HP Smart Tank 7303: Specs, Price, Pros & Cons
HP built most of its home printing business on cartridges and, more recently, on the Instant Ink subscription. The Smart Tank range is the company's answer to buyers who want out of that model altogether: ink arrives in bottles, sits in visible tanks at the front of the machine, and is topped up by hand when it runs low. The 7303 is the middle of that range, and its specification looks like a deliberate choice of what to keep.
It keeps what people use every week. Automatic two-sided printing, a document feeder for multi-page scans, wired Ethernet next to Wi-Fi and a full-size paper tray make it a practical home-office machine. What it leaves out, the fax and the larger touch display found higher in the family, are the features a household is least likely to miss.
The trade that comes with any tank printer applies here too. The purchase price is noticeably higher than a cartridge all-in-one with similar features, and the savings only arrive through steady use. A printer that sits idle most of the month never earns back that difference. Refilling from bottles is also a small manual job that cartridge owners never think about, and the control panel is basic buttons and a simple display with no touchscreen.
That makes the 7303 easiest to recommend to a family or small home office that prints every week, scans paperwork now and then and wants predictable running costs. Buyers who print a handful of pages a month will spend less overall on a cheaper cartridge machine, and anyone who still relies on fax needs to look one step up the same range.
Category strengths
Where the HP Smart Tank 7303 beats the median
- A much higher input tray capacity ?250 sheets vs 150 sheets (median)
- Has supertank / refillable ink ?
- A much higher output tray capacity ?100 sheets vs 67.5 sheets (median)
- A slightly lighter build ?7.7 kg vs 7.98 kg (median)
Where the HP Smart Tank 7303 trails the median
- A much lower monthly duty cycle ?5,000 pages vs 10,000 pages (median)
- A slightly lower print speed (black) ?15 ppm vs 16 ppm (median)
How this VS Score was computed
Score 62: each known spec is measured against the median of all printers (65 products), then weighted; 50 means level with that median. In classes of six or more, a value beyond the class’s 10th–90th percentile range counts as that limit, so one extreme product cannot set the scale. 66% of the scoreable weight could be used; unknown values, features not applicable to this class and proxies (battery capacity where a rated life exists) add or remove nothing.
| Specification | This product | Cohort median | Score weight | Points moved |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Automatic duplex printing | Yes | 73% of the class have it | 1 | +50.0 |
| Automatic document feeder | Yes | 55% of the class have it | 1 | +50.0 |
| Input tray capacity | 250 | 150 | 1 | +33.0 |
| Supertank / refillable ink | Yes | 30% of the class have it | 0.5 | +25.0 |
| Ethernet | Yes | 54% of the class have it | 0.5 | +25.0 |
| Duplex scanning | No | 23% of the class have it | 0.5 | −24.0 |
| Touchscreen display | No | 45% of the class have it | 0.5 | −24.0 |
| Fax | No | 35% of the class have it | 0.2 | −9.6 |
| Monthly duty cycle | 5,000 | 10,000 | 0.3 | −7.5 |
| Output tray capacity | 100 | 67.5 | 0.3 | +7.2 |
| Print speed (black) | 15 | 16 | 2 | −6.0 |
| Weight | 7.7 | 7.98 | 0.3 | +0.6 |
| Print speed (color) | 9 | 9 | 1 | +0.0 |
| Print resolution | 4,800 | 4,800 | 0.5 | +0.0 |
| ADF capacity | 35 | 35 | 0.5 | +0.0 |
Not scored: Color printing (standard for the class (88% have it)); All-in-one (standard for the class (85% have it)); Wi-Fi (standard for the class (97% have it)); Wi-Fi Direct (standard for the class (90% have it)); USB (standard for the class (100% have it)); Apple AirPrint (standard for the class (97% have it)); Mobile app printing (standard for the class (100% have it)).
Editor’s note
The Smart Tank 7303 is the configuration HP should probably lead with: the same bottle-fed economics and 15/9 ppm engine as the Smart Tank 7603, keeping the 35-sheet document feeder, automatic duplex printing, Ethernet and the 250-sheet tray, and shedding the fax machine and color-ish touchscreen that pushed that model's price up.
The core arithmetic is unchanged and remains the reason to buy. A 135 ml black bottle rated around 6,000 pages and color bottles around 8,000 pages each land printing costs well under a cent per page. HP ships a full bottle set in the box and markets it as up to three years of ink. For a family or home office printing steadily, the maths works.
What the 7303 keeps matters more than what it drops. Automatic duplex printing, missing from the cheaper Smart Tank 5003, is the feature volume printers use daily. The ADF handles multi-page scanning, Ethernet joins dual-band Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi Direct, and the 5,000-page monthly duty cycle with a 400-800 page recommended volume set fair expectations.
The compromises: the display is a two-line segment LCD with buttons (fine, but basic), the ADF is single-sided, and color speed at 9 ISO ppm is unhurried. There is no fax, which for most households in 2026 is a feature, not a gap.
Against its own siblings the logic is clean: the 5003 is cheaper but loses duplex, ADF and Ethernet. The 7603 adds fax and a touchscreen for meaningfully more money. Unless faxing is a requirement, this middle model is the Smart Tank that balances the ledger best, and the one I would put in most homes.
Specifications
Quality bars show where each figure sits between the lowest and highest of the 65 printers this VS Score is measured against.
Printing
Scanning & copying
Paper handling
Connectivity
Design
Sources and verification
Where the specifications come from
- Official product pagehp.com
- Retailer listing (cross-check)amazon.com
Verification
- First published
- Specifications last checked
- Sheet completeness
- 24 of 24 specifications verified; the rest show as Unknown and are never estimated or scored
- Page type
- Product specification page — Compiled from the manufacturer’s published specifications and the cited sources; this is not a hands-on test.
- Basis
- Research-based: specifications and editorial text were compiled from the documents listed here and the manufacturer’s published data. We have not tested this unit ourselves; where independent measurements are mentioned they belong to the linked publication.
Where to buy
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Price history
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The bottom line
The HP Smart Tank 7303 earns a VS Score of 62, above the median of the 65 printers it is measured against (a score of 50 is level with that median).
- Who it’s for
- Homes and home offices printing steadily who want bottle economics WITH the features that matter daily: auto duplex, a document feeder and Ethernet.
- Who should look elsewhere
- Anyone who needs fax or walk-up touchscreen convenience (that is the 7603's job) or duplex scanning, which no Smart Tank offers.
- The trade-off that matters
- You give up the 7603's fax and touchscreen to keep the same engine and ink maths at a friendlier price, which is the right trade for most households.
- The main alternative
- HP's own Smart Tank 7603 restores fax and the touchscreen. Epson's EcoTank ET-2980 is the no-ADF alternative with bigger black bottles.
The VS Score is calculated from the weighted specifications above, each measured against the median of comparable printers — a shortlisting guide, not a substitute for your own priorities. See how we score.
