HP Photosmart B8550 Inkjet Photo Printer
- Inkjet printer produces lab-quality photos as large as 13 x 19-inches
- 125-sheet tray holds paper from 4 x 6-inches to 13 x 19-inches; includes specialized tray for three common photo sizes
- Up to 32 pages per minute for black-and-white draft-quality letters; 95 seconds for 13 x 19-inch color photos
- Five-ink system lets you replace only the colors you need; 2.4-inch color LCD lets you review, select, and enhance photos without your computer
- One-year limited hardware warranty; one-year of technical phone support
Product Description
Need one printer for everything from photo enlargements to 12 x 12″ scrapbook pages to documents? Check out our Photosmart B8550. It lets you print excellent-quality photos in a wide range of sizes all the way up to 13 x 19″ plus documents.
Easy and flexible
- Print photos in a variety of sizes, from 4 x 6″ to 13 x 19″
- Review and enhance on the 2.4″ color display
- Print without a PC just insert a compatible memory card, or print straight from a PictBridge-enabled camera
- Take the guesswork out of your printing with our Auto Sense technology1
High quality, affordable costs
- Get consistently excellent results with our new five-ink printing system
- Skip the photo lab and enjoy the convenience of printing enlargements at home
- Save money by replacing only the individual cartridges that run out
- Enhance details with HP dual-drop technology, which produces extremely small ink drops
- Print lab-quality photos that last for generations2 when you use HP Advanced Photo Paper
- Get instantly dry, smudge-resistant photos when you use HP Vivera ink and HP Advanced Photo Paper
- Print documents for archiving for decades without fading when you use HP Vivera pigment black ink3
Peace of mind
- Protect your investment with the one-year limited warranty plus our Total Care advice and support
- Get questions answered toll-free, 24 x 7, or via e-mail in as little time as an hour at www.hp.com/go/totalcare
- Get exclusive offers and discounts on supplies and get free next-day shipping with “My Print Rewards”
1. When using HP Advanced Photo Paper.
2. Display-permanence rating by Wilhelm Imaging Research, Inc. or HP Image Permanence Lab.
3. Based on paper-industry predictions for acid-free papers; colorant stability data at room temperature based on similar tested per ISO 11798 and ISO 18909.
Amazon.com Product Description
Amazon.com Product Description The HP Photosmart B8550 Inkjet Photo Printer makes it easy to produce lab-quality photos as large as 13 x 19-inches at home. Enjoy the versatility of printing from your computer, from a supported memory card, or directly from your PictBridge enabled camera. And because this Photosmart printer also produces laser-quality text, you can rely on it for all your printing needs.
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Easy-to-access ports let you print directly from memory cards. |
The HP Photosmart B8550 Inkjet Photo Printer produces lab-quality photos up to 13 x 19-inches. View larger. |
Review photos using a 2.4-inch color LCD display. View larger. |
Print Directly From Cameras and Memory Cards
Printing photos and enlargements at home is convenient and cost-effective. The HP Photosmart B8550 Inkjet Photo Printer offers several printing options. With a 2.4-inch color LCD display, you can review, select, and enhance photos without the use of your computer. It features 15 convenient buttons that let you zoom-in to check out details before you print and perform quick editing tasks. With special HP technology, red eye reduction is as easy as pushing a single button, and the printer’s four LED indicators let you know if anything needs your attention before you start printing.
Dedicated slots let you print directly from a variety of common memory cards, including Compact Flash, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Duo, Secure Digital/MultiMediaCards, and xD-Picture Cards. You can also print right from any PictBridge enabled camera or computer using one of the printer’s high-speed USB connections. This printer also supports wireless operation with the use of HP Blue tooth adapters (not included).
Print Almost Anything, Fast
The 125-sheet main tray holds paper from 4 x 6-inches to 13 x 19-inches, including envelopes, standard letter paper, and legal-sized paper. A specialized tray makes it easy to load paper in three common photo sizes–3.5 x 5-inches, 4 x 6-inches, and 5 x 7-inches. Additionally, borderless printing is supported for prints up to 13 x 44-inches.
Document printing is fast, at up to 32 pages per minute for black-and-white draft-quality letters and 31 pages per minute for color draft-quality letters. Unlike with some multi-use printers, photo printing is quick, too. A 13 x 19-inch color photo may be finished printing in as little as 95 seconds.
