HP Smart Tank 7602 Printer Review

The HP 7602 printer has a very good build. The plastic feels nice, and it's well-assembled. The hinges feel solid, and unlike the HP Smart Tank 7301, there are no creaking or other noises when using this printer. The output tray extension flap is spring-loaded, automatically unfolding when pulling it out. The printheads are easy to access and user-replaceable. The power cable is detachable, making it easy to replace in case of damage.

The biggest issue with the design of this printer is that the paper tray cassette doesn't have an adjustable slider guide for the length of paper, only for its width. This can cause misalignment issues. You can see this in our Color Accuracy and Color Documents section. The ink tanks and ink bottles aren't keyed, so inserting the wrong ink bottle in the ink tank is possible.

Like all inkjet printers, the printheads can clog on the HP Smart Tank 7602. Thankfully, this printer has many built-in maintenance features, including Print Quality Diagnostic Report, Clean Page Smears, Align Printheads, and Clean Printheads.

Due to its high page yield, you only have to refill the ink tanks periodically. The tanks are easy to fill and light up to indicate which tank is low and requires filling. The ink bottles don't come with keyed nozzle shapes. The printheads are user-replaceable. However, they can be difficult to purchase. HP recommends contacting a certified service center to replace the printheads.

You will only have to refill the paper tray occasionally, as this printer holds up to 250 pages. There's good paper jam access from multiple places in this printer, including the back and the maintenance bay, and by removing the input tray, output tray, and duplexer plate.

See the user manual here. This is different from the basic setup manual included in the box. Both manuals often refer to the support website for additional information.

The HP 7602's display is excellent and sets it apart from similar HP models, like the Smart Tank 7301. HP advertises the display as a "Magic touch panel" and describes it as a "Touchscreen Mono Graphics Display." This display is under the top transparent plastic panel of the printer, without bezels or visible edges. The display shuts off and is invisible when the printer sleeps. There are additional "Back," "Help," and "Cancel" capacitive buttons on either side of the display, as you can see here. These buttons are only visible when you can activate them. A "Home" button would have been a welcome addition, as you sometimes need many button presses to return to the main menu.

This display has excellent viewing angles and is clear, bright, and easy to read despite sitting under a textured plastic. This textured plastic makes it difficult to get a clear picture of how good the display is. However, it also helps to reduce fingerprints on the display. The touchscreen is very responsive to swiping and pressing, and there's adjustable audio feedback when you press to select a menu or option. Selected options also appear with a circle around them, as you can see here, which is a nice, accessible visual cue to have.

Finally, there's a light that shines above the output tray. This light shines different colors and pulses to indicate different states. This light is quite bright and is on whenever the printer is on (there's no way to turn it off).

The HP 7602 has an ink tank system instead of traditional disposable cartridges. It yields a high amount of black and colored pages before needing a refill. You can only print if every tank has ink in it. You can monitor the ink levels directly on the front of the printer or through the HP Smart App.

This printer has three warnings to let you know when you need to refill your ink. First, when an ink tank is low, a fixed light appears that you can see from the front and top of the printer. The display reads: "The indicated tanks are low. You may fill the tanks now or wait until prompted". When the ink level in the tanks becomes very low, the lights begin to blink, and this message appears on the printer's display: "The indicated tanks are very low. You may fill the tanks now or wait until prompted". Finally, when an ink tank runs out of ink, you can no longer print, and a final message is displayed: "The indicated tanks do not have enough ink to continue printing without risk. Fill the indicated tanks now to continue printing".

The HP 7602 doesn't allow you to initiate a scan and save it directly on your computer. You can only send scans to an email, network folder, USB drive, or the HP Smart App, not directly to your PC. You can save documents as searchable PDFs through the HP Smart App. An advanced "Text Extract" function allows you to edit text from scanned documents. However, it doesn't work at this time as the printer displays a 'text not detected' error message.

Scan quality is excellent on the HP 7602. Black text and fine lines are very clear. However, white text on a color background can be hard to see. Although the scanner's maximum scan resolution is 1200 DPI, using the ADF limits it to 300 DPI.

• User manual
• Power cable
• Set of HP 32 and 31 ink bottles:
• 1x HP 32XL Black ink
• 1x HP 31 Cyan ink
• 1x HP 31 Magenta ink
• 1x HP 31 Yellow ink
• 1x Color printhead (pre-installed)
• 1x Black printhead (pre-installed)

The print quality of black & white documents is great on the HP 7602. Text is clear, and there's good contrast between lighter and darker elements. Thin lines and fine details are easily visible. However, the standard print mode presents banding and other vertical dark lines. The alignment task can help, and printing in high-quality mode eliminates these artifacts. You can see an example of the high-quality print here.

Color documents look excellent. Text appears sharp, and fine details are clear. Although the colors aren't very saturated, there's no banding when printing either colors or grays.

This printer has a fantastic cost-per-print ratio. Its ink tank yields many pages before needing a refill. While you can buy each bottle individually, HP also sells a bundle pack that can offer a cheaper per-bottle price.

The printing speed can vary when printing photos on plain paper, as the printer treats black and color differently. You can see the speed difference in this video. Also, the printer saturates the paper when using black, causing the paper to curl.

You can set custom sizes from 3.5" x 5" (88.9mm x 127mm) to 8.5" x 14" (215.9mm x 355.6mm).

This printer has a poor, narrow color gamut, resulting in a significant loss of fine details. There's also considerable graining in the transitions from one color to another.

Color accuracy is sub-par on the HP 7602 printer. Colors look muted, and skin tones appear overly warm.

This printer is excellent at reproducing small details. Fine elements look clear, but halftones (dot effect) significantly obscure objects in the distance.

Borderless printing is available up to 8.5" x 11" paper dimensions.

The fax line inputs are on the back, near the middle. This printer supports printing from USB flash drives; the USB port is on the front of the printer.

Although the HP Smart app advertises Instant Ink subscription services, they're unavailable for this printer. The Instant Ink option only lets you buy replacement ink. Microsoft Office, TXT, and HTML formats are only printable on the iOS HP Smart App. Android users must use the apps they use to view these formats to print.

You need to manually install drivers on Windows devices to get full functionality. While you can install the drivers via HP Smart, the app's current version (at the time of writing) installs generic Windows drivers instead of the correct HP drivers, limiting the printer's functionality. You can get the proper drivers through Windows Update.