Good-quality photo prints; incredibly easy software installation; tonnes of editing features; large touchscreen; small footprint
Slower-than-average print speed
The HP Photosmart A636 is an excellent inkjet photo printer that's both versatile and easy to use. We highly recommend the A636, both for its attractive design, and for the significant improvements in photo quality compared to its predecessor
8 Excellent
Reviewed by Justin Yu
The HP Photosmart A636, available for around £90, is a slight upgrade to last year's Photosmart A626, with a few minor software differences. The A636 retains the same body shape and design but adds additional photo customisation and editing capabilities. We didn't notice any significant change in print speed, but we certainly saw an improvement in photo quality.
Design
The A636 has the same small print-kiosk form of its predecessor. The exterior is still matte black, with a glossy output tray that folds down to reveal four media-card slots (CompactFlash, Memory Stick, SD/MultiMediaCard and xD-Picture Card) and a PictBridge USB port. The only aesthetic difference between the A626 and the A636 is the faceplate, which is now light grey instead of blue.
At 251mm by 132mm by 117mm, the printer takes up very little space on a table, and all the trays conveniently fold up into the body for clean storage. Popping open the output tray also releases the rear paper-input door and the 122mm (4.8-inch) colour touchscreen, our favourite feature on the printer. Other printers, like the Canon Selphy CP770, use hard navigation buttons surrounding the display to access features, but the A636's touchscreen and stylus work much better for direct photo editing.
When you're not using the stylus, you can either slide it back into the slot or prop it up on a quill-style holder if you're not completely finished editing. A small door on the front of the printer folds down to reveal the single HP tri-colour inkjet print cartridge (replacement cartridges cost £21). The rear-mounted input tray can hold 20 sheets of photo paper in a variety of sizes, including 4 by 6 inches, 5 by 7 inches, and 4 by 12 inches. HP sells its compatible photo paper on its Web site in a variety of sizes for any application.
The A636 also has the potential to become completely mobile and self-sufficient if you purchase a few additional accessories, such as an external battery pack, carrying case and Bluetooth dongle. The A636 already has a built-in handle, which folds down and out of the way when the printer is stationary, for comfortable transportation.
Features
While other printers require an external disc full of drivers and superfluous software, the A636 has all the necessary installation files already preloaded. We were able to set up our unit in less than 2 minutes by simply plugging the printer into our Windows XP desktop -- the printer did the rest. After a few minutes, the hardware completed its installation and HP's Photosmart Essential Software automatically loaded to indicate a successful install.
We've used the Photosmart Essential Software in the past and there are no noticeable differences in the version that comes with the A636. Since the printer can only print photos in a limited number of sizes, some of the features embedded in the software are unavailable. Users can connect to their home computers using a USB cable (not included, unfortunately), but the A636 can also edit directly from a memory card, USB stick or PictBridge digital camera.
The on-screen software is a sliced-down version of the Photosmart Essential Software and boasts a sleek, easy-to-use interface. When you insert a card into one of the slots, the printer immediately scans and brings up a thumbnail library of your photos. The screen can display up to nine thumbnails at a time, while the A626 only shows four. Alternatively, you can horizontally scroll using your choice of a large navigation bar at the bottom of the screen or soft left and right buttons on either side of the display.
After selecting the individual shots you want to print, you have several editing options, including cropping, pet eye fix (pets tend to have glowing green or yellow eyes in photos), brightness edit, and spot fix touch-up, which didn't always produce pleasing results in our field tests.
The A636 provides a variety of fun, creative ways to edit your photos, using more than 300 stock elements, including borders, frames, clip art, and even drawing on the screen. Choosing the 'create' option within a picture brings up a menu of features, including 'clip art', 'design gallery', 'greeting card', 'caption', 'albums' and 'draw'. Best of all, the interface lets you combine elements to really put your imagination to the test.
Our favourite supplemental component is 'draw', which brings up 20 different colours and three brush sizes to help you draw and paint over pictures. Afterwards, you have the option to save the new image to an external card or continue printing without saving, which saves room on the card by placing the image in the A636's 64MB memory bank. After the image is printed, the file is immediately deleted to conserve space.
In a pleasing touch, HP has added a slideshow to the feature set. Users can select individual photos for display or instruct the printer to scroll through random images on the card. The slideshow will also turn on automatically if the printer is inactive for more than 5 minutes.
Performance
The A636 performed at a relatively similar speed to the A626, printing 0.63 pages per minute. While this is about average for a small, single-function printer, it still doesn't come close to the quickest portable photo printer, the Epson PictureMate Dash PM260, which leads the pack at 1.42 pages per minute. It's also slower than the CP770, a dye-sublimation printer that uses heat to place four layers of ink over the paper.
The A636 shows significant improvement over the A626 in terms of print quality. The colour blocks that seemed grainy before are now crisp and clearly detailed. The colour spectrum remains solid and well defined, with sharp edges that seem to pop off the page. We used HP's recommended Advanced Photo Paper and saw that skin tones were very accurate.
Conclusion
With loads of software versatility, a clean design and vastly improved picture quality compared to the A626, we're comfortable recommending the HP Photosmart A636 above rival printers.
Additional editing by Charles Kloet
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