HP Photosmart A646 Compact Printer

HP Photosmart A646 Compact Printer

In the old days of film cameras, you'd go on vacation, come home, dither for a while, then take your film to a developer (or mail it off) and end up with a handsome set of blurry 4x6 prints of family members with the tops of their heads cut off.

The good news is that nowadays with digital cameras we can perfectly compose works of art using the screens on the back of the cameras and store hundreds or even thousands of photos on a single memory card.

But somehow - most of the time - nobody actually has time to sort through all those images and print out the best ones.

I know that we've got years of photos sitting on hard drives and stored on photo-sharing websites, but only a handful of prints.

That's why I was so eager to test the HP Photosmart A646 Compact Printer. As HP says, the printer lets customers view, edit, create and personalize photos using the TouchSmart control panel.

What makes it eco-friendly? First of all, it's small. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the whole package isn't much bigger than a small toaster. Making something small generally means using fewer raw materials.

Second, it's Energy Star-rated as energy efficient.

In addition, nearly 1/3 of the printer's body is made from recycled plastic. You'd never know this just by looking at the printer, as it looks and feels as solid and sleek as any other piece of electronics these days. I continue to be impressed at the way that recycled plastic can look just as good as 'virgin' plastic.

And the printer itself is so small and compact that it can easily be carried from one place to another using the included reusable tote made from recycled plastics. (By shipping the printer within this tote, HP has really managed to cut out a lot of unnecessary packaging waste.)

How did the printer work in action? Initially, I thought the quality was a little below photo lab standards. Looking closely at certain parts of the picture, I could see a linear pattern where the printer had put down ink. As the printer got warmed up, the quality seemed to improve, although I still feel like you'll get somewhat better quality from a lab.

What HP does give you is convenience and ease-of-use. We printed photos both by connecting the printer to a desktop computer with a standard (not-included) printer USB cable, and also by plugging a memory card directly into the printer. Both worked just fine, although the computer option seemed to work better since I had trouble locating specific images on my memory card using the printer's touch-screen display.

We also had some issues where printed photos were cropped a bit differently than they displayed on the computer. The issue seemed to occur a bit randomly and did not necessarily seem to be linked to the size or shape of the image as displayed on the computer screen. To be honest, I didn't delive into the instruction manual to see if there was some way of getting around this cropping problem.

Also note that you'll need to take both paper and ink costs into account when determining if the printer is right for you. We typically managed about 40 photos per cartridge. HP did include a handy, eco-friendly postage-paid envelope (folded nicely into a tiny package) for returning spent ink cartridges for recycling.

What's the final verdict? Between its recycled plastic content, its energy efficiency and its small size, the printer seems like a fairly Green product. I may not be smitten with the print quality, but for procrastinators like myself an HP Photosmart A646 Compact Printer could be just the ticket for getting some of your photos off the screen and into the real world on paper that can be handed around, put in a wallet or in a frame and hung on the wall.

Finally being surrounded by physical, tangible reminders of happy moments from the last few years? That's pretty sweet.

Where to buy:

Buy directly from HP for $149.99 or from Amazon.com for $99.99.

Disclosure - HP loaned me an A646 printer for testing. I sent it back when the test was complete.