Innovative Technology for Quality and Reliability
Four HP 564 dye-ink cartridges in cyan, magenta, yellow, and photo black provide vivid color images and high-quality black-and-white photos. For laser-quality black text on paper, a fifth cartridge contains black pigment ink. Combined with Advanced Photo Paper, these Vivera inks offer instant-dry, smudge-resistant photos. Plus, with the five-ink system, you only have to replace the cartridges you need, saving you money.
There’s plenty of innovative technology behind HP’s photo printers. Unique Auto Sense technology uses optical sensors to optimize settings based on what type of paper you are using. And when printing begins, dual-drop volume technology means the specialized print head delivers extremely small drops, allowing detailed images to contain smooth transitions.
When you select the “best” print quality option for color or black and white, this Photosmart printer prints up to 1200 x 1200 dpi. For photographs, it can render images with up to 9600 x 2400-optimized dpi color (when printing from a computer on selected HP photo papers and with 1200-input dpi).
This HP Photosmart printer is backed by a one-year limited hardware warranty and one-year of technical phone support.
What’s in the Box
HP Photosmart B8550, Printhead Assembly, HP 564 Black Ink Cartridge, HP 564 Photo Black Ink Cartridge, HP 564 Cyan Ink Cartridge, HP 564 Magenta Ink Cartridge, HP 564 Yellow Ink Cartridge, power cord, Software CD, Photo media sample pack, Start Here Poster, User Guide, and Creative Projects Guide.
HP Photosmart B8550 Inkjet Photo Printer
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March 20th, 2010 at 2:35 am
As a long-time photographer and graphic designer, I’m pretty familiar with printing in irregular formats. The HP Photosmart B8550 is the second large-format printer I’ve owned, and will be replacing an HP Deskjet 1220C for the majority of my photography printing and graphic design work.
Overview:)
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The Photosmart B8550 is a large-format printer, capable of printing photographs and posters as large as 13″ x 19″. If you just want to print 4″ x 6″ weekend snapshots or if you don’t understand why someone would want to print something so large, this is **NOT** the printer for you. This printer is very, very large and is designed primarily for people who want to print very large photographs and digital images.
The Physical Object:)
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The Photosmart B8550 is surprisingly sleek and sexy-looking for a large-format printer, and is significantly smaller and more attractive than the 13×19 printer it will be replacing. The LCD screen is bright and clear, and the printer feels solid and well-built.
The printer’s included software integrated quickly and seamlessly with my various photo-editing programs. I was very pleasantly surprised both with how attractive the printer is, and with how well it works with Photoshop, Illustrator, Light Room, Aperture, and iPhoto.
The Prints:)
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The prints from the Photosmart B8550 are nothing short of superb superb. I have printed 3″x5″, 4″x6″, and 8.5″x11″ photographs and have been awed by the quality of the prints I get from this machine. When using the recommended HP Advanced Photo Paper prints of all sizes tested came out bright and clear and were absolutely dry to the touch within seconds of coming out of the printer.
The quality of the prints is so good that friends who I have shown them to have been unable to distinguish them from lab-created prints, and two of my friends have had me print enlargements of their wedding photos because they thought the quality of the prints I showed them was BETTER than the prints they got from their professional photographers.
Speaking from experience, the people who are complaining about the quality of these prints are DEFINITELY doing something wrong. I don’t know if they’re using the wrong paper, printing on the wrong side of the paper, or using the wrong settings, but if you use the recommended paper and the correct settings on the printer you will get FABULOUS results.
The Supplies:
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One of the most surprising things about this printer is how affordable the recommended replacement supplies are.
The paper is surprisingly affordable, with 50-packs of 8.5×11 or 100-packs of 4×6 glossy HP Advanced Photo Paper costing roughly $20. Likewise, the ink is surprisingly cheap, with replacement cartridges being priced at roughly $15 each.
To put this in perspective, the ink and paper for the large-format Epson printer at my office costs more than twice as much as the supplies for this printer, and the results are markedly inferior.
CONCLUSION:
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The HP Photosmart B8550 is, without a doubt, the finest home printer I have ever owned, and is one of the best 13×19 printers I have ever used. In fact, this is the best printer under $1,000.00 that I have ever used, bar none.
The print quality is nothing short of outstanding, the wide variety of compatible sizes make this a very versatile printer, and the affordable supplies make this printer a joy to use and excellent for hobbyists and photography enthusiasts.
