Great Medium Format Printer

My girlfriend bought me this printer as a gift because I had been talking about it all year and when it was finally available she surprised me with it.

I've printed about 150 photos on it ranging in size from 8x10 to 13X19. I don't print 4X6 because I don't see the point of having a 12.8mp camera and 13x19 printer if you're going to print postage stamps.

I have owned many color printers over the years. I was an Epson devotee until I started having trouble with the P2200. I could never get the output from it that I wanted. The color was always off and I could not get a decent black and white photo out of it. There was always a purple or green color cast to it (metamerism).

I purchased an HP Photosmart 8250 about a year and a half ago when they first came out and I was blown away by the output of this $179 printer when compared to the $800 Epson. The color was spot on every time and the black and white photos were actually black and white. I even framed some of my work and gave them to friends and family as gifts. The only problem was that the printer only printed up to 8.5x11. I wanted something that could print 13x19 with the ease and quality of the 8250. When I read about the Pro B9180 early in 2006 I couldn't wait to get my hands on one, but HP wasn't ready to release them until late 2006.

Since I've gotten it I have printed many of my own photos that now hang on the walls of my house. It took a little trial and error but after several test prints I finally got my output to match the screen images on my calibrated monitor.

Be very careful with your paper selections for this printer. I have been using HP Premium Plus Glossy which I get in 200 sheet packs from Sam's for $20, that's a great deal. I was very disappointed with the prints I was getting on this paper with the Pro B9180. The only paper profile in the print driver was HP Advanced Glossy so I used that profile. I couldn't find a profile online for the Premium Plus. Then one day I was at CompUSA looking for 13x19 paper and noticed an interesting little note on the Premium Plus paper package (say that 5 times fast). It said "Not recommended for use with HP 38 ink cartridges" which is what the B9180 uses. (All 8 cartridges are #38, which can get a little confusing). Amazing what you can learn from reading the package, isn't it?

I took a step to the left and found the Advanced Photo Paper and it said "Ideal for printing with HP # 2 and 38 inkjet cartridges." (#2 is what the 8250 uses). So I grabbed a package of 8.5X11 and another of 13x19 (no 11x14 were available) and headed for the door (with a quick stop at the register of course. I'm a photographer not a thief.)

I was amazed at the difference that this made in the image quality. Before, the images were always much darker than they appeared on my screen and the ink took forever to dry. Now the prints are dry almost immediately and they match my monitor images very well.

I've also found that Ilford Pearl paper works great with this printer but you have to download the paper profile from Ilford's website. The Pearl finish is wonderful for black and white and color photos that you wish to have a softer finish than the HP Advanced glossy paper.

Since I got the paper issue straightened out I have been very impressed with the prints.

Ink usage is another matter. I've read other reviews on other sites that stated users have gotten 200 prints without having to change a cartridge. I did not have that experience.

This printer has a closed loop ink system. It is the same type of system that is used on the 8250. There is a door on the left front of the printer that covers the ink compartment. Behind this door is where you insert all 8 ink cartridges. The 8 cartridges include photo and matte black as well as a light gray. Both photo black and matte black have their own slots and stay in the printer all the time so you don't have to change them out like you do on other printers (Epson P2200) and the light gray makes black and white prints look as good as any I've seen with lots of contrast and great mid tones.

The ink cartridges on this printer are not carried by the print head. Instead, they stay put and the ink is pumped through tubing to the print head with the use of a closed loop vacuum system. No ink is wasted. Whatever is not used gets recycled through the system thereby saving a lot of ink that would otherwise be wasted. There are 4 different print heads, each dedicated to 2 colors. The print heads are user changeable and come in packages that look like big ink cartridges. The manual says that they will last the life of the printer but it makes you wonder why they would design the printer this way if periodic print head changes weren't required to maintain optimum performance.

The driver software monitors the health of the print heads as well as the ink level of each cartridge and the number of prints the printer has produced. I have printed approximately 150 photos and I have replaced 4 cartridges (photo black, yellow, light cyan and magenta.) The ink level monitor will tell you that your ink is low when the level reaches 25% which is a little too early for me. I have gotten almost a dozen prints after the low ink warnings started before I got down below 10% on a cartridge. It seems the first set of cartridges goes quicker than the replacements because the setup procedure eats up quite a bit of ink. I also believe but have not been able to verify that even though the monitor tells you that the cartridge is low, there is quite a bit of ink in the lines and in the reservoirs in the print heads (I don't actually know if there are reservoirs in the heads but when you install them it tells you to shake them up first which would indicate that they come with some sort of liquid in them.)

When checking the ink monitor recently I noticed that one of the print heads was in FAIR condition rather than GOOD like the other 3. The new Vivera ink cartridges (#38) are a pigment based ink and pigments are well known for clogging print heads. I ran the printer through a cleaning cycle and this fixed the problem but I wonder why the printer didn't notice this itself and run a self cleaning. The manual says to keep the printer on at all times because it goes through regular maintenance routines. Maybe I caught it before the printer had time to do it's own self maintenance, but I'll keep an eye on it.

One of the hazards of being an early adopter is the difficulty in finding parts and supplies. I have only found 1 cartridge for this printer in a store (CompUSA). The big office supply chains that guarantee to have every ink cartridge don't even have them yet and the printer has been available for several months. I was very surprised that CompUSA had only 1 cartridge in the whole store as they had the printer itself prominently displayed in the store. I have had to order cartridges direct from HP. They are $33 each with free next day shipping. I was very impressed with this service. I ordered the cartridges on the Friday evening before Christmas and they were here before noon on Saturday, Dec. 23rd. I was amazed. Even with free next business day shipping I didn't expect to get these cartridges until Wed at the earliest because I ordered them so late on Friday and Monday was Christmas. This may have just been dumb luck, but I did notice that the cartridges were shipped from Memphis, TN, the shipping hub for FedEX, this may have something to do with the speedy delivery. (All due respect to Fred Rogers).

The printer itself is a beast of a machine. You need a very substantial printer stand for it. I don't know how heavy it is (maybe 30 lbs.) but I did let out quite a grunt taking it out of the box and setting it on the desk and the UPS guy was breathing pretty hard after carrying it up to my 4th floor apartment. It gives the impression of being well engineered, well built and capable of lasting for quite a while. The paper tray is removable, just like the ones on the printers at the office or the copy machine. Very well designed and easy to load. When you have the printer loaded with 8.5x11 inch paper the paper tray is completely enclosed. This is a big plus with photo paper that is best kept out of the light. It also helps to keep dust off the paper as well. The paper tray expands to accommodate larger papers but when expanded you don't get an enclosed paper tray so the paper is not protected. It also has a fold down manual feed slot for thicker media but I have not yet used this feature. I have made a few plain paper text document prints for work and the printer works just fine for this purpose as well, although it is the equivalent of seeing a surgeon for a hangnail.

This printer also has a built in ethernet port. I set it on the desk next to my wireless router, connected it with a network cable to the router and installed the included software on all 3 of our household laptops. Now we can print from any computer anywhere in the house wirelessly. It works equally well on the Macs and the PC and it has it's own plug in for Photoshop CS2 color management. The initial setup routine takes about 30 minutes and then the printer is ready to go.

Print quality is excellent and looks as good as anything I've seen from a lab. If you are looking for a medium format printer, you really can't go wrong with this HP.