HP Photosmart 7510 e-All-in-One review: HP Photosmart 7510 e-All-in-One

For $50 more than the Photosmart 5510, the 7510 adds access to HP's ePrintCenter apps available for download directly on the display, just as you would on modern smartphones. The wireless connection required to log into the store also permits entry to ePrint, a convenient service that takes the job queue to the cloud for remote printing. For homes and offices looking to get creative with their prints, the $150 HP Photosmart 7510 offers easy to use connections, a host of useful apps in the ePrintCenter, and high resolution yields for an affordable price.

Design and features
The Photosmart 7510 combines the functionality of a printer, scanner, and copier into a low-profile chassis finished in matte black that jells with HP's current design aesthetic. It measures 17.9 inches long by 17.7 inches tall and 7.7 inches wide, so it will take up a considerable amount of room on your desk, but the chassis includes the tray that corrals outbound prints, saving at least some space.

HP extends its trend of touch-compatible displays on the 7510 with a 4.3-inch color screen positioned on the far left of the device. The color graphic display (CGD) takes on the familiar shape of the original iPhone with a rectangular screen fitted inside a rounded edge, with virtual buttons that illuminate to help with navigation and selection.

Though the sensitivity of the display is indeed a large improvement on some of HP's earlier touch screen models, it's still prone to precision missteps when it comes to scrolling through the landscape menu pane. Unless you start a finger swipe on the outside of the display, the menu has a tendency to continue moving even after your finger lifts off the screen -- frustrating if you're trying to quickly parse through a lot of apps. The quirks of the display add time to the learning curve, but you'll have an easier time once you train your finger to unlearn the familiar iPhone gestures you might be used to.

The top of the printer houses the auto-document feeder (ADF) that you'll use to scan a stack of documents, though it's limited to 25 sheets at a time, so I recommend checking out a laser printing multifunction if you plan to use this device for heavy-duty workloads. A single 125-sheet paper tray loads on the bottom of the device and also includes a separate top-loading 20-sheet photo paper tray for 4x6-inch and 5x7-inch media. An intelligent sensor picks up on the best kind of media to use for each job and accesses the appropriate tray accordingly.

Another gripe I have with the hardware is the low paper output tray capacity -- you'll only be able to keep 50 sheets in the dock at a time before the stack gets too high for the machine and clogs the receiving belt -- another reason for hard-core users to consider a more business-friendly printer.

In addition to a direct USB connection (like most vendors, HP does not include a USB cable with the printer), you can set up the Photosmart 7510 on your network via Wi-Fi, which also lets Apple users make an easy connection through AirPrint on a compatible iOS device. Using AirPrint, you can print out a photo from your iPhoto library by simply choosing the connected printer and hitting Print.

Unfortunately, HP just started omitting Ethernet ports on its printers in an effort to push its cloud printing features that can only work on a Wi-Fi network, which you should probably be using to reduce clutter anyway. I'm still not ready to see Ethernet printing extinguished entirely until wireless connectivity becomes more ubiquitous.

I tested the Wi-Fi connection process and found it simple to navigate through the initial setup screens with help from the instructions on the driver disc. HP's latest Auto Wireless Connect reduces the set up time to less than two minutes (if you make your network visible, that is). If network privacy from intrusive leeches is your concern, you can also manually input your network username and password details on the virtual QWERTY keyboard and the printer should immediately connect. Macs and PCs alike on CNET's lab network were able to see the printer without the need to install any additional software.

In addition to Apple AirPrint, the 7510 also features HP's ePrint technology that lets you send jobs from any connected device to the printer using the uniquely assigned e-mail address. You can even navigate through the settings and change the e-mail address to an easier designation to give out to friends and family that you deem responsible enough to take control of your printer -- you can take ownership of that in the control panel (Wireless > Web Services > Display Email) and it's supereasy to set up, but it comes with a few restrictions. For one, the printer must be on and also connected to your network. For another, it can't print Web pages, although you can simply copy and paste the text into a document as a workaround and even create your own customized e-mail address.

The ePrintCenter is an online hub where you can view job history, change settings, add printers to your account, browse and install apps, and cancel print jobs. All the extra applications are free and HP breaks them down into categories within the App Store: entertainment, home, kids, news/blogs, photo, and tickets. Each one promises to streamline the printing experience by offering shortcuts to your favorite coupons, news articles, weather reports, recipes, and so on. HP tells me that it plans to release a Software Development Kit (SDK) in the near future so software engineers can design their own shortcut apps for the store.

Adding apps to the 7510's home screen is as simple as hitting the Get More button that takes you directly to the store to download new apps, rate them, and even add your own comments. The apps have potential, but prepare to battle long load times that require you to navigate through several submenu layers.

The standard flatbed scanner/copier measures 8.5 inches by 11.7 inches, but I was disappointed to find that the hardware omits a hinge that some may find necessary to scan thicker media such as books and multipage documents. Regardless, its 1,200-dpi resolution scanned and copied crisply rendered documents and this model can also send scans directly to a PC, a memory card, a network folder, an e-mail message, or even the cloud. Amateur photographers should also note that the 7510 doesn't include a separate USB port for PictBridge cameras, so you'll need to add an extra step to your process by removing the media and plugging it into the drive bay on the bottom of the machine.

Performance
In lab testing, the HP Photosmart 7510 printer registered scores slightly faster than the average for multifunction devices at the $150 price point. It churned out just over six pages of monochrome text, nearly four pages of color graphics, and screamed past the competition with 6.4 PowerPoint slides a minute. Slides notwithstanding, the 7510's scores trailed behind the performance of the Epson WorkForce 645, a top performer in this category, but the difference won't likely be visible to you unless you're printing a large stack of pages at once.

Thankfully, the Photosmart 7510 also doesn't sacrifice quality for speed. It produced crisp, dark black text even at smaller fonts where I would dare to compare its line work to that of a laser printer. Color graphics and photos exhibited accurate colors, though I found that copies of photos come out slightly blurry. That said, I recommend simply reprinting a photo from its digital source if you need another copy.

Service and support
HP backs the Photosmart 7510 with a standard one-year warranty that includes 24-7 toll-free phone support and live Web chat during weekdays. HP's Web site also contains downloadable drivers, software, and manuals; e-mail tech support; FAQs; and a troubleshooting guide. You can return the product within 21 days of delivery.

Conclusion
The Photosmart 7510 is an excellent printer for home offices and families that will take advantage of its wireless printing features like ePrint and Google Cloud Print. You can downgrade to the Photosmart 5510 if you don't see yourself using the ePrintCenter apps, but with more coming down the pike every day, it's worth it to put forth the extra $50 to make your purchase future-proof.

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