HP D1530 Printer: In-Depth Review and User Opinions

Overview of the HP Deskjet D1530 Printer

The HP Deskjet D1530 is a compact and affordable home printer aimed at home office use and light printing needs. Released in 2006, it is an older model but still provides basic printing, scanning, and copying functionality.

The D1530 has a simple and understated design with a two-tone gray color scheme. It has an angled front panel that lifts up to access the print cartridges inside. Controls consist of a few buttons and LED indicator lights on the top panel.

Overall, the D1530 is easy to set up and use for light home office tasks like printing webpages, documents, or photos occasionally. While not loaded with features, it provides a budget-friendly option for basic printing and scanning needs.

Design

The HP Deskjet D1530 has a compact, lightweight design that makes it easy to place on a desk or table. It measures 17.5 x 13.9 x 5.9 inches and weighs just 7.7 pounds, so it doesn't take up much space.

The printer casing has a clean, modern look with rounded edges. It comes in two color options - a stylish glossy black or white finish to match most home or office decors. The top lid flips up to reveal the flatbed scanner and buttons for copy, scan, and resume functions.

Despite its small footprint, the printer doesn't feel flimsy or cheap. The plastic casing feels sturdy, and the printer stays firmly in place when printing thanks to rubber feet on the bottom. Overall, the Deskjet D1530 has a smart, minimalist design optimized for desktop use.

Print Quality

The HP Deskjet D1530 delivers decent print quality, though not exceptional for its price point. It has a max print resolution of 4800 x 1200 dpi when using the best print mode. While not the highest resolution available, it is sufficient for most home and basic office printing needs.

Text prints fairly sharp in draft mode, though graphics and photos look noticeably grainier. Using the standard or best print modes greatly improves graphics and photo print quality. Colors appear vibrant and accurate when using HP original ink. Print speeds are decent but not fast, averaging around 20 ppm in black and 15 ppm in color. The printer slows down significantly when printing in best quality mode.

Overall, the print quality is solid for a budget inkjet aimed at home users. However, photo enthusiasts or those printing high-quality graphics for business use may want to consider a model with a higher resolution for optimal image quality. The D1530 delivers good everyday text and graphics quality for low-volume home and home office users. Those wanting professional photo-quality prints will likely need to upgrade to a more advanced model.

Connectivity

The HP Deskjet D1530 offers both wired and wireless connectivity options. It can connect to computers via a standard USB 2.0 cable for fast and reliable printing directly from your computer.

For wireless printing, the D1530 is Wi-Fi enabled and supports connecting to wireless networks with 802.11b/g standards. Setting up the wireless connection is straightforward using the printer's built-in wireless setup wizard. Once connected to your wireless network, you can print from any computer on the network wirelessly.

The D1530 also supports mobile printing services like HP ePrint, Apple AirPrint and print apps for Android devices. This allows you to print directly from your smartphone or tablet. Simply enable the mobile print service in the printer settings to get started. Then you can send print jobs directly from mobile apps or email that get delivered to your printer.

Overall, the connectivity options on the D1530 are versatile. It supports both wired and wireless setups, and printing from mobile devices. This gives you flexibility in how you use the printer and allows multiple people to access printing easily from their own devices.

Printing Features

The HP Deskjet D1530 offers standard printing features you would expect in an inkjet home printer. It supports basic print quality settings like normal, best, and fast draft modes. For convenience, automatic duplex printing allows you to easily print on both sides of the paper.

The D1530 can produce borderless photos and documents by extending the print image all the way to the edges of the paper. Borderless printing is convenient for photo printing tasks where you want a clean finish without any white borders around the edges. This printer also supports numerous paper sizes and types including letter, legal, 4" x 6" photo paper, envelopes, and more.

You get access to some creative printing effects like applying sepia toning or black and white filters to photos. The printer drivers allow you to do basic image adjustments like brightness, contrast, and color balance adjustments before printing. Overall, the D1530 provides a solid set of features for home printing needs.

