Summary: Great photo printer
Comment: We purchased this printer when our son was born. The 4x6 borderless printing is awsome. The ink seems to last a long time and the photo quality is just like getting them developed. I use the HP premium glossy photo paper (samples come with printer). People can't belive I printed the pictures from home. For the money this printer cannot be beat! Only thing bad is if the photo gets wet the ink smears, until an affordable printer comes out that uses ink that don't smear (and with this printers same print quality) this is the printer for someone with a small budget and wants great quality.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Quality Photo Printer
Comment: Like other reviewers, I wasted dozens of pages trying to get printer to work initially. Printouts would give up randomly (usually with 3/4 of a page printed) with a CRC error. HP support desk blamed corrupt files on my hard disk (Windows ME)which seemed dubious as I had had no other problems suggesting corruption of files. Was about to take the printer back to the retailer, when I happened to take delivery of a new PC (XP) and decided to try it on that. It all worked perfectly on the new PC first time. I have heard of other users having perfectly working HP PCs on ME/W98, finding CRC errors on upgrading to XP. Obviously something is amiss, but for me a happy ending.
The printer is first class at highest quality settings using best glossy paper, printing flawless borderless photos to A4 with ease. It gets through a lot of coloured ink though, maybe only producing 8-12 A4 photo sheets per cartridge which is about a 1/3 of the volume my old Epsom colour printer used to produce on a similarly priced cartridge (with similar quality results). It is very slow at producing plain text, unlike my HP1512 which breezes through producing documents. It, like most HP photo/inkjet printers, is a noisy beast and there is always the concern that the grinding and banging noises emanating from its innards are fatal, but it makes them over and over again, without apparent harm. It doesn't take much paper in the in-tray so not suitable for volume use. I occasionally get 'paper not big enough' errors using some Neato CD inserts which are perhaps 1/4mm narrower than A4 - which seems a bit fussy.
The printer has multi-format card readers, so printing straight from the printer without a PC is possible by using a digital camera's memory card, but there is no preview of the photo on the small LCD monitor, so you'd have to note down the picture numbers from the camera first.
Overall I am very happy with the printer, due to the quality of the output which is its main selling point.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Awesome Photos
Comment: If you are looking for an affordable photoprinter, not a fast text printer, this is the one.
I have a 2 year old printer at home printing digital photos at 2400x1200 dpi. I printed the same photo on both my old printer and the hp 7660 at max resolution and wow the colors in the hp printer are more vivid and accurate. The photo felt more life like, similar to film prints.
The draw backs are you can not refill the ink cartridges, and you have to switch between black and the photo cartridges. It is slow printing text pages compared to a dual roll printer like a deskjet.
In summary if you want a great photo printer at a reasonable price this one is it, if you want to print say 24 page documents all the time buy another printer. This was designed to be a photo printer, not a document printer.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Solution available to low ink warning
Comment: I am a prospective buyer of a HP 7660 printer and after reading the reviews, I noticed that
most them were favorable, however I was concerned about the comments of Dr. Tug, who was disturbed that when he used a refilled cartridge, that he kept getting a warning of a
low ink level whenever he went to print a document. I checked this out with P.S. Ink of Northfield, NJ, who I have used for refills on my present (now defunct) printer and was told that there are work around solutions to the problem. Altho I do not have the complete details, one involves rotating 3 different cartridges.
Customer Rating:
Summary: *****PERFECT PICTURES AND VERSATILE*****
Comment: I'm a stickler for research. I extensively researched six of the top photo printers on the market. I eventually narrowed my search to the HP 7660 based on these attributes:
A- Picture Quality- It can't be beat! I went to the trouble of printing three pictures from the HP 7660 and compared them to the same prints I received from a well know photo lab from Bentonville, Arkansas (started by a guy named Sam). The clarity and realism are identical; perfect pictures.
B- Versatility- I wanted a photo printer that would serve as a document printer as well. It does both. And unlike the SONY X5 that doesn't print documents nor any other photo size other that a 4X6, this printer does it all. And for those that whine about having to interchange ink cartridges to print photos versus documents; so what! It takes (not an exaggeration) less than 5 seconds. HP even gives you secure cradle to rest the dormant ink cartridge in until it's ready to be used.
C- Price-- Compared to other photo printers, the price is exceptional. It will pay for itself in memories, gifts, entertainment, and convenience in no time. $150.00 is VERY reasonable.
I wanted professional picture results. I wanted to print documents. I wanted a fair price. The HP 7660 gave me everything I wanted. I am OVERLY satisfied. No hang-up on installation. No problems whatsoever. I'm very satisfied with my purchase.