HP Smart Tank 5103
Easy to use
06/19/2024 17:58
I have a love-hate relationship with printers. I love having the ability to print good quality documents and photos at home but I've had issues with most of the printers I have owned over the years. The ink cartridges drying up between uses, running out of ink during important print jobs, mediocre print quality and ink that costs more to replace than buying a new printer are some complaints my family has endured.
The HP Smart Tank 5103 is poised to change all of that. The first thing I noticed when opening up the box was the ink comes in bottles, along with two cartridges that look very much like the printer ink I have grown accustomed to over the years. Instead of being vessels for the ink, however, these are print head cartridges. Since the ink isn't stored in them, apparently, they will not dry out or encrust on the nozzles the way other printer ink cartridges you have encountered might. There are two print head cartridges, one black and one Cyan-Magenta-Yellow. Accordingly, there are four bottles of ink for each of them and you use them to fill airtight ink containers that you can actually see the levels on right on the front of the printer. The way you fill the inkwells is very satisfying and feels very secure and vacuum-y: you up-end each ink bottle and attach it to the matching inkwell. There is no fuss or muss involved.
Once the inkwells were filled, I attached the power cord and turned the printer on. Set-up was quick and easy, especially since I already had the HP Smart app on my phone. I just added the new printer to the app, connected to my home WiFi and got started! The app registered the printer for me, since I already had an HP account. Then the printer automatically printed out a calibration sheet that I popped on the scanning bed to register. Easy peasy.
I printed from my laptop and phone, through the HP Smart app and directly from my photo library. My WiFi has been a little testy, so I had to restart it once or twice and turn the printer off and on but once it connected it printed very quickly. I printed on regular paper and on the 4x6 photo paper that came with the HP Smart Tank . The print quality on plain office paper is pretty impressive but the photographic printing is absolutely astonishing. I got out a magnifying glass and couldn't see the pixels at all! You can see how much more vivid the colors are on the photo printing in my third photo below.
I am looking forward to trying more print projects on the HP Smart Tank 5103!
superdumb
Wichita , Spojené státy americké
Age: 53
Gender: Female