HP Photosmart C4388 Printer IN NOVEMBER LAST year, we compared budget multifunction devices HP's Photosmart C4288 was our best buy at that time. Coinciding with the start of the new year, HP released a newer version, the Photosmart C4388 which is identical in specs to its sibling, but comes with wireless connectivity.
Quality and Speed :-
On the printing front, the new C4388 produces very good quality with text, but when it comes to photo printing, the MFD is a bit disappointing similar to what we felt with the C4288 as well. Under close inspection you can observe the prints being slightly grainy. From a distance of say, two feet however, the prints look fine. On the bright side, colors are reproduced faithfully with no colorcast.
Time taken for printing the first page of a text filled MS Word document was slightly longer at 20 seconds. We have seen inkjet printers in this range that are faster.
After the first page however, the time per page is a very health nine seconds. The C4388 sprinted in A4 photo printing (Best quality) taking just a little over two and a half minutes. Copying and scanning durations are average and should not bother most home users.
Features and Design :-
The most striking feature of this device is its wireless capability. With the inbuilt IEEE 802.11g interface, you can connect it to your home router and all computers connected to that router can wirelessly print on the C4388 (alternatively, if you don't have a router you can connect it even to a single PC in an ad-hoc mode). Thus, if you have a laptop, you can fire the print comŽmand from anywhere in your house, so long as Wi-Fi is active.
The C4388 has memory card readers for all common formats MMC / SD, MS / DUO, XD and CF. A 1.5 inch display helps preview the images before printing. The flatbed scanner can scan at up to 1200 dpi (optical), while the printing unit manages 4800 x 1200 optimised dpi for color and 1200 dpi for black. On the spec sheet at least, these numbers will not be a bottleneck for home users.
Using the copier function is pretty straight forward there are dedicated buttons for color / black, quality and number of copies. You can know the settings, thanks to the two displays (one of which doubles up as the preview screen while printing from memory cards). The manual clearly explains the steps involved in setting up wireless access, so even novices users can do it with relative ease. The software bundle from HP includes Smart Web Printing, a software that can print only the content from web pages and thus help save ink.
Verdict:-
Wireless printing is a welcome addition in the home segment, especially in a printer that is good in other departments as well. This comes at a small premium at Rs 7,999 it is costlier by Rs 1500 when compared to the C4288, which is identical in every respect, but excludes Wi-Fi. However, users who want a large number of prints need to think twice about this model owing to its higher printing costs Rs 3.50 per page of black text (based on HP's claimed 200 pages with a cartridge costing Rs 698). Nevertheless, if you want the convenience of wireless printing and an overall good MFD, without the requirement of bulk prints, the Photosmart C4388 is a good buy.
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