Why You Can Trust CNET HP Photosmart 7520 review: $200 all-in-one printer puts your prints in the cloud
The Photosmart 7520 is an excellent printer for home offices and families who will take advantage of its wireless printing features like ePrint and Google Cloud Print.
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HP Photosmart 7520
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Like the model it replaced, the $200 Photosmart 7520 can access Hewlett-Packard's ePrintCenter apps directly on the large 4.33-inch landscape display, though a wireless network is required to log in to the store. The Web connectivity also engages HP's suite of apps, including the convenient ePrint service that takes your print queue to the cloud and adds remote printing. There is no shortage of useful apps in the ePrintCenter, not to mention high-resolution yields for an affordable price, but you'll be just as happy with the Photosmart 7510 if you can find it at a discount.
Design and features
The Photosmart 7520 combines the functionality of a printer, a scanner, and a copier in a low-profile chassis finished in matte black that fits with HP's current design aesthetic. Its footprint -- 17.9 inches long by 17.7 inches tall and 7.7 inches wide -- does demand a large amount of desk space, but the tray that corrals outbound pages does fold back into the unit to save space during dormancy.
On the 7520, HP continues its trend of touch-compatible displays, with a 4.33-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 over 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 take time to get used to, 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 autodocument 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 multifunctional laser printer instead if you need something to handle heavy-duty workloads. A single 125-sheet paper tray loads on the bottom of the device and there's 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 about the hardware is the low capacity of the paper output tray -- you can keep only 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 using a direct USB connection (like most vendors, HP does not include a USB cable with the printer), you can set up the Photosmart 7520 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 omits an Ethernet port in an effort to push cloud printing features that can work only on a Wi-Fi network, which you should probably be using to reduce clutter anyway. Still, I'm still not ready to see Ethernet printing extinguished entirely until wireless connectivity becomes more ubiquitous, and the gap will likely be a deal breaker for IT professionals shopping for a networked printer to connect an office.
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 setup time to less than 2 minutes -- if you make your network visible, that is. If keeping the network private 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 7520 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 trust enough to take control of your printer -- you can take ownership of that in the control panel (Wireless > Web Services > Display E-mail). It's really easy to set up, but there are 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. You can 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 7520's home screen is as simple as hitting the Get More button. It 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. This model can also send scans directly to a PC, a memory card, a network folder, an e-mail message, or even the cloud.
The key difference between this model and the 7510 from last year is the latter lacked a dedicated fax machine, instead having an eFax companion utility. HP partnered with eFax to bring fax functionality to HP's lower-end models -- it works by sending a fax over the Internet so there's no worry of a busy signal to interrupt your transmission.
The extra $50 for the dedicated fax machine and phone line on the 7520 is prudent for home offices and individuals with higher-than-average fax volume, as the 7510 eFax version is a trial that only allows a maximum of 20 incoming and 20 outgoing pages per month, with the option to upgrade to an unlimited service for a monthly fee.
Performance
In lab testing, the HP Photosmart 7520 printer registered scores slightly faster than the average for multifunction devices at the $200 price point. It churned out just over six pages of monochrome text per minute, produced nearly four pages of color graphics in the same span, and screamed past the competition with 6.4 PowerPoint slides in the same 60 seconds. Slides notwithstanding, the 7510's scores trailed behind the performance of the
Thankfully, the Photosmart 7520 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 came out slightly blurry. I recommend simply reprinting a photo from its digital source if you need another copy.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
 | Presentation speed | | Photo speed | | Graphics speed | | Text speed |
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 7520 is an excellent printer for home offices and for families who will take advantage of its wireless printing features like ePrint and Google Cloud Print. I certainly recommend it at the $200 price, but you can likely find a Photosmart 7510 for less if you don't need the fax machine function.