While this may not be the printer for everyone it is an excellent choice for anyone who is interested in printing large photographs, and saving a great deal of money by printing enlargements for themselves instead of sending them to a lab.
I have been enthusiastically recommending the HP Photosmart B8550 to all my photographer friends, and would suggest this to anyone who has a DSLR camera and wants to try printing big, gorgeous pictures of their favorite shots.
This is the most affordable, highest quality, consumer photo printer I have ever used, and I am constantly surprised by the high quality of the results.
Rating: 5 / 5
March 20th, 2010 at 4:35 am
This printer joins my home office in addition to a Canon Pixma Pro9000 large format photo printer and an older Epson RX500 All-in-One printer/scanner/copier. I tend to mainly use the Epson for low-color non-photo printing since it seems to be the most wasteful with ink usage (replacing its 6 ink cartridges is not cheap and the printer annoyingly always uses some of the 5 non-black color inks even if you are printing a black-and-white text-only page), with the HP B8550 and Canon Pro9000 being used exclusively for photo printing. I am a serious amateur photographer with way more DSLR cameras, lenses, and gear than can be justified given that I have never earned any income from my photography, but I enjoy printing everything from 4×6 photos to 13×19 enlargements. I frame the 13×19 photos and circulate displays of photos on walls around my house, as well as print photos for friends, so I suppose that is my “payback” for this hobby. My photography interests include people and pets, travel and vacation photos, nature photography and macro close-ups, and John Fielder-inspired wide-angle shots of landscapes and wilderness.
The HP B8550 is a well-made printer with a variety of thoughtful features built into it that accentuate its usability for those looking for a mid-range large format photo printer. If your main interest is in printing lots of 4×6 photos or if you are just using a low-resolution digital camera with a tendency to take blurry photos, you may be just as happy using a less expensive photo printer since a 13×19 photo will accentuate the imperfections that were caused by a bad camera shot. Also, if you print more documents than photos, a photo printer like this should not be your only primary printer.
Unlike the Canon Pro9000, the B8550′s control panel includes a 2.4-inch color LCD display. It has a surprising variety of built-in functions. You can insert various memory cards into the printer and, just using the control panel without needing to access the computer, perform functions such as:
** Perform “Red Eye Removal” editing on your photos.
** Print out ruled notebook paper, graph paper, music paper, a task checklist, and even a fairly challenging maze.
** Clean and align the printhead.
** Print a “Printer Status Report” that shows the printer’s model and serial number, how many pages you have printed so far, and the date when you installed each of the 5 ink cartridges.
** Set language and country/region preferences for the displays.
** Create and assemble photo album pages, create panorama prints, create wallet and passport photos.
** View and edit photos that are on your memory card. Rotate, crop, resize, perform a “Photo Fix” adjustment (which I did not really ever find to be useful), adjust brightness on the photo, add a “Color Effect” of Black&White, Sepia, or Antique, perform a Print Preview, add a date stamp to the photo being printed.
While the basic photo-editing functions suffice for printing 4×6 photos without needing to use the computer, if you are printing larger photos (especially 13×19 photo paper), you really should be editing your photos from your computer where you can see a much larger screen since the 2.4-inch LCD display only allows rudimentary previews of photos similar to the 2.5-inch LCD on digital cameras. But it is nice to at least give the user the option to insert memory cards or a USB storage device into the printer and immediately start printing after performing some basic photo editing. You can also connnect a PictBridge camera to the USB port on the front of the printer.
Installation and set-up of the B8550 printer hardware went smoothly. In addition to the included “Start Here” set-up instructions, when you first turn on the printer, the LCD screen also guides you, using short animated videos, through the installation of the printhead and ink cartridges, and the loading of the paper into the two trays, the “photo tray” that holds 4×6 and 5×7 photo paper and the “main tray” that holds the larger paper sizes on up to the 13×19 paper.
The one aspect of the printer that I consider to be a mechanical design flaw is in the way the output tray and paper extender lock into place when raised up to a 45-degree angle. The output tray and paper extender are housed in one unit that sits above and covers the main paper input tray below it. To access the main paper input tray, you pivot the output tray up and it clicks into place at a raised 45-degree angle, allowing you access to place paper onto the main paper input tray. But the output tray is held at this 45-degree angle with such a loose grip that a slight bump of the printer can cause the output tray to slam back down hard to its horizontal position. This happened twice on my printer and, both times, the output tray swung back downward with such force that I had to check that the plastic hinge on the output tray did not break or crack. Luckily, the tray remained intact, but I learned the lesson not to leave the output tray propped up at its 45-degree angle for too long and to carefully lower it back down with my hand underneath it whenever I load new paper into the main paper input tray.
