HP Photosmart C4488

Full Review

The C4488 is versatile in more ways than one – it can use different cartridges for different tasks, has the ability to print on compatible CD / DVD media and there’s a host of printing options in the driver and bundled software. Also, amongst the three manufacturers in our Top 5, HP is the only one making Linux drivers available for users – that’s another plus point. True to its ‘Photosmart’ tag, the C4488 is quite adept at photo printing, albeit with a couple of minor imperfections. When held close to the eye, the print out showed graininess and there were thin streaks in some parts of the image (we used fresh cartridges and aligned them before starting our print quality tests). At normal viewing distances however, there’s no problem. Coming to the good parts, when we used the optional 6-ink system, colors were brilliant and stood out beautifully on the inkjet photo glossy paper. Colors did not seem over-saturated, yet looked vibrant. Color reproduction was the best on the two HPs. Text print in normal quality mode was good too, but the ‘darkest’ black was from the two Canons. There’s a dedicated photo tray and when choosing a photo paper, this tray is automatically selected. Speed wise, this is no racer. But then, for normal home use, this is no make or break factor. The Photosmart C4488 managed 6.5 pages per minute in normal quality mode. (excluding spool time – time for first print) with A4 sized pages filled with text. On the scanner front, it took all of three minutes for a 600dpi photo scan and 66 seconds for color copy. And, speaking of color copy, the two HPs produced the best color copy quality in normal mode.

The C4488 is versatile in more ways than one – it can use different cartridges for different tasks, has the ability to print on compatible CD / DVD media and there’s a host of printing options.

Bottom Line

Users keen on photo print quality can use the optional 6 ink system cartridges (the default is the usual 4-ink CMYK), besides, HP has XL cartridges that reduce the cost of printing. Photo quality with the default 4-ink system should have been better.