HP Photosmart D7460

The HP Photosmart D7460 looks a lot like other members of the Photosmart printer line. The brushed silver and white body stands 18.2 inches wide, 15.3 inches deep, and 6.8 inches tall, and weighs a very manageable 17.6 pounds. Protected behind a clear plastic door live four memory card slots that accept most types of cards some card types require an adapter, which is not included.

The front mounted USB port is PictBridge enabled, which means you can print directly from PictBridge cameras. You can also use it to connect and print from storage devices such as USB thumb drives. Although this printer does resembled older Photosmart models, the major difference is the distinct lack of buttons on the user interface. The reason for this is that the 3.5 inch color LCD is a touch screen.

HP has moved most of the direct print capabilities and functions to the touch screen, leaving the control panel clean.

The only buttons are the cancel, red eye removal, and print photos buttons. The touch screen is mounted in a panel that swivels through a 90 degree range, letting you optimize the viewing angle.

The screen is large, colorful, and responsive. The Photosmart D7460's paper handling design is typical of HP's Photosmart printers.

The unit comprises the output tray and two input trays. The main input tray sits at the bottom and pulls out for easy loading. Adjustable paper guides allow you to load various paper sizes as many as 100 sheets of plain paper. Immediately above the main tray is the dedicate photo paper tray that holds 4x6 sheets and smaller. The nice thing about this paper tray is that it engages automatically, so you don't have to push it in manually in order to print from that tray.

Above both input trays is the output tray, with an extend able arm for corralling long prints. A clear window lets you see if the photo paper tray is empty, while the output tray flips up for loading photo paper. This printer uses six color printing, with individual ink cartridges for less waste. The 10mL black cartridge costs $18 to replace and prints roughly 480 pages. Each color tank holds 4mL and costs $10 to replace.

The number of prints each can produce varies by color, as some colors are more commonly used than others. For example, the light magenta and light cyan are rated to print more pages because they're used less often than the regular magenta and cyan. Based on HP's estimates of the number of pages produced per cartridge, we estimate that a black only page costs about 2.6 cents and a full color (six colors) page costs about 10.3 cents both costs are good. Unfortunately, HP does not offer XL versions of these cartridges for this printer.