Review or buy HP Photosmart D5160 New & Used

I am very pleased with the printer, so far. At the moment I have used it only for general document printing and for an occasional photograph, and it has lived up to expectation. However, I have not used any of the more exotic features it lays claim to. This review is therefore very provisional. This is the third HP printer I have had and at the moment I see no need to abandon the brand.

First the critism: Seems an OK sort of printer in general, as it prints CDs and DVDs well most of the time only occaisonally printing a part of the CD/DVD then ejecting for some reason (a dud). Also a more useful colour LCD screen would have been nice, as it can be quite hard to work out what it's error messages are from a single lowly LCD calculator type screen. I'm writing mainly to address the unfounded bad reviews this printer has been getting here "Won't print except gibberish from HPs overbloated software". Very wrong, and I wish I'd picked this man's printer up from the skip he proported to throw it into. I've sucessfully printed from every single app I've tried, and I love Acoustica as it has has built in CD/DVD printing support for the D5160. Another reviewer said it was unreliable and marked it only one or two stars. This is also untrue, mine has been working well for over a year. Yet another reviewer complained of the ink meter not working - the ink meter only works with genuine HP cartridges. Overall a good printer, but if I could buy it again, I would buy the more expensive HP model, for the larger and better coloured status screen. I would stick to HP as the print heads are renewed with every new cartridge thus extending the life of your printer immeasurably.

This is an excellent printer, and quite robust, for DVDs, photos and general everyday. Easy to use and with good results. Photos good quality. This is the second one I have as the first one sadly died after 18 months heavy useage. A colleague had one as well and hers didn't last as long but it was heavily used. When they die it seems to be something with the cartridge bit that moves across when it prints as they were both the same. Would have another one though.

HP D5160 printer My first printer failed after 6 months giving persistent "Paper jam" warnings whe there was no jam. The retailer exchanged the machine with the same model, after a further 6 months the second macine refused to print 4X6 photo prints from the Photo tray giving an "Out of paper" warning when there was plenty of paper {5X7 paper worked OK } I am about to return this machine also. I think I will avoid HP in future. It does not seem very reliable.

This printer would be a nice item, if it didn't faint at the first whiff of photo paper. I bought mine primarily to print on DVD's and all went well for a little while. But just 3 months after purchase I decided to print a photo and the machine jammed, then refused to do anything but flash a light at me ever again. After going through the reset procedures given on line, all the 'help' department could do was give me a UK help number which is apparently in India. After being questioned by an unfriendly 'support' person I was instructed to fax proof of purchase as they had me down as out of warrenty although I bought it in March and there is supposed to be 1 year warrenty on it. Not having a fax machine appears to be a criminal offense. Luckily I had a scanner and we agreed I could email proof, as a photocopy by post was not acceptible. 2 months later, I still have an almost new machine that doesn't work. I won't buy HP again.

I have owned a number of printers over the years, but this is my first HP for almost a decade. Picture quality is very good, excellent even, and the ink usage is also very respectable. However, the ink monitor is very suspect. Both tanks have been showing empty for 3 months and the prints are not lacking in any of the component colours. The paper feed for A4 works well, and paper jams are very rare which suits my children who have struggled in the past. The strange feed in system for A5 photo paper is, at best, irritating and normally totally unusable. It shuffles the plastic carrier backwards and forwards, but rarely picks up the paper and attempts to use it require a great amount of attention and luck. If you just need basic functions then this printer delivers, it is fast with quality output and excellent running costs. It is the peripheral aspects that struggle to keep up.

I've been buying computer equipment for maybe 15 years, and this is the most unreliable, bug ridden, inefficient, poorly designed pile of scrap metal I have ever encountered. It flatly refuses to print anything but gibberish from anything but the cumbersome, bloated non intuitive rubbish they include as printing software. I just threw mine in a skip, after finally giving up. Do NOT buy this rubbish.

When I was considering this product there were lots of conflicting reviews on this page. Most of the conflict was about the quality of the Cd/DVD printing facility, and this was very important to me because as a home recording musician the ability to print directly onto Cds was the main reason for my interest in this printer. Some reviews claimed the Cd/DVD printing was very good and others said it was very poor. After checking the price in town (where it was over thirty pounds dearer in one shop and over ten pounds dearer in the cheapest shop), I ordered it via Amazon. It arrived on time and was well packed. I particularly liked the way it was covered in black plastic so no nosey neighbours etc, or dodgy delivery persons knew what was being delivered. It had been dispatched from France and contained a mains adapter/converter so it could be plugged into English sockets. This works well though it looks a little strange. I found the print quality to be excellent for ordinary paper, photo paper, and importantly for me it also printed very well on my Cds. The cd/dvd designing software by HP and another similar one provided were both very limited in that they seem to only provide some print boxes for you to type into, but the HP one does allow you to print a photo (bmp/jpeg etc) that it resizes and crops to the correct sized circular shape. This means that you can produce designs in photo editing software or a design/publishing program that allows you to save designs as bmp/jpeg etc. Unfortunately my photo editor has limited text manipulation, (I need to print in a circle aroung the circumference of the Cds)and my otherwise excellent microsoft desktop Publisher doesn't let me save designs as images, so at first I was a little stuck. I got around this by designing in Publisher, printing the design onto good quality paper at a high resolution, and then scanning the printed image back into the computer as a bitmap. I then inserted the bitmap image using HP's software and ignored their text boxes (they don't print if you don't type anything into them). The result was very good. I am pleased with this for now, but I am thinking about getting a proper drawing/design program. Overall I am very pleased with this printer, and would recommend it to anyone who wants excellent photos, and wants to print directly onto Cds and DVDs. The only problem I have had so far is that i find it difficult to switch it off. As I use it with a laptop and have to pack everything away after each use, this is annoying. Double-clicking on the disconect USB icon is always met with a message saying the printer can't be disconected because a program is accessing it. This happens even though I have no programs running. Eventually I ignore the message and switch the power to the printer off and unplug the USB lead. It doesn't seem to do any harm, but it's still worrying - Hence only 4 stars, but it's excellent in all other respects.

Removed my 7 year old HP Deskjet 930C & had the HP D5160 installed & printing within 30 minutes. It goes like a dream, very quick, good clear printing in B&W. Colours are vibrant & print much faster than the 930C. Amazon delivered within 48 hours of placement of order. Purchased through an Amazon 3rd party seller for £39, that's what I call value for money. Incidentally, when I visited the HP website & entered my printing requirements it actually chose the Photosmart D5160 printer as the one to fit my needs..

Wanting to print some DVD's for my photo collection and only having an old (but reliable) 4110 I made the mistake of trying an alternative - the Canon ip4300. What a mistake. Either Canon's quality control of Mac OSX programming skills are wanting - I don't know which - but the Canon ip4300 refused to print onto CD's or DVD's After 4 hours of frustration I realised my error and returned the Canon, exchanged it for the D5160 and had my DVD's printed in short order. No matter how good something may appear to be it needs to work and, whilst the (published) specs may not be as high as the Canon, the 5160's print quality if fine plus it does what it should when I want it to do it and that's good enough for me. Thanks HP.