Towards the end of the B8550 printer set-up, you install the CD software which contains the printer driver along with various other software, some of which I considered useful and some of which I considered useless clutter that eats up disk space and system memory. The CD install gives you the option for either a “recommended” express installation or a more manual select-what-you-want custom installation. I selected the express installation, which turned out to be a bad, but correctable, decision. When I completed the CD installation, I was able to print my first photos in less than 30 minutes from the time that I initially took the printer out of the box.
But I was surprised by both the hundreds of megabytes of disk space used and the number of extra HP-specific processes now running on my Windows XP Task Manager (listed with their KB of memory usage):
ACDaemon.exe : 2180KB
ACService.exe : 2076KB
hpqbam08.exe : 3920KB
hpqgpc01.exe : 6692KB
hpqste08.exe : 8508KB
hpswp_clipbook.exe : 3624KB
hpwuSchd2.exe : 2200KB
hpqtra08.exe : 11744KB
By comparison, my Epson Status Monitor only consisted of one process running that used just a fraction of the memory that all those HP processes required:
E_S4I2K1.EXE 2712KB
So I started to consider what HP applications I wanted to keep and what I wanted to remove. My computer has 2 GB of memory and over 600 GB of disk space, but I do not want to clog this up with unused applications.
The “hpqtra08.exe” process is the HP Digital Imaging Monitor; I kept that.
The ACDaemon.exe/ACService.exe processes are involved in checking for updates for the ArcSoft Print Creations software. I have sometimes used previous ArcSoft software to mainly create greeting cards (especially during the end-of-year holidays), so I wanted to retain the ArcSoft software that was loaded during the CD installation. The B8550 printer also includes a “Creative Projects Guide” booklet that describe how you can use the included ArcSoft Print Creations software to create photo album pages, calendars, placemats, greeting cards, and frames. But the ACDaemon.exe/ACService.exe processes do not need to be always kept running and consuming memory since you can manually start it up. I shut those down so that they did not always remain running.
Likewise, the “hpwuSchd2.exe” process that kept running is the HP Software Update process that performs scheduled checks for new and updated HP software. But it does not need to be kept always running since I can just manually start it up from the Start menu on a periodic basis. So I used the Windows Registry Editor to delete its “HP Software Update” entry from: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE:SOFTWARE:Microsoft:Windows:CurrentVersion:Run
The included “HP Smart Web Printing” software lets you selectively gather and edit Web page content from your browser to output to the printer. The application is supposed to work by embedding itself inside your browser, and then you can click the “HP Smart Select” button that it adds to your browser’s toolbar, and you use your mouse to highlight Web page content that you wanted to collect into a “Clip Book”, and from your browser’s “Clip Book”, you can then print just the portions of various Web pages that you are interested in, instead of printing entire Web pages. A great concept… but I could not get this to work. My Firefox (version 3) browser refused to accept this software as a add-on plug-in, and it also did not work with my Internet Explorer 7 browser for some reason. In addition, at one point, I saw a Windows system error message announcing that the “hpswp_clipbook.exe” process had crashed. So I had enough of this and went into the Control Panel’s “Add or Remove Programs” and uninstalled the “HP Smart Web Printing”.
“Shop for HP Supplies” is another program that the CD installs onto your computer and also places a shortcut for it on your desktop. But after trying it out, I found that it is only useful if you want to buy your ink cartridges and printer supplies at MSRP list price and do not ever shop around for the best price. When you click on its desktop icon, it accesses a Web page called “SureSupply – Order supplies”. But the ink cartridges were all offered at the (inflated) MSRP list price, and the only vendor options were either to purchase directly from HP, or from CDW or Staples online stores (Amazon was not an option listed on the Web page!) So I also uninstalled this program.
The printer’s CD also installs the “HP Customer Participation Program 11.0″. This is just like the Microsoft Customer Participation Program, where this program will send back statistics of how you use HP products so HP can improve on its products based on the gathered statistics. It is an opt-in program. But I wanted to remove this program and, in doing so, freed up over 60 megabytes of disk space.
