At the back connections include USB and Ethernet, but the Photosmart Premium C309g also supports wireless networking. Two memory card slots, for SD, MemoryStick and xD cards are set next to a dual-purpose USB socket, which connects to PictBridge cameras and USB memory drives. A pull-out paper stop prevents printed A4 sheets from sliding onto the desk, but increases the printer’s footprint quite considerably. The printer draws the photo tray into itself when you select photo media. It has a 7:5.5 aspect ratio, which is better for photo previews than a widescreen.īelow the control panel is the usual paper tray arrangement, which can take both plain paper and photo blanks. It’s very easy to use and is a bit more sensitive than Lexmark’s. This is a capacitative screen, with a bright backlight and large icons. The screen itself is surrounded by six, single-function touch buttons, which illuminate when their functions are available. The fixed, angled control panel has a raised rim with the touchscreen set almost as a separate unit on a five-position hinge. The top cover, gloss black with a series of embossed geometric lines, is reminiscent of some recent HP laptops and lifting the lid gives easy access to the flatbed scanner, though there’s little allowance in the hinge for scanning books. HP has gone out of its way to design this machine with very smooth, simple lines. HP’s Photosmart Premium C309g, aimed at the home enthusiast with a taste for photo printing, has an 89mm touchscreen which, along with its surrounding touch buttons, is the only control on the machine, apart from its physical power button. The only thing that let the C309g's photos down slightly was that very dense black areas, such as night skies, had a rather powdery appearance when compared to those of the PX710W.Although it may have attracted the most coverage for its new range of inkjet all-in-ones, Lexmark is not the only printer maker to include large LCD touchscreens in its new models. Together, these deliver super-sharp results, with faithful colours and excellent definition in shadow areas. ![]() There are five inks under the hood - the standard cyan, magenta, yellow and black, and an extra, photo-strength black for more subtle shading. The C309g proved no less proficient with photos. The C309g sailed through our greyscale test at all quality settings, cleanly picking out each tone in a scale of 21 steps, going from white to black with just 5 per cent difference in tone between each. At draft quality, the smallest you should expect to go before you see feathering is eight points in both cases. The 'best' setting takes over four times as long - 5 minutes and 52 seconds - but, while the characters are darker, they're no better-formed, so we'd recommend sticking to the normal setting.īusiness graphics were dealt with well, with strong, solid colours and white text on a black background clear and sharp down to eight points with serif text and four points with sans-serif text at both best and normal quality on office paper. Upping the quality to 'normal' got rid of the feathering but increased the job time to a still acceptable 1 minute and 16 seconds. Epson's Stylus Photo PX710W and Stylus SX610FW were both faster in this test, but neither machine's results were as good as those of the C309g. This is good, but not especially fast, which makes the attendant noise and desk-shaking feel like overkill. Ten pages at this setting were printed in 46 seconds, with a 1-second spool and a 13-second print time for the first page. In general, the C309g's software bundle is pretty good (as you'd hope, considering how long it takes to install), and we were particularly impressed by the linked comparison-shopping engine that pulls in the best prices for ink supplies from a range of retailers, including Dabs and Ebuyer.ĭraft-quality black text was handled well on photocopy paper, with only slight feathering. The editing tools are minimal, but they do let you crop, correct colours and sharpen the results, so they cover the major bases. ![]() We did this, courtesy of the excellent driver, which makes it easy to scan multi-page documents into a single file and manipulate the results without using third-party apps. We asked it to scan to the computer, and it told us to 'Try starting scan from computer'. ![]() We also found that the C309g didn't always work happily with our PC. There's just one button on the front - for power - lost in a sea of dark brown plastic. The downside of the smart display is the printer's bland appearance.
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