HP Photosmart 7960 color ink jet printer
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| Height: | 7.6 in |
| Width: | 20.9 in |
| Depth: | 15.1 in |
| Weight: | 16.8 lbs. |
The HP 7960 is rather wide for a letter size printer (8.5" maximum paper width). Though the depth is 15.1", it can be placed up against a wall since the paper feeds horizontally in and out of the front of the printer, so it will sit on a fairly narrow shelf. The body of the printer is about 10" deep and the paper tray extends about 5" out from the front. By comparison the Canon i900D body is about 13" deep but is only 17" wide.
Assembly
Not much assembly is required. All you basically have to do is install the printer cartridges, plug in the power supply and turn it on! Pretty simple.
Software
Software installation on a Windows XP PC was simple and without problems. Just put the CD in the drive and follow the instructions. Just remember not to turn the printer on until the software instructs you to do so. I didn't try this, but my guess is that if the plug the printer in and turn it on before you install the HP software, Windows will try to install a generic driver for it so you'll get yourself into trouble if you do this and you'll have to uninstall some files and start again.
Several applications are also installed along with the printer drivers.
- HP Photo & Imaging Gallery - An image browser and simple image editor
- HP Album Printing - Allows you to layout album pages to print
- HP Director - A control panel for all your HP imaging hardware and software
- HP Memories disk creator - Create a slide show with music that can be played on a home DVD player (as long as it can read CD-R/W discs).
Some of these are also supplied with other HP photo items (such as digital cameras and scanners). The software will update earlier software versions if it finds them.
The Ink System
The unique feature of the 7960 is that it uses an 8 color ink system for photo printing. Most other consumer ink jet printers use 4 or 6 ink systems
- 4 ink systems - Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow
- 6 ink systems - Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Photo Cyan (light Cyan), Photo Magenta (light Magenta)
- 8 ink systems - Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Photo Cyan (light Cyan), Photo Magenta (light Magenta), Medium Gray, Light Gray
The extra two colors - Medium Gray and Light Gray - allow the HP 7960 to print true monochrome B&W images right out of the box. 6 color printers must make up all shades of gray from the colored inks, and so there is often a slight color bias. More importantly (and annoyingly) there may be different color bias to different shades of gray. By using only black, medium gray and light gray inks, any color bias is eliminated.
The extra two inks are also said to widen the printing color gamut, enabling the printing more more colors, especially darker shades.
HP provide the following data on their 6 and 8 color printing systems. PhotoREt is the name HP gives to its Photo Resolution Enhancement Technology.
| PhotoREt IV | PhotoREt Pro | |
| Number of color inks | 6 | 8 |
| Drop volume | 4-5 pl | 4 -5 pl |
| Drops per dot on photo media | 32 | 32 |
| Levels of primary colors | 289 | 289 |
| Levels of true gray | 17 | 4097 |
| Number of colors* | 1.2 million + | 72.9 million + |
* Number of directly printable colors that can be produced without halftoning
Of course it's debatable exactly what the significance of 73 million colors is. It's the result of the mathematical analysis of the number of possible ink combinations. The eye can't distinguish 73 million different colors. I don't suppose it can even distinguish 1.2 million. The practical significance is that it can produce smoother gradations in dark shades. It's not like it produces a whole new spectrum of bright yellows for example.
More Ink Matters
HP supply 4 ink cartridges with the printer:
- HP 56 - Black cartridge - with pigment based ink for text printing
- HP 57 - Tricolor cartridge - Cyan, Magenta and Yellow dye based inks for color graphics and photo use
- HP 58 - Photo color cartridge - Photo Cyan, Photo Magenta, Black dye based inks for photo use
- HP 59 - Gray cartridge - Light gray, Medium Gray and Photo Black dye based inks for photo use
However you can only use 3 cartridges at a time!
For Color or B&W Photos you use the #57, #58 and #59. For documents with color graphics or plain B&W text you use the #56, #57 and #58 cartridges. HP provide a print cartridge protector which prevents the cartridge not in use from drying out, and there's a space to store it under the top cover of the printer. The ink capacity and estimated "street" price of the cartridges is given below:
| Cartridge | Total Ink Volume | Est. # of 4"x6" prints | Est. # of letter size pages | Estimated discount "street" price |
| HP 56 | 19ml | ? | 450 @ 5% coverage | $18 |
| HP 57 | 17ml | ? | 391 @ 15% coverage | $30 |
| HP 58 | 16ml | 125 | ? | $25 |
| HP 59 | 17ml | 110 | ? | $28 |
I don't know what the print capacity of the cartridges is since I haven't yet run one dry. From various reports on the web users seem to be getting something like 30-40 letter size prints before running the #59 cartridge dry when printing B&W images, though that obviously depends a great deal on the images. Images of black cats at night are going to use up a lot more ink then images of polar bears in the snow! It's difficult to estimate overall print costs, especially for color prints, because if one color runs out you have to replace a whole cartridge, even if the other two colors still have ink left. So if you're printing close-up images of magenta colored flowers, your costs will be higher than if you're printing more general images with a wide distribution of colors since you'll run the magenta ink dry before the others. Ballpark costs to print a full letter size image on HP premium plus photo paper would be between maybe $1.25 and $2 per print, B&W probably working out slightly cheaper than color. This is a very rough estimate though.
