The Photosmart Pro B8550 printer from HP is a high-end photo printer that can produce big prints (up to 13 x 44 inches) that have accurate color, deep blacks and good overall quality. But it's also a rather slow printer that makes a lot of noise as it prints.

The B8850 uses 8 ink cartridges, and a complete set of all 8 costs about $350. However, they do seem to last a long time; we only used one set in our testing, which usually exhausts at least two sets. These 8 cartridges include 2 blacks (one for glossy paper, and one for matte) a grey and a light cyan. These cartridges are installed in the front of the paper, and a series of tubes then lead to the print heads.

Performance (Read the full lab performance results at Printerinfo.com)
In our extensive performance tests on the B8850, we found that it had good color accuracy, reproducing most colors with only minor errors. It did struggle with some colors, though; the darker blues and some of the greens were slightly inaccurate. We  also found that we got better results using a non-HP paper (Ilford Galerie) than with HP's own Advanced Photo Paper. Fine details were also well reproduced, but some intricate details had a slightly soft look to them; one of the test images that we use is an Alice in Wonderland woodcut, and this had a somewhat soft focus look to it after printing.

We also found that the HP B8850 was not a fast printer: it took about 9 minutes and 13 seconds to produce a 13 x 19 inch print at the highest quality setting, and about 1 minute and 46 seconds to do a 4 x 6 inch photo. Although we don't expect high-end printers like this to print especially quickly, that is on the slow side all around. These figures are for the highest quality mode (called Maximum DPI), but it's not that much faster in other modes; in the Best mode, the 4 x 6 too 1 minute and 26 seconds.

The other thing that we noted with this printer was the noise; it produces a lot of noise while it is printing, producing a lot of clanking and grinding sounds as it moves the print heads around. It is also rather cat-like in that it spends a lot of time cleaning itself; before every print, the print heads are moved to the right side of the printer body and it spends between 5 seconds and a minute cleaning them, with another accompanying symphony of clunks and grinding noises.


Comparisons (Read the full lab performance results at Printerinfo.com)
There are several similar printers from other manufacturers that offer similar features at a similar price; the Canon Pro 9000 Mark II and the Epson R1900 both cost about $450 and can both print on paper up to 13 x 19 inches. We also found that most of these printers had fairly similar performance; although they each have their own issues printing certain colors accurately, they all had about the same overall color accuracy. But the other features are somewhat different: the Canon Pro 9000 Mark II can't handle the larger banner sized paper that the HP and the Epson R1900 can. While the HP can print onto sheets of banner-sized paper (up to 13 by 44 inches) it doesn't support printing from a roll of paper the way the Epson does, which can make producing larger numbers of big prints significantly easier. The Epson R1900 offers support for printing onto inkjet compatible DVDs with the included CD/DVD tray, which the HP and Canon can't do.

Although the B8850 produced prints that had decