Top Quality All-In-One Photosmart Printer
Pros:
Great quality printing, nice design.
Cons:
No sheet feeder, sometimes noisy.
The Bottom Line:
If you can grab this item online or locally at under $300 it is a great printer for the money.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
I recently purchased the HP Photosmart C8180 All-in-one printer, scanner and copier.
Prior to this purchase I used a bottom of the line HP deskjet for everyday printing needs, a Canoscan flatbed scanner for scanning and copying, and a Canon Photo Printer for printing 4x6 photos.
This grouping worked well but took up a lot of real estate in my den, and there was nothing cohesive among the 3 pieces of equipment. All the software was different, and this proved a little difficult sometimes.
I decided to go with the Photosmart C8180 over several other of their models because I really like the design of the printer.
The front panel consists of a very readable and responsive touch screen interface, and only a small grouping of buttons (Red Eye Removal, Cancel, Print Photos, and start copy-black and color).
The touch screen runs a very intuitive version of the HP Photosmart Express software right inside the printer. The opening screen gives you options to Print Photos, copy, scan or work with DVD's or CD's.
The front of the printer includes the usual assortment of memory card readers, and one unusual device-a built in DVD burner.
The burner can burn DVD's CD's, and with the right discs burn labels right on the disk using HP's Lightscribe system. You can also print photos from existing discs using this drive.
The system (I'm using Vista) shows the disk as an external disk drive, so you can use it through windows like any other drive, just with slightly slower access times.
The rest of the front of the printer is taken up with input trays for regular and photo paper, and the output tray. The design overall is nice and compact.
The top of the printer has an expandable cover which covers the copier and scanner. There is no auto sheet feeder.
Hp includes a variety of desktop software and drivers with the system, and everything works well together.
Print quality is excellent in all regards, and scanning is quick very accurate in my limited testing.
Making copies is a matter of placing the original on the bed and pushing the color or black and white copy button.
This is a very nice unit, but beware that pricing is all over the place. I purchased mine on Memorial Day weekend for only $239 at Circuit City, but I see prices as high as $399. I think that for $239-289 this is a good buy, but don't spend more.