Note that the HP ink cartridges include an integral print head, so each time you change the cartridge, you change the print head. This means that clogged print heads are rare since the print head is always pretty new, and even if a clog should occur and can't be fixed, changing the cartridge will fix the problem. On printers with fixed print heads which are not replaceable (most Epson printers), if a print head clogs it's often cheaper to throw the printer away and get a new one than to send it off for a new printhead to be installed. Current Canon printers "split the difference" with a fixed print head, but one which can easily be replaced by the user.
If you do a lot of text printing you will want to use the #56 cartridge. If you don't, you'll use up the black ink in the #58 and #59 cartridges which is bad because when they run out, you'll have to buy new ones even if you've never used any of the other inks in them (photo cyan and photo magenta in the #58, medium and light gray in the #59). This could get expensive!
Paper and paper feed
The HP 7960 has one tray for paper up to A4 size (8.27" x 11.7") or letter size (8.5" x 11") and a separate tray for 4" x 6" paper. Both trays may be loaded at once, but you have to manually move a lever to select which tray the paper will be fed from. Each tray has a maximum capacity of 25 sheets of photo paper (or 100 sheets of plain paper). Unlike most photo printers, the paper feed in from the front of the printer and follows a "U" shaped path. This has two consequences. First you must load the paper with the printing side down, not up (yes, I made that mistake!). Second it limits the thickness of paper you can use. HP recommend a maximum thickness of 11.5 mil. HP also recommend a maximum paper length of 14". There is a removable panel at the rear of the printer which enables access to clear paper jams (note: I did not experience any such paper jams in the course of this revue).
HP recommend using their own photo paper (of course), but especially for B&W prints. The paper and ink are designed to work together. Using HP premium photo plus paper and the B&W inks a print life of up to 73 years is claimed (based on work by Wilhelm Imaging Research Inc.). HP comment that this is "up to twice as long as most traditionally processes photos".
The printer can automatically determine the type and size of paper in use (at least for HP papers). Alternatively you can manually select paper type from most of the printing menus.
The HP premium photo paper is of the "swelling polymer" type. This means that the ink is absorbed into a polymer layer on the paper and it initially causes that layer to swell. If you look at fresh prints from the HP 7960 you can see the surface looks like a relief map with some areas higher than others. As the print dries this effect disappears. It does mean that the print is very slightly sticky as it comes out of the printer, so it should be handled with care. You can put fingerprints on it for example. The advantage of this type of paper is that the ink is contained in the polymer layer and is thus protected from atmospheric pollutants which might hasten fading.
Direct Printing
The HP 7960 can print directly from memory cards. The following formats are supported:
- Compact Flash I and II
- Microdrives
- MultiMedia
- Secure Digital
- Sony Memory Stick
- xD-Picture card
The printer also acts an an external card reader when hooked up to a computer via the USB port, so you can copy data from your memory card directly to your hard drive. The card appears as an extra drive on your PC.
An interesting feature is that the printer can print directly from both sRGB and AdobeRGB files stored on a memory card.
You can also print directly from HP digital cameras which support direct-printing. However the printer does not support the PictBridge standard so you must have an HP camera for direct printing. [PictBridge is an industry standard, so users can connect PictBridge-compatible devices made by many different manufacturers.While the initial list of PictBridge devices is small, several companies have pledged support for this standard, including Canon, Epson, HP, Sony, Olympus, and Fuji.]
The HP 7960 has a built in 2.5" LCD screen which can be tilted for best viewing. It's clear and bright and allows you to see what's on your memory card as well as select images for printing and printing options. Note that you can only display the first 2000 images on your memory card. I don't think this will be much of a limitation for 99.99% of users though. With the HP software installed on your PC you can also use the LCD to select images to be transferred to your hard drive or sent via email.
There are also options to remove redeye, adjust brightness, add a decorative frame and add color effects (e.g. sepia toning) to prints. There's an option to print all the images on the card in the form of a photo index page. Again you might run into trouble if you have those 2000 images on your card since you'd generate 32 index pages!
