Print Photos Anywhere, Anytime...No Computer Required!: HP Photosmart A636 Compact Photo Inkjet Printer

Author's Rating:

Pros: Prints beautiful pictures; prints fairly quickly; easy-to-use touch screen; clip art/creating functions; picture "fixing" functions

Cons: Absolutely none!

The Bottom Line: 
This little photo printer is the bomb-diggity. It prints gorgeous pictures easily and quickly, is portable, doesn't require a computer and has neat clip art/creating functions.

Author's Review
I see lots of computers, digital cameras, GPS units and other "techy" type of items presented on QVC all the time. I get tempted from time to time by some of these items, but I was never tempted by an item as much as I was tempted by the HP Photosmart A636 Compact Photo Inkjet Printer. The ability to print pictures from a digital camera anywhere without having a computer available is something I never even thought of - but as soon as I saw it presented on QVC, I suddenly realized how nice this would be. I ordered it and waited for its arrival. I'm so glad I got this neat little printer - it has been a LOT of fun to have, especially during the recent holidays.


Printer Details:

The HP Photosmart A636 Compact Photo Inkjet Printer is a small, compact photo printer that is easily portable and allows you to print 4"x6", 5"x7" or 4"x12" (panoramic) pictures without using a computer. It measures just under 10" wide, 5" high and just over 4" deep, and has a handle for easy carrying. It is made from mostly black plastic, but has a few areas made of gray plastic as well. It comes with a gray plastic stylus that is used to select photos and options on the touch screen. The stylus has its own little storage area on the printer.

HP made this little printer so easy to store and to transport. All of the parts on a regular printer that "stick out" or "stand up" have the ability on the HP Photosmart A636 Compact Photo Inkjet Printer to fold in or snap shut easily in order to make this printer very easy to store and transport. The touch screen pops up for easy viewing and then folds down flush with the printer. The "input tray" (where the photo paper is held) pops out so that the photo paper can be loaded, then folds in flush with the printer when you are done. The front of the printer (where the printed picture comes out of the printer and where the memory card or flash drive is put into the printer) has a cover that opens while you are using the printer, then snaps shut.

This printer uses HP 110 Tri-color Inket print cartridges to print both color and black and white photos. It does not use a separate color and black cartridge.

The paper tray holds 4"x6", 5"x7" and 4"x12" photo paper and holds up to 20 sheets at a time.

There are four memory card slots on this printer. You can insert any of the following into one of the appropriate slots: xD-Picture Card, Compact Flash I and II, Memory Stick, Secure Digital MultiMediaCard (MMC).

If you are using the HP Photosmart A636 Compact Photo Inkjet Printer with a computer, your computer's operating system will need to be Microsoft Windows XP Home, XP Professional, x64 Edition, or Vista Mac OS X 10.4x or higher.

This printer comes with a 1-year limited warranty.


My Experience:

I have to admit that I'm not that much of a "techy" person, but I do like to dabble in electronics and computers from time to time. I thought that I might have a bit of a hard time setting up and initially using this little photo printer. Imagine my surprise (and delight) when I was printing pictures within five minutes of having it out of the box!

You can use this printer two ways. You can either put a memory card from your camera into a slot on the HP Photosmart A636 Compact Photo Inkjet Printer, or you can connect your computer to this printer with a USB cable and print pictures that are already stored on your computer to this little printer. The way that you print with a memory card is simply to put the memory card into the slot, and the printer automatically recognizes the pictures on the memory card. You then use the touch screen to display, select, edit and print the pictures. 

The first time that you print pictures from your computer to the HP Photosmart A636 Compact Photo Inkjet Printer, when you connect the USB cable to the printer and your computer, the printer recognizes this automatically and installs the software that allows you to print from your printer. All you have to do is then select what pictures you want to print, and select the HP Photosmart A636 Compact Photo Inkjet Printer from the print menu so that the pictures will print to this printer instead of to your normal inkjet or laser printer.

The touch screen is so easy to use. All of the options are easy to understand, and all you have to do is touch the option you want with the stylus. There is always a "back" option displayed, so that you can go back to the previous screen. I have had no issues with this touch screen whatsoever since I've had this printer. It moves along at a good clip, too - it isn't slow and displays everything you select quickly. As you edit your pictures and add frames or text to them, the changes you make are displayed on the touch screen so that you can see what your picture will look like should you decide to print it.

