21 out of 21 people found this review helpful.
What a cute little printer *aww*
Date of Review: Oct 31, 2006
The Bottom Line: This printer is very cheap and not a gimmick like some of the other products out there. Prints good quality photos without the fuss
Even though the epson printer is apparently cheaper to run because it has individual ink cartridges I would never get that beast because its so damn ugly. I was very near buying a Canon Selphy but decided against it, as they are extremely expensive to run and have no card-reader. The 335 does look good beside an ipod, and on the little table I have it on. If this thing would let me post pictures I would post a pic of it beside an ipod. But unfortunately there is no point in putting it beside an iPod as it won't be able to read from the ipod. For some reason they decided they'd put a USB port in it that won't read from USB storage devices that aren't pict-bridge cameras. But it does allow you to use it as a card reader for the computer, but only for one card at a time.
Menu interface
The printer takes about 10 seconds to start up from cold, after which you can browse the very simple menu that lets you select print quality and a whole load of other stuff. In standby it shows a picture of a droplet with how much ink is remaining. Unfortunately it doesn't count how much you have printed with it. The screen is quite small but it does the job perfectly, anything else would be a gimmick that drives up the price of the printer. The interface can be somewhat slow which makes me believe they used a batch of underpowered processors for an overly fancy looking menu. Gone are the days of simple words on a menu and simple picture previews, everything has to look nice and have borders around it and this takes processing power - something the printer doesn't have. Unfortunately it is nothing more than the result of a mere marketing gimmick and p|ssing contests between different manufacturers "their menu's look nicer". I think deep within most people would prefer a simple responsive menu than an overly pimped one made to look pretty. This menu is by far not the worst, as you might have seen on some of the more gimmicky phones these days but there is lag when pressing the buttons and especially with picture previews it can lock up for a second or two.
Printing from computer
I have installed all the drivers on my iBook, which took quite a while and now I have about 10 extra applications I know nothing about and are most likely not a whole lot of use to me, as I only wanted the drivers. I tried to print one picture this way and it had a border on it I couldn't get rid of by changing the settings. Also tried this on my linux computer and it also had a border, despite me setting all the borders to 0.
But then I discovered a much simpler method of printing from the computer.
Bluetooth
I shoved a Sitecom CN-500 dongle into the printer's USB port and scanned for devices on my laptop and it found the Photosmart 335 almost instantly. Now setting up a bluetooth printer is a big fuss so I said screw that. I then discovered I could just send pictures to it via OBEX Push. Just like sending a file over bluetooth to anyone else. As soon as I started sending an image it gobbled up a sheet of paper getting ready to print it, but spit it back out after waiting too long for it. So this means I have to resize them down to around 2mb before sending, which isn't that hard and if I want to print a whole lot of them I can copy them onto a card. I can also send pictures to it from my phone now and all the other wonderful bluetooth stuff I have.
By default when you have a bluetooth dongle in it the printer will have no security options on, so anyone can just send pictures to it and it will print. Unless its already printing in which case nobody can send anything to it. It is very easy to set up a 4 digit pin code and require pairing but this is mostly for paranoid people since most bluetooth dongles have a range of only a few meters.
There is no need for expensive HP branded bluetooth dongles, mine was an ordinary off the shelf one and I'm sure there are many more off the shelf ones that will work
Printing from card
The printer will read Microdrives and all sorts of other flash media, including MiniSD cards in adaptors which I use most of the time if I want to print a batch of pictures. As soon as you put in the card just use the left and right buttons to go through the menu, the OK button to select them and the print button to print them all off. You can select multiple copies by repeatedly pressing the ok button over the photo. That is all there is to it.
Pictbridge
I tried this once with my E-500, it took about 10 minutes to print the photo. Using this is to be avoided
Printing
The printer can be quite fussy about which photos it will print, I had to resize and modify one particular photo at least 5 times before it would pick it up for some unknown reason. The printer will read ordinary jape egg's and TIFF images, but often while sending a picture to it via bluetooth it will barf out the page at the sight of yet another progressive-encoded jpeg. [you know, the ones that start off blurry and gradually get sharper as they load].
It has a tendency to jam easily, but if one flicks through the pages before loading them it helps a lot. I always run over to make sure it isnt after gobbling up half a pack of photo paper as it has done before.
The printer is surprisingly fast compared to the 245, and unfortunately paper now loads in the back of the printer which isn't as nice looking I think, having all those pages standing up out of the printer.
Print quality
If one looks closely at the picture there are little scattered dots, but it is hard to know how much "detail" it is getting into the picture from an image. It is very easy to tell a 960x720 or a 1.3 megapixel image from a 5MP image after its been printed. The ink takes a while to dry so it is good to remove them from the printer as they could sometimes stick together if they are not completely dry.
As good as a 'real' photo? I have no clue. Until someone sends me two exactly identical photos one analogue and one digital we will never know.
Running costs
A6 Photo paper can be bought quite cheap these days so we won't worry too much about that. 344 cartridges go for about 20 euros or #12 on ebay and amazon if you have a poke around. Refilling them in a shop costs about the same, and these cartridges are supposed to be good for 100-200 prints. The reduced size 343 probably won't do 100, as it is half way empty after printing about 30 pictures maybe 35.
The printer [or the very ugly oversized transformer] uses over 4.3 watts just by being plugged in. This is about 40 kilowatts a year and will set you back over 5 Euros a year. So well worth pulling the plug on it if you don't plan to print anything soon.