The HP7960 can also do tricks with proof sheets (above). You can select either all images or just new images (images not previously printed) and print a proof sheet. This is much like an index page except there are barcodes and little boxes you can fill in. You can then scan the proof sheet by feeding it back into the printer, and depending on which of the boxes you have checked it will make prints in various formats and quantities. The proof sheet prints on plain paper, so your paper cost is low, but it still uses ink. It's also s....l....o....w. For 12 images each with an average file size of 5MB printing a proof sheet took about 9 minutes. Most of that time seemed to be spent reading the data from the card and/or doing stuff in software. Occasionally the print head would move. Then it would sit there for a while in silence, then it would print another line. Then more silence. Then a few clicks. Then more silence and flashing of the memory card read light. Then I went and made a cup of coffee....Somehow I don't think this is a feature I would use much, though I can see how the technophobic might prefer it to using a computer (as long as they aren't in a hurry). One point of note is that it didn't print the full file names on the proof sheet. For example a file named "CRW_0543_RJ.JPG" was captioned as "CRW_05~3.JPG", so it looks like the captions are limited to 8 character file names, but the truncation seems odd since it left out a middle character and lopped of the final 3 characters. Not a huge deal, but potentially annoying.
Print Quality
All print tests were made with the #57, #58 and #59 ink cartridges installed. The #56 cartridge is intended for text and graphics printing. I'm sure it does both adequately!
Color Printing
The first prints I made were directly from a CF memory card. I loaded a standard Photo Disk test image onto the card (24MB image file, 1.1MB JPEG) and inserted the card into the printer, accepted the standard defaults and hit the print button. The result was an excellent color image. Since I still had a Canon i900d printer available I printed the same file on that printer, also directly from the CF card using the printer defaults. Again an excellent print resulted. At first sight, held side by side, the prints looked identical, but on closer inspection there were detectable differences. Below are scans of the prints. Note that these are second generation images and their color on your monitor depends on the color mapping of my scanner and the color mapping and gamma of your monitor, so pay more attention to what I say - looking at the originals - than what you see on your screen!
Overall the HP print was slightly darker and the Canon print was slightly warmer. I emphasize slightly here. Both were excellent. Looking very closely at the prints with a 10x loupe, it seemed that the Canon print had slightly more detail, but this wasn't observable by eye. The HP print also had an almost "linen-like" texture when viewed through the 10x loupe, though again this was not detectable by eye. I'm not sure if this is due to the printer driver algorithm or if it's a function of the paper or if it's both, but it was clear on all the test prints I made under a 10x loupe.
Above is a greatly magnified section from the Canon i900D
Below is the same section from the Hp 7960 print.
Besides sharpness and "texture" the Canon print seems to have slightly darker and more saturated blues. Again let me emphasize that these are greatly magnified sections of the prints. In the actual print this area was of the order of 1cm wide. Viewed with the naked eye, no differences in sharpness were observable and no "texture" was observable in either print.
B&W Printing
For this test the same image file was used, but it was first converted to B&W, then uploaded to a CF card for direct printing. Below are scans of B&W prints made on the Canon i900D and HP 7960
The print on the right comes from the HP 7960 using HP premium photo pro glossy paper (that's the paper HP recommends). It's completely neutral with no overall color cast and no color cast in any of the grayscale patches. An excellent B&W print. On the right is a composite print. The upper left half of the print (labeled "uncompensated") shows the image printed by the i900D on Canon photo paper pro using the standard monochrome image file. It's clearly magenta, not B&W. While the print is sharp and the tonality of good, the color cast is objectionable. Since the color cast is magenta, the source file needs to be compensated by adding a small amount of green. So the monochrome image was converted to RGB on a PC (though it's still B&W, it's just that the Red, Green and Blue values for each pixel are identical). Then a slight green bias was added and the file was downloaded to the CF card again. When this "green biased" file was printed the result in shown in the lower right half of the left hand image above (labeled "compensated"), which is clearly more neutral in color.
Despite both the i900D and HP 7960 images looking pretty good and pretty neutral, it was clear on close inspection that the i900D still had a very slight color bias (magenta) in some intermediate shades of gray. The effect was subtle, but clearly there. The HP 7960 image was neutral throughout the grayscale range, as it should be. As in the color test, under 10x loupe inspection the Canon image held a little more detail and the HP image showed a little more "texture", but again neither was visible to the naked eye. This is shown in the images below.
The multicolor dots are visible in the i900D image and the "9" grayscale patch shows a slight magenta shift. The HP tone patches are neutral.
The conclusion is clear. If you want a totally neutral B&W print with no hue shifts in intermediate gray tones, the HP 7960 is the winner. You can generate pretty good B&W images with the i900D if you work at it, though it's difficult to eliminate all trace of color bias at all gray levels.
Other considerations are fading and metamerism.
Since the Canon image is made up of various colored dots, if one color fades faster than another the print will develop a complementary color cast in some areas - but possibly not in others. With the HP image, if the inks fade at all and they hold their neutral color when faded, the image should not show a color shift. However as mentioned above, the prediction is that B&W prints made with HP ink on HP premium plus photo paper should have a lifetime of up to 73 years, so fading shouldn't be an issue with the HP prints provided they are stored and displayed properly. They may not be as archival as a platinum or palladium B&W print, but they should be as archival as a many simple silver prints.