Scanning

The HP Deskjet D1530 offers basic scanning capabilities to digitize documents and photos. It has an optical scanning resolution up to 1200 x 1200 dpi which allows you to capture fine details in the scanned image.

The scanner can scan to common image file formats like JPG, TIFF, BMP, PNG, and PDF. Scanning to searchable PDF format is also supported to facilitate text searching in scanned documents.

Overall the scanning functionality is fairly basic but sufficient for home office needs to digitize the occasional document or photo print. The lack of an ADF (automatic document feeder) means you have to scan pages one at a time on the flatbed which can be time consuming for multi-page documents.

Copy Function

The HP D1530 printer offers basic black and white copying capabilities. It can produce copies at speeds up to 19 cpm (copies per minute) for black and white documents and up to 17 cpm for color documents.

Copy quality is decent but not outstanding. Text copies tend to look good, but photos and graphics can sometimes appear grainy or lose some fine detail. There are minimal settings to adjust - you can choose the number of copies and reduce/enlarge from 25% to 400%, but there are no advanced options for lightening/darkening, adjusting contrast, etc.

Overall, the copying functionality is fairly basic but will meet the needs for occasional home office use. For more robust copying needs, a dedicated copier may be a better choice. The D1530 is best suited for small copy jobs of simple text documents a few pages at a time.

Ink and Toner

The HP Deskjet D1530 uses individual ink cartridges for each color, including black, cyan, magenta, and yellow. This allows you to replace only the color that runs out rather than having to replace a tri-color cartridge.

The included standard cartridges print up to 190 black pages and 165 color pages. High-capacity cartridges are also available, yielding up to 480 pages for black and 330 pages for color. Using the high-capacity cartridges helps lower the cost per page.

Original HP ink cartridges run about $15-25 each. Compatible and remanufactured alternatives are widely available from third parties at significant discounts. With some cheaper inks, you may notice a slight reduction in print quality on photo prints.

Overall, the cartridge yields and costs are average for an inkjet printer in this class. The separate ink tanks give you flexibility in only replacing the color you need. And HP makes it easy to find replacements both from them and third-party suppliers.

Software

The HP D1530 comes with easy-to-use printer software and drivers. It is compatible with Windows and Mac operating systems, so you can set it up seamlessly with most computers.

The printer installs HP's printer driver software when you connect it to your computer. The drivers allow you to access all of the printer's functions and configure settings like print quality, paper size, orientation, and more. HP provides drivers on its website for various Windows operating systems from Windows 7 onward.

For Mac users, the D1530 utilizes AirPrint, so you don't need to download any software to start printing from an Apple device. Simply connect your Mac and the printer will be detected and ready to print instantly.

In addition to the printer drivers, you can also download HP's print apps to enable extra functionality. These include apps for printing from cloud storage like Google Drive or Dropbox, scanning directly to cloud services, accessing templates, and more. The apps help streamline printing and extend what you can do from the D1530.

Overall, the printer software for Windows and Mac works well out of the box. HP provides good driver support and useful print apps to get the most out of the D1530. The setup process is quick and intuitive too.

Pros and Cons

The D1530 has several pros and cons to consider before purchasing:

Pros

• Compact and lightweight design saves desk space
• Capable of decent print quality, especially text documents
• Wireless and USB connectivity offers flexible setup
• Automatic 2-sided printing helps conserve paper
• Scans and copies well for an entry-level printer
• Separate ink cartridges are economical to replace

Cons

• Print speed is relatively slow, around 20ppm
• Printing photos has only average quality
• Lack of Ethernet may limit printer sharing
• Small display screen can be hard to navigate
• No fax functionality or document feeder for scanning multiple pages
• Ink can be expensive over time compared to laser printer toner

Overall, the D1530 delivers satisfactory performance for basic home use, but may not meet the needs of busy offices or professional photography needs. For the price, its balance of size, features and print quality make it a respectable budget option. Those wanting higher speeds, volume and photo quality may wish to consider more advanced models.