One of my favorite things to do with this printer is to edit pictures. I take a lot of pictures of our Boston Terrier, Baxter, and there is, a lot of times, "pet red eye" which usually shows up as cloudy blue in the black iris of his eyes instead of the black color that his eyes really are. There is a "fix pet red eye" function on this printer that is so easy to use. I just select the picture from the touch screen, click "edit" and then "fix pet red eye" - and voila - it fixes it in just a few seconds without me having to even select the eye area first! It works beautifully without looking painted on or fake. Of course, there is also a "fix red eye" for people too.

Another function I like is the "create" function. This allows you to add text captions (in over 20 colors and six fonts) to your pictures. At Christmas, I printed a bunch of family photos and added text at the bottom that said "Christmas 2008" in red or green. It gave a nice touch to the photos and everyone commented on how neat it was to have a caption on the photos. You can also add color frames and borders to your pictures, with themes such as birthday, holidays and pets. Other things you can do include creating greeting cards, drawing on photos using the touch screen stylus, adding clip art and printing passport photos.

So aside from the somewhat "crafty" functions of the HP Photosmart A636 Compact Photo Inkjet Printer, you probably want to know about the quality of the pictures. In a word, the quality of the pictures is fantastic. It's actually better than my local drugstore photo processing, and it's far better than our Epson injket printer. The pictures are sharp, the colors are true and vibrant, the printer never prints the pictures crooked and never leaves any white edges (like the printer didn't "grab" the photo paper right when it was going into the printer). I've printed a variety of pictures, and I have to say that it prints all types of pictures well. Pets, people, houses, the outdoors and Christmas trees all have looked great when printed. I realize that a lot of this quality is the quality of the digital camera, but my digital camera is just a 4.0 megapixel camera and is three years old. However, I was printing pictures at Christmas from my boyfriend's family members' digital cameras that were much newer and were 8.0 megapixels - and the printer printed those pictures equally as beautifully as the ones from my "older" digital camera.

One other really nice thing about this printer is that the pictures are instantly dry. You don't have to worry about smudging the ink or getting ink on your hands. As you see the picture coming out of the front of the printer as it's printing, you can touch it immediately. I know that this speaks more of the ink than the printer, but I did want to point it out.

I've used the more expensive HP glossy photo paper and Kodak photo paper, and the $3 glossy photo paper from Big Lots. All three brands result in great-looking pictures and seem to be of the same quality. When I start to run low on paper, I will probably purchase just the $3 photo paper because the pictures turn out just as nice.

The ink cartridge that came with the HP Photosmart A636 Compact Photo Inkjet Printer was a full capacity ink cartridge and wasn't a "starter" cartridge with less ink that a lot of full-size printers come with. I have printed well over 60 pictures so far with this original cartridge, and the little ink supply icon on the printer's touch screen is showing that my cartridge is just under half full. I truly expected to get no more than 25 or 30 photos from each cartridge, so I'm thrilled that I'm probably going to get at least 75 pictures from each cartridge. 

The replacement cartridge for the HP Photosmart A636 Compact Photo Inkjet Printer is an HP 110 and ranges in price from $18 to $24 online. HP claims that each cartridge will yield about 55 photos, but based on my experience, the 55 photos is on the conservative side.

All in all, I can't say too many nice things about this little printer. I am completely in love with it! In addition to the gorgeous pictures it prints, I love how portable it is. At Christmas, all I had to do when we took this to my boyfriend's brother's house was plug it into an electrical outlet and we were all taking pictures with each other's digital cameras, adding text to the pictures and printing them. People were practically standing in line to get a picture printed and they couldn't believe how nice the pictures looked. This is a great little printer for any occasion when you want to print pictures on the spot. It would also be something that kids can do as long as they are over the age of 8 or 9 or so and understand the basics of digital camera and printer technology (these days, kids know more than adults when it comes to technology, so this shouldn't be a problem in most households). I can see this printer making a big splash at a birthday party, an office party or a retirement party. And it would be great to take on a visit to a nursing home along with a digital camera to leave your loved one with several pictures from the visit. This is probably one of the best things I've ever spent $120 on. We will get a LOT of use from the HP Photosmart A636 Compact Photo Inkjet Printer.


Price and Purchasing Information:

My HP Photosmart A636 Compact Photo Inkjet Printer was $120 at QVC. However, they no longer have it available. It can currently be found at Amazon.com for $119.99 and at bhphotovideo.com for $137.95. As far as brick and mortar stores go, I saw it at Circuit City not too long ago for about $120, but since that chain is closing its doors, you might have to look for it elsewhere or look for a similar model instead.