>>> BlackFriday HP Photosmart B8550 Inkjet Photo Printer
Technical Details
- 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
Fuzzy Wuzzy's Summary:
**** Recommended with warm fuzzies.
This printer joins my home office in addition to a Canon Pixma Pro9000 Professional Large Format Inkjet Printer (9995A001) 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 4x6 photos to 13x19 enlargements. I frame the 13x19 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 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 13x19 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 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 13x19 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 13x19-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 13x19 photos I rarely print 4x6 or 5x7 photos anymore; 8x10 photos are now the smallest size that I print out.
***** Excellent 5-fuzzies feature ratings:
***** The HP B8550 is a quality 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 4x6 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 13x19 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:
o Perform "Red Eye Removal" editing on your photos.
o Print out ruled notebook paper graph paper music paper a task checklist and even a fairly challenging maze.
o Clean and align the printhead.
o 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.
o Set language and country/region preferences for the displays.
o Create and assemble photo album pages create panorama prints create wallet and passport photos.
o 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 4x6 photos without needing to use the computer if you are printing larger photos (especially 13x19 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 connect 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 4x6 and 5x7 photo paper and the "main tray" that holds the larger paper sizes on up to the 13x19 paper.
**** Good 4-fuzzies feature ratings:
**** Taking into account the mid-range price of this printer and the fact that it is one of the most inexpensive 13x19 photo printers I would rate the print quality quite good. I selected various scenery and nature photographs that were taken using a Canon EOS 40D 10MP DSLR. On 4x6 photos the B8550 output is pretty much identical to my Canon Pro9000. When comparing 13x19 photos using the best quality settings for both printers however my Canon Pro9000 does have better color quality better color accuracy and clarity than the B8550. But the differences are usually 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 13x19 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 13x19 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 a few 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.
*** Not-so-good 3-fuzzies feature ratings:
*** 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.
** Bad 2-fuzzies feature ratings:
** 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 manually 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. A product review on printer hardware should not have to use so much verbiage to discuss its included software but in this case the amount of extraneous software that HP's installation CD dumped onto my PC was excessive. And in the case of their "HP Smart Web Printing" software that install also did not work and it did something to my IE browser to cause it to no longer play/display Flash content.
Fuzzy Wuzzy's Conclusion:
For the casual/amateur photographer who wants a very affordably-priced large format photo printer this is a great printer! This printer is not perfect and in particular the color accuracy is better on my Canon Pro9000 but the Canon printer also costs a fair bit more. HP obviously had to make some compromises to keep the price low but the beautiful print quality is superb. I printed out 13x19 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. For constant 13x19 printing this printer does drink up its ink pretty quickly. When printing 13x19's that are heavily saturated with one or two main colors I sometimes used up an ink cartridge after printing just 5 13x19's.