After I completed the printer CD installation, for some odd reason, my Internet Explorer 7 browser could no longer play embedded Flash content on Web pages, even though embedded Flash applications still worked on my Firefox browser. When accessing various Web pages that used Flash applications (including Amazon’s “Listen to Music Samples” Flash application), the Web page would display the Adobe Flash download link and the Web page’s embedded Flash application would not work. I presume that this was probably caused by the “HP Smart Web Printing” application embedding itself into my IE browser (and interfering with the browser’s Flash plugin) because my IE browser could display Flash content just prior to the installation of the printer CD. The problem persisted even after I uninstalled the “HP Smart Web Printing” application. I actually had to go to the Control Panel’s “Add or Remove Programs”, uninstall both the “Adobe Flash Player ActiveX” and “Adobe Flash Player Plugin”, and then re-install it from Adobe’s Web site in order to get my IE-7 Flash functionality working again.
So even though I would rate the actual printer hardware 5 stars, my CD installation experience gets a rating of 2 stars. The CD was installed on a Windows XP (Service Pack 3) system. Your mileage may vary with Vista, Mac, or your own flavor of Windows.
The B8550 printer’s size is typical for a large format printer. At 23 inches wide, it is overall smaller than my Canon Pro9000 since the Pro9000 also has a top-feed paper tray whereas the B8550 input and output trays both are in front of the printer. In fact, it is probably one of the smallest and lightest photo printers available that can print on 13×19 paper. But if you place this printer on your desk next to your computer, the footprint of this printer will likely occupy a large portion of your desk. My home office from where I telecommute everyday working on e-commerce Internet applications consists of one desk, one computer workstation table, four 2-drawer file cabinets, and several bookshelves. Both the Canon Pro9000 and HP B8550 printers now sit on separate 2-drawer file cabinets. Like many printers, the B8550 does not include a USB cable (my Canon Pro9000 also did not include the USB cable, even though I think that it is lame for manufacturers to not include the cable with their printers). I actually had to combine a 10-foot A/B plug USB cable with another USB extension cable in order to place this printer on another 2-drawer file cabinet that was farther away from the USB hub sitting on my desk. When used with the optional HP bt500 – Network adapter – USB – Bluetooth 2.0 EDR , you can connect this printer via Bluetooth. But I have not always been happy with the consistency of Bluetooth connections, and so I decided to use an extension USB cable instead. Another connectivity option that I considered was to use the HP Wireless Printing Upgrade Kit (Q6236A) , but judging from the widely varying opinions about that product, I also stayed away from that option.
I found that the top of the 23-inch-wide printer made for a convenient place to put 13×19 photos right after they are printed to ensure the inks are fully dry for a short period before further handling. And one nice aspect of 13×19-inch photo printouts is that they are very similar in size to the full-screen image that I preview on my 22-inch widescreen monitor. I also have to admit that after looking at my digital photos both on a 22-inch widescreen monitor and by selectively printing out 13×19 photos, I rarely print 4×6 or 5×7 photos anymore; 8×10 photos are now the smallest size that I print out.
Which brings me to the most important attribute for all photo printers: print quality. Taking into account the mid-range price of this printer and the fact that it is one of the most inexpensive 13×19 photo printers, I would rate the print quality 5 stars. I selected various scenery and nature photographs that were taken using a Canon EOS 40D 10MP DSLR. On 4×6 photos, the B8550 output is pretty much identical to my Canon Pro9000. When comparing 13×19 photos using the best quality settings for both printers, however, my Canon Pro9000 does have slightly better color and clarity than the B8550. But the differences are very subtle… which is a very pleasant surprise since I was comparing the output from the 4-ink-color (cyan-magenta-yellow-black) B8550 to the output from the 8-ink-color Pro9000. During these 13×19 photo comparisons, I was printing photos on the B8550 using both HP Advanced Glossy Photo Paper and HP Premium Plus Photo and Proofing Gloss paper. And the Pro9000 was printed using Canon papers. The Pro9000 is also about 40% more expensive than the HP B8550. Canon’s Pro9000 is also packaged with far better software (aimed at the pro or serious amateur photographer) compared with what is included with the B8550.
Even though HP advertises that their “Vivera inks offer instant-dry, smudge-resistant photos”, I left one slight thumbprint on the very edge of one of my first 13×19 printouts using their recommended HP Advanced Glossy Photo Paper when I immediately picked up the sheet the moment it fully came out of the printer. But if I carefully lifted the just-printed photo from the bottom and let it sit by itself for 5 or 10 minutes, the photo ink did admirably live up to the smudge-resistant claim as I was able to vigorously rub my thumb over dark areas of the photo without creating smudges.
