Photosmart B9180

Hewlett-Packard’s 8750 failed to make an impression among designers, artists and photographers when it was first launched back in the Spring of 2005. Now, after a lengthy rethink, HP has unveiled the B9180, a printer that it hopes will silence critics of the older machine. It’s aimed at a similar market, but this time HP has created a solid design that uses a new eight-way ink process with extra greys, supports gloss and matte media, and enjoys a 200-year longevity rating (as set by Wilhelm Research, the industry’s longevity-testing organisation).

Two hundred years may seem academic – it’s unlikely that anyone reading this will still be worrying about print quality a couple of centuries from now – but in the shorter term it suggests that colour fastness is almost rock solid. Any print that’s kept out of direct sunlight, with an optional UV coating, should show no signs of any colour shift at all for a good few decades.

If the new process is impressive, the external design is less so. This is a boxy bread-bin printer that looks solidly consumer-oriented with no professional accents. Internally, it’s a different story, with solid metal parts that look and feel robust, and built for heavy use. But another negative is the initial installation routine. You only have to do it once – which is just as well, because it’s not fun. The first let-down is the tiny mains lead, which must be all of one foot long. If you don’t happen to have a socket near the printer, you’ll have to find yourself an extension lead.

Ink installation is pretty standard, with eight 27ml ink cartridges – which cost £22 each, so a full set costs £176 – slotted in place manually. Less standard is the print-head installation. There are four heads altogether, and they’re expected to last for the life of the printer. So although they’re replaceable, it’s unlikely you’ll need to change them. Fitting each one involves shaking it vigorously, removing three safety tabs, and swabbing the head with a large cotton bud supplied as part of each head package. With the heads installed, the printer must be fed a special pack of calibration media. It then clicks and whirrs away for up to an hour as the heads are calibrated.

This closed-loop process, as it’s known, uses a built-in densitometer to check for nozzle alignment and colour matching. While it’s not the same as full-scale profiling, it creates a colour reference that the printer subsequently refers to, and helps make colour consistency more likely. Colour consistency is certainly a good thing, but busy graphics professionals may be unimpressed by the need to spend an hour on a process that could surely be done at the factory. At the least, you’ll need to find some quiet time to get the B9180 up and running, because it’s certainly not a plug-and-print model or something you’ll want to tackle in the middle of a rush job.

Familiar drivers
Compared to the mechanical set-up, software installation is painless. The latest updates are downloaded automatically. The drivers will be familiar to existing HP owners, although one significant new arrival is a special Photoshop plug-in driver, which provides extra control over formatting and media selection. There’s also the option on both Mac and PC to install a simple image library and editing tool. But this is consumer rather than pro-oriented, so it’s unlikely to be essential for anyone who does design for a living.

Connectivity is provided via Ethernet or USB 2.0, and drivers for each are installed. There’s no WiFi option – but, to be fair, this isn’t offered by the B9180’s rivals either.

In terms of output quality, this is a printer that will make the market sit up and take notice. Colours from the eight-ink Vivera pigment process are exceptionally vivid. While you’ll still need a formal profiling stage if you want to use this printer for professional proofing, colour deviation out of the box is small.

As you’d expect, HP’s own media gives the best results, and prints on glossy, matte, fine art and canvas samples proved that this is one versatile printer. The print path is curved, so heavy card stock or more exotic media can’t be used. But after a few initial teething troubles during set-up, printing on standard media was smooth and reliable.

Print speed is a mixed bag. This printer isn’t as creakingly slow as the 8750, but it’s not quite as fast as the newest Canon models. Still, smaller prints appear quickly, so if you’re looking for high-speed photo-prints, this is an attractive choice. A full-sized A3+ print takes between five and ten minutes, depending on the selected options, which is competent, if not quite best of breed.

Aside from print speed, there are only two areas where the B9180 could do better. First, there’s no roll-feed and no roll-feed option. In theory, panoramas and banners should still be possible, but in practice the paper path alignment isn’t precise enough for extended media. So if this is important to you, the B9180 might not be a first choice. There’s also a minor issue with gloss printing, which lacks the all-over glossy smoothness of the Epson R1800’s output. The latter comes with a gloss optimiser cartridge, which effectively sprays an extra layer on top of the print. The B9180 lacks this, so the gloss finish can look a little patchy.