Metamerism is a phenomenon where colors look the same under one type of lighting (say tungsten lighting), but look different under a different type of lighting (say fluorescent lights). It's a function of the dyes used to make the ink and their interaction with the paper. Neither the i900D nor the HP7960 prints showed noticeable metamerism under the lighting I tried (daylight, tungsten and fluorescent).
I also tried printing on Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy using the same printer settings as for the HP Premium Photo Pro Glossy. The results were good, but the print was very slightly lighter and initially had a slightly warmer tone which seemed to fade when the print was allowed to stand for a minute or two. The unknown here is the stability of prints made on paper other than the HP recommended paper. I don't know of any test data on prints made using the HP printer with other manufacturers paper. However at least in the short term, prints made on the Canon paper looked excellent and neutral under daylight and tungsten illumination. Under some types of fluorescent light prints on the Canon paper did show a very slightly cooler appearance, perhaps tending a little towards the green, but it was only really noticable when prints on Canon an HP paper were viewed side by side.
I also printed B&W images on Epson Archival Matte paper. This time the warm tone did not fade, but I found the warm tone quite pleasing on many subjects. It's worth noting that even conventional silver halide based printing paper is available in a range of tones from "warm" to "cool", so that fact that an image is not 100% neutral isn't necessarily a bad thing. The important thing is that the whole image is the same tone, rather than, for example, having cool highlights, neutral midtones and warm shadows (or worse, green highlights, gray midtones and magenta shadows!). The prints on the Epson Archival Matte paper were uniform in tone. I did not have samples of HP matte paper to test. Again, there is no data on the lifetime of prints made on Epson paper with HP inks. Image made on matte paper tend to be a little less stable than images made on glossy paper because the inks tend to be absorbed deeper into the paper structure with glossy paper and are thus better protected.
Printing from a PC
Printing from a PC presented no problems. You can either print from the HP Photo & Imaging Gallery software, the HP Album printing software or an external program such as PhotoShop. From a program such as PhotoShop you're presented with a typical printer setup screen from which you can set paper size, print quality, paper type, special effects etc.
There did not appear to be any significant difference in print quality when printing from a memory card in the printer and printing the same file from the hard disk on a computer via an image editor. Nor should there be of course, since it's the same data!
Printing Speed
The HP 7960 is no speed demon, despite what you might think you read in the specs (which apply to text printing, not photo printing). For example HP specs B&W printing at 21 pages per minute (ppm) in draft mode. However at "best" quality a 4x6 print typically takes about 2.5 minutes and an 8.5x11 print takes a little over 6 minutes (borderless prints).
Conclusion
There's little doubt that the HP 7960 is an excellent printer for both B&W and color work. Of course it's the B&W feature that sets it apart from all other printers in its price range. While you can get special monochrome ink sets for some other printers (e.g. the Epson 1160), it's a significant amount of work to set up the system, it's not cheap and it means you have to dedicate a printer to B&W. With the HP 7960 you can print either in B&W or color at any time, you need no special drivers or profiles, and the price is not significantly higher than that of similar printers from other manufacturers.
While you can get good B&W images out of 6 color printers, it takes work, and even then you're not sure of absolute neutrality. If you're printing toned (sepia) images this isn't usually much of a problem, but if you want truly neutral B&W images it can be.
One possible limitation for some users is that the HP 7960 only prints up to 8.5" wide, so if you're interested in making 11x14 prints, you're out of luck. HP currently have no wide carriage version of this printer. Maximum settable paper length in the print options dialog is 14". I'm not sure if you can actually use longer paper by playing tricks, but if you intend to print panoramics on paper like the Epson 8.5" x 24" stock, it's something you'd need to research before buying the HP 7960.
If you want to save a little money there are two other HP printers in the same family as the 7960, both of which are 4 color + 2 gray (vs. 6 color + 2 gray in the 7960), so their color performance might not be quite so good as the 7960, though their B&W performance should be similar. It may not be 100% identical since it is possible that there may be some differences in the printer drivers. The HP 7660 has a 1.8" LCD and card reader, but the LCD is monochrome (B&W). It available for under $150. The HP 7760 also has a 1.8" LCD, but this time in color. It also has a few more features such as a button for auto emailing of images when the printer is hooked up to a PC running the HP software. Street price is under $200. [Just for comparison, the 7960 has a 2.5" color LCD and 8 color printing for a street price under $300].
Be sure to order a USB cable to connect this printer to your computer. Get it for $9.99 if you choose Yes for the cable below. An additional $9.99 will be added to your purchase. You may get 2 separate charges on your credit card.
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