But for the casual/amateur photographer who wants a very affordably-priced large format photo printer, this is a great printer! HP obviously had to make some compromises to keep the price low, but the beautiful print quality is superb. I printed out 13×19 photographs that included a close-up macro photo of a butterfly standing on top of a purple coneflower, a wide-angle shot of a picturesque canyon filled with surreal rock formations and lots of earthtone hues along the canyon walls, photos of serene mountain lakes with blue skies and swirling cirrus clouds overhead, etc, and they were all printed out in glorious color, rich in detail, with sharp line boundaries in areas of the photos where there was high contrast and lots of color/shape transitions.
Rating: 5 / 5
March 20th, 2010 at 7:14 am
I use this printer with Vista 64. I’m a web designer and have strong graphic artist skills (have been using Photoshop for over 15 years). I have several printers in the house but I wanted a printer that I felt that could generate decent prints and have a lower cost of ownership than my Epson printers.
The HP B8550 got my attention because of the good reviews and the ink system. 5 inks with one a photo black and regular black and the option of bigger ink tanks for a good cost was what I was looking for. It’s almost impossible to get consistent cost per page numbers across different brands as that depends a great deal on what kind of cost you can find on the ink. If you can get great deals on ink for printer A and not for Printer B that alone can change your cost of ownership.
As a general rule Epson has the best photo printers and I have confirm this many times. Canon is usually second place and HP tends to be third in photos but first in text quality. After using the B8550 I can clearly say things are changing.
Good: This HP 5 ink printer (only 4 inks for Photos) took on my Epson 6 ink printers and matched it (And maybe even surpass in some cases). The photos looked great and the printer was fairly fast. Print quality is the final measurement of any printer and this printer did as expected (I had high expectations).
Bad: Oh, HP, when will you get your act together with your drivers? The Window drivers have no ICM profiles. The Mac versions do so this is just not acceptable and I was counting on them. In Photoshop the printer would forget settings and revert to older values (who does the QA for this stuff at HP?). Since I had no ICM profiles I could not let Photoshop control color reproduction and had to use the printer color logic. The saving grace is that since we have fewer inks fine tuning the default color profile was not hard. After like 20 small prints I had found a color combination that matched my monitor colors with great accuracy.
If HP ever gets updated Windows drivers with ICM profiles and that they remember changes better in Photoshop this would be a 5 star printer. The hardware and print quality is all there, all they need is to show better love on their drivers.
Get the XL inks, worth the extra money. The HP paper is very expensive. Consider paper from other brands and test. The difference in print quality is not much (if any) and the price difference can be significant.
Rating: 4 / 5
March 20th, 2010 at 7:15 am
Let me start the review by stating that this is a PHOTO PRINTER. I emphasize this because a great photo printer is not necessarily a great everyday document printer. If you don’t print a lot of photos or color fliers, but print mostly documents, then this is not the right printer for you. Printing simple documents is noisy, slow, and expensive on a printer like this.
However, if you want a lab quality print up to 13″ x 19″ then the HP B8550 is a masterpiece. The print quality is so remarkable that you literally could fire your photo lab and print all of your photos at home. This printer will quickly pay for itself and save you a lot of money on photo processing.
The physical set up of the printer is easy and intuitive. The print cartridge carrier slipped right in place and the print cartridges are color and shape coded to simplify installation. For some odd reason, HP doesn’t include a USB printer cable. This doesn’t make any sense to me at all because you have to have one to use the printer and they don’t cost that much money. Luckily, I had a spare cable or else I wouldn’t have been able to use the printer until making another trip to the store! So be sure to get a USB printer cable.
I use the printer with an Apple iMac G4 so my review of the software is Mac OSX specific. I haven’t tried the Windows software.
The Mac OSX software installed with ease and the printer was discovered and ready to print immediately. The software is smart enough to alert the user if an inappropriate paper size is selected – a feature that is greatly appreciated! However, one must still remember to choose the correct paper size and appropriate print tray before printing. Given the cost of paper and ink for a specialty printer like this I can’t overemphasize the importance of this. The software won’t catch every user error. Check twice and print once!
Enjoy!
Rating: 4 / 5
March 20th, 2010 at 7:53 am
To be honest, this should be a 4.5 star review in light of some software issues, but the printer does such a fantastic job that I thought I should round the stars UP rather than down. I’m truly thrilled with this printer, and that’s that. If only HP could streamline their software, this would be a full 5 star review.
