HP Photosmart 385 Compact Photo Printer (Q6387A#ABA)

Average customer rating: 3.5

Works fine some times
this printer is junk: jams
Worst Service EVER!!
Not durable...scam artists at customer support
Nice printer with only a few problems

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HP Photosmart 385 Compact Photo Printer (Q6387A#ABA)

Manufacturer: Hewlett Packard
Product Group: CE
Binding: Electronics
ASIN: B0009Q5BT0

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Product Description

<b>Box Includes:</b> HP Photosmart 385 GoGo Photo Printer, HP 95 Tri-color Inkjet Printer Cartridge(7 ml), power module with cord, index card kit, CD with photo & imaging software for Windows and Macintosh and user's guide.
With the HP Photosmart 385 GoGo Photo Printer you can print on the go, wherever you travel. Leave the PC at home: you can print right from most memory cards or flash drives, plus from PictBridge-enabled cameras. Save time and money: the display lets you easily see exactly what you'll print -- no need for paper-wasting "rough drafts". Open the paper trays at the touch of a button, then start printing using the friendly menus and one-touch buttons. Afterwards, just fold up this stylish little space-saver and set it on a counter or shelf. Print fun stickers 16 to a page, 4 x 12 panorama shots, and action sequences from video clips Print artistic and vintage-looking black-and-white photos with the optional HP Gray Photo Inkjet Cartridge Print directly from your phone, PDA, or laptop using an optional HP Bluetooth Wireless Printer Adapter HP SureSupply keeps you on top of your toner replacement needs - and helps you order online Go portable! Keep on going with an optional rechargeable battery (up to 75 printers per charge) Uses C8766W, C9363W, C9368A ink cartridges

Customer Reviews:

Works fine some times.......2007-04-28

If I fix the image on my computer, copy the image to a CF card, and use the card print the image, the printer complains "Cannot display this photo". It doesn't print it either. I really don't want to connect this printer to my computer. Another HP printer connected to the printer prints the picture fine.

All pictures are in simple JPEG format.

HP Service was absolutely worthless. The only suggestion I got was to "change the power source". While I was extremely skeptical, I did try a different source and as I expected, nothing changed. The lady at the support told me to try another power source!

Update 5/4/2007:
I found that the images edited using the software are missing some EXIF information (X and Y resolution) and that is causing this printer to fail on those images.

There is a free software on the Internet called jhead.exe using which I could copy EXIF data from another image to the problematic image. Then the printer printed it fine.

BTW, I compared a print from this printer to a print from another HP all-in-one deskjet printer. The quality of this printer is barely better than the regular printer. I don't see any advantage to this printer (other than portability).

this printer is junk: jams.......2007-01-21

this printer is junk.
after a couple months of low usage,
it now jams all the time.

the power supply also died, and i had to replace it at high expense.
and now i have this jam problem.
what a piece of junk!

and as usual, the windows xp sw drivers are awful. 180 mbytes! give me a break. and no linux drivers available. and no simple/small drivers available.

no more hp photo printers for me.

Worst Service EVER!!.......2007-01-16

I got this printer last year as a present. The printer worked well at the time, although it ate up A LOT of ink. Then I went to use it for the first time in a few months and all it would flash was a error message. I called, but they wanted me to pay just to TALK to someone about the problem. So, instead I got online and talked to a person there about the problem and all she could tell me is that it was a software problem and that I could trade it for a newer model but it would cost me a $100. Okay is anyone else seeing a problem here? I don't recommend any HP products....this company obviously does not stand by their products and instead I recomend Lexmark...they do!

Not durable...scam artists at customer support.......2006-10-08

We bought our photosmart printer about eight months ago and it recently started having paper jam problems. We have probably printed about 40 pictures on it total. The problem go so bad it would not print anymore. We called technical support and they said that it was a "software" problem and that the printer's warranty for software issues is only 90 days. They wanted $59 to fix the problem.

While the printer does make great pictures I don't see how paper jamming in the printer would be a software issue.

Nice printer with only a few problems.......2006-10-08

This is a solid printer with problems typical to HP photo printers.

The dedicated paper path prints with only very limited image drift. This is something you can't get on a printer that prints other paper sizes. Talk to HP about image drift and they will deny it but it is very real. If you are trying to print composed images this is something that will be important to you.

Yield per cartridge using hp hi capacity ink is about 120 6x4 images per cartridge. You will need to clean the print head at about every 30 images then print a dummy image (to saturate the head) to avoid noticeable banding and a more subtle banding that occurs in wide strips about 4 across the page. I use medical alcohol wipes to clean the heads.

If you are printing a black or photo grey back you can use the hp photo grey cartridge for that, this printer will accept that ink cartridge as well. Also old cartridges that no longer print color accurate print black just fine for a while.

You can only fit about 7 to 10 pages in the paper tray at a time without introducing multiple sheet feeds, jams, or slippage.

The PC drivers tend to convert your images to 300 dpi. This printer runs best when you put the image on a cf or other memory card then print from the memory card. Then you can print full 1200 dpi images and never hang up. When you try to print 1200dpi images from the pc, you will be either down sampled or the image will be ignored. Using the memory card, you can preview the images and decided which and how many of each to print.

This is one of many HP printers that when given a 6x4 inch image will resize and crop the image on its own. The only way to print something near your 6x4 inch image accurately is to add a small amount of bleed space around the edge to allow for the possibility of the paper going through a slight bit askew (even commercial printers do this) then add a border to make the size 7.5x5 inches. Put the image on a memory card, then when you print it, program the printer to crop it to 1.25. This will print the inner 6x4 inch image. I kid you not. This is a simple process and literally the only way to print your image as a 6x4 inch image. The automatic resizing software cannot be defeated. I have talked to HP engineers about this.

Best color accuracy and image quality are achieved using a good paper like MOAB Kokapelli and printing tiff images through a memory card. Jpeg images are fine and if your image starts that way, leave it alone. If you shoot raw images than transfer those into Photoshop or something like that, just save them out as tiff files on your memory card. This printer does not accept CMYK.

Image quality is very high. When printing through a PC, I personally find all the HP software designed to "improve" my image to be annoying as I have to constantly shut it off as their setting don't like to stay set. This is another reason to just print from a memory card.

This device also functions as a card reader/writer and allows your memory cards to show up as disk devices independent of the printer. This allows you to pull the memory from your camera and plug it into the printer to transfer images instead of plugging the camera into the PC.

Overall this is a good device. I do think the paper sensor may be going out but this is from attempting to pull paper out once printing has started - be warned. So far I have printed about 2000 images from this printer. Average wasted paper per run of 40 is 2 sheets.

It would be nice to be able to clean inside the unit. Most of the interior is sealed. This printer ships with low capacity ink cartridges.

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