandma the pictures from the lake!” In the past that would mean an extra 30 minutes of printing pictures and waiting for them to dry before we could put them on top of each other. The Photosmart A826 has totally solved that problem. Now if it could just remind me where I put the car keys, we’d never be late again!
If you’re in the market for a high quality photo printer that’s fun and easy to use, the HP Photosmart A826 might be just what you’re looking for. You can read more about it on the Hewlett-Packard site here: HP PhotoSmart A826
Comments
Got something to say?