I’ve printed at least 2 dozen prints — 4×6, 5×7, 8.5×11, HP paper, Epson paper, Staples paper, etc. — and I have great difficulty determining that ANY of these did not come from a professional photo lab. In fact, I’d told a friend that I’d received this great printer, and when I presented him with a gorgeous 5×7 of a group of us, he asked me where I went to have my photo developed! The output is THAT good. The only output complaint I have is that every once in a while one gets some very shallow linear scratches to the glossy finish, but they are so incredibly small, you have to hold up the photos to a light at a specific angle. This is being very picky, and it’s truly a NON-ISSUE for me.
Some have claimed to have had problems with ink drying time, but I have not: prints are dry within 15-30 seconds, though I do let them sit for a minute or two just in case. I tried smearing the “wet” ink on one after 10 seconds, and there was no smearing, so, if one uses HP Advanced Photo paper, or any of the premium glossy papers I’ve tried, I do not forsee any such problems.
My biggest problems in terms of print output are of the software variety. I have not been able to determine whether this is an HP or a Corel issue (on the computer I have connected this printer to, I use either Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 or Jasc PSP 9, which is the basis for the Corel software, since Corel bought out Jasc and built their PSP series on this Jasc platform), but there are some differences in inch standards between these software packages and the HP printer software: I can edit pictures to print to a standard paper size (let’s say 5×7 here) and crop photos to either those exact dimensions or at least to preserve that particular aspect ratio, but when I then send the photo to this printer via the HP software, the preview shows gaps along the “borderless” photo preview on both of either the 5″ or 7″ sides. This is true of 4×6″ photos as well. I have not been able to figure out which software is to blame for having dubious “inches,” but I’ve created a work-around that I’ve found totally satisfying…
I do edit ALL photos I take with photo editing software before printing, so what I do to work around this problem is create the output crop to be a 5.1″x7.1″ (aspect ratio preserved) photo. Then, I save the file to a SD/SDHC card, stick it into the printer directly, and then the photo is centered on the printer’s preview screen, and it prints perfectly along ALL borders. I know that this is not perhaps the solution a professional photographer would like, but for a amateur photographer like me who does some not-so-amateur digital photo processing, the output is astounding, and this workaround is not a significant problem.
I would be remiss, though, if I did not refer you to the truly exhaustive technical review on the sub-par HP software that the reviewer named “Bond… James Bond ’007.5′” wrote. It points out some software glitches and the resource-hog multi-process problems that do exist with the bundled HP software. As far as I’ve seen, all he writes is accurate. The issues are slightly different with the Vista 64-bit OS I’m using, but the differences are not significant enough to enumerate.
One bug that I have also found is in HP’s attempt to load its “HP Smart Web Printing 4.0″ into all browsers. It is not compatible with Firefox 3.0.4, and it’s fairly easy to disable there; however, reading the problems “Bond” experienced trying to uninstall it from IE, I’m not looking forward to that operation.
The printer software interface is not all that user-friendly either. I’m used to Epson’s multi-tabbed affairs that have literally pages of options. HP seems at first to have the same approach, but, actually, some, but not all (!!!) of the tabs are mutually-exclusive: whichever tab you print from will be the set of options chosen. So, if you think you’ve set one option on one tab and move to another and print from it, that other tab’s setting may have just been negated. This will take some getting used to, and I can’t pretend I quite comprehend this interface yet, but I’ve simply been bypassing it by saving my edited photos to SDHC cards and printing them directly from the printer with WONDERFUL results.
These praises and complaints I’ve noted in my experience with this printer and its software are typical of what I’ve experienced with HP in the past (I am writing this on an HP Pavilion Media Center m8430f, so I know what I’m talking about) is that HP hardware tech is formidable and wonderful stuff — but their software? Not so much. Very much resource-hogging, non-necessary stuff that drags down your system and creates quite a few glitches.
There are so many other features I could comment on, but this review is waxing long. Suffice it to say that I’m absolutely thrilled with this printer, and I’d recommend it in an instant; however, I’d do so with the caveat that it’s probably best used as a stand-alone, not hooked up to any computer (to avoid the software issues), simply used to print photos one has edited on a non-connected computer and saved to SDHC media to print directly from the printer without software interaction. If that’s how one chooses to use this printer, I think they’ll have a 5-star experience!
Rating: 5 / 5