At AU$599, the Photosmart C8180 sits in Hewlett-Packard's lineup as one of its most expensive All-in-One (AIO) players. This printer, scanner, and copier has a suite of features for the amateur photo enthusiast that includes a touch-screen display, built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth connectivity, a slide scanner, and a dual paper feed tray, but it's not without a few missteps. The photo quality is better than average and the hardware is well-designed, but the lack of an auto-document feeder (ADF) and painfully slow print speed prevent us from giving this otherwise excellent printer an Editors' Choice award.
Design and features
The design of the C8180 is similar to the rest of the printers in the Photosmart series, but this particular model has a few notable hardware additions that you won't find in most All-in-Ones. Unlike most printers, the C8180 has a swiveled touch screen that lets you control all the software functions including photo editing, wireless setup and management, and scanning jobs. The touch screen eliminates button clutter and frees up the rest of the front panel for simple buttons that control one-touch red-eye removal as well as a few others for start, stop, and cancel. The front of the C8180 also has a memory card bay with slots for Compact Flash, xD, SD/MMC, and Memory Stick cards.
Although HP flaunts the C8180 as a full-featured AIO for the home and office, it lacks a fax machine and an auto-document feeder that you can find on other AIOs for less money. You'll also notice a unique hardware feature on the front of the C8180: a LightScribe drive that lets you archive your data directly from a USB key or an external memory card to a CD/DVD. We're not disputing its utility, but we wish HP could have found a way to include the drive alongside an ADF and fax instead of omitting them entirely. In either case, we must compliment HP on the build quality and design of the C8180. The rounded corners and silver/white overlay contribute to its overall appeal; this printer will look great alongside any desk setup.
You have three options for connecting your computer to the printer: wired via the included USB cable, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi. We can confidently state that the Photosmart C8180 is the easiest Wi-Fi printer we've used to date. Other printers make you pour through pages and pages of instructions and ultimately force you to set up the connection via an ad-hoc network, but the C8180 distills the process down to a simple pairing between the printer and your computer. In fact, there are no onscreen instructions; you set everything up through the digital LCD on the faceplate itself. From open box to first print, the entire Wi-Fi setup took less than five minutes.
Another unique feature to the C8180 is its dual paper input tray. This is bound to be one of those, "Why didn't we think of that?" headaches for HP's competitors, and it really is genius — the C8180 has two separate paper trays: one for larger 8.5-by-11 inch paper and another for smaller 4-by-6-inch media. This small hardware addition saves time and desk space by allowing the user to manually select which paper tray will spool from the device, but most of the time the C8180 will choose automatically depending on the job.
The C8180 uses six separate ink cartridges (black, light cyan, light magenta, cyan, magenta, and yellow) and each has its own dedicated bay underneath the hood. We're happy to see that each cartridge is easily replaceable at a fairly reasonable price. Even though each colour costs the same, the page yields vary immensely, so for our calculations we used black and yellow, which apparently yield the most pages.
Performance
The C8180 printed much slower in all three of our test categories compared with other printers in the same price range. The discrepancy is most obvious in photo prints — the HP printed almost half a page per minute slower than our other test subjects, including the Brother MFC-685cw, an AIO that lost major points for its slower-than-average print speed. Even the Brother beat our HP by a full page per minute in photos, averaging about 1.3 ppm, while the HP trudged in at a meager .66 ppm.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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Photo (ppm) | |
Presentation (ppm) | |
Text (ppm) |
Thankfully, there's more to be said for the HP's photo quality than its print speed. The text documents we tested on the C8180 came out very clear with bright, outstanding colors and dark black lines. The colour spread came out even with zero fuzziness or jagged edges, even at smaller points. The printer also produced very pleasing 4x6-inch photos with accurate colour reproduction in skin tone and an even hue across the page. Some of the lighter colours appear undersaturated, even on HP's own Premium Glossy Photo Paper, but overall these prints will satisfy some of the most nitpicky photo enthusiasts.
