Costs are actually fairly low for an MFP in this price range if you use the large-capacity supplies. The Photosmart 5520 uses a four-cartridge ink system (HP’s 564 line). Scans have a slightly cool temperature but are more than acceptable. Though a tad on the light side, photos have a largely realistic color palette (with a slight pinkish cast) on both plain and glossy photo paper. Output from the Photosmart 5520 generally looks good when it arrives. Scans and copies were acceptably quick as well. The Photosmart 5520 produced nice-looking draft-mode documents very quickly. Full-page photos printed on the Mac were a little slower than average at 0.4 ppm. Snapshot photos printed at 4.1 ppm to plain paper and 1.0 ppm to glossy paper. In our tests, monochrome pages printed at 8.8 pages per minute on the PC and 7.9 ppm on the Mac. The Photosmart 5520 is a nice performer for a sub-$150 MFP, albeit a tad slower than the Photosmart 5510. Like its predecessor, the Photosmart 5520 supports push scanning (that is, scanning to a PC using the printer’s control panel) and printing via email using HP’s ePrint.
Although the Photosmart 5520’s printer driver is a relatively simple affair, it does offer layout options for booklets and multiple pages–amenities lacking in the Photosmart 5510.