Like many of the printers in HP's Photosmart series, the C8180 produces better quality colour scans than greyscales. We noticed a significant amount of compression in the grayscale scans with serious gradation issues at the dark end of the spectrum. This problem is almost nonexistent when scanning color prints, where we were actually impressed with the level of evident detail and representation.
HP includes its standard one-year warranty with the Photosmart C8180, which includes free technical support and the option to upgrade to an additional two years of HP Accidental Damage Protection as well as access to its unique Pick Up and Return program. HP's Web site also has easy-to-use features including online classes, FAQs, driver downloads, and troubleshooting tips.
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domino_m
06/06/2008, 01:15 AM
rating
6/10
Hmmm, interesting idea. I do agree that a lack of fax feature is quite degrading for such an expensive combo unit. If the support for Mac OSX is good, i can foresee the use of this unit as a great way to supply a MacBook Air a dvd drive plus printer. Also, could be an option for all those Asus EEEPC users out there too. However, i double any support for any linux-based OS.
Using a HP photosmart 3310 for quite sometime, i to am aware of the cumbersome software hp supply with their printers, plus the drawbacks of over-network operation (esp. WiFi), however on that note, the latest versions have given me zero trouble in over-bearing cpu usage. I'm sure that this could be fixed in the next version, or perhaps just a higher model again that supplies all these features?
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jase24
28/05/2008, 08:10 AM
rating
10/10
I love this printer as it simply does everything i need it to. The salesman gave me the right info so im not having the problems that some of the other commenters had
Pros: Price for features. Currently at $250 after cashback at Dick Smith's this was an awesome purchase
Cons: 6 inks can get pricey, but with the $55 6 pack its not too painful
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C8180
16/03/2008, 12:35 PM
rating
3/10
Bought this as a network printer. The DVD is not accessible by network. It can only be accessed by a computer connected to the printer with a USB only. The printer shows up in the mshome workgroup even though the network workgroup has a different name.
Pros: Looks good as a single printer connected to one computer using a USB.
Cons: Cannot map to DVD over network. Cannot change workgroup that the printer belongs too. I did consult with tech support to no avail. Poor rating based on expectation of a network printer.
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thomasmthomas
10/01/2008, 02:52 PM
rating
2/10
Firstly - both HP and Dick Smith websites showed this printer as having a fax function - which it does not. Emails to both have never received a reply.
I have had nothing but problems with this thing for two months and finally returned it with much stress and hassle for a full refund. Still trying to figure out a suitable alternative.
2 main software issues: 1st had issues on loading software which caused the CPU utilisation to go to 50% on my desktop and 98% on a smaller CPU laptop. HP initially advised that it was my computer. I spent many hours (days) debugging it to discover it was their software. I then stopped the offending service which then restarted automatically and worked.
HP advised that I re-install (1 hour process from removal to re-install) which concluded in a "fatal error". HP then sent me a bit of software to re-set permissions. No luck. Then another bit of software to fix the registries. Still no luck. More debugging and a 2 hour session with HP tech managed to totally remove all traces of HP S/W and then re-install successfully.
A week later when I tried to scan the software would not come up and gave an error that "no printer detected" although I could still print, ping and load the web page. HP advised a re-install yet again, which of course resulted in a "fatal error". HP had no further advice.
I downloaded their most recent driver and attempted to load it to both my desktop and laptop with no success. After an unpleasant attempt to return the printer to Dick Smith I managed to get HP to send me a letter allowing me to "exchange" it. I researched alternative HP printers - determining that the HP 7410 would be a better fit. User feedback at the Amazon site showed that this printer had the same errors that I was experiencing.
After 2 months of pain I returned it for a refund. After reading user feedback on Canon MX700 and MP830 printers I have no idea what trouble-free alternative options I have.
Pros: When it does work it seems to work well. Printed both colour documents and photos and copied. Did not get scanner to work at all, nor used the DVD.
Cons: Software is crap. Doesn't work most of the time.
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MJC
17/11/2007, 12:25 PM
rating
8/10
Seem to have everything I am looking for. I'm moving & don't have to re-wire a network as it has Blue tooth etc
Pros: Very gtood - Thanks
Cons: Who wants to give me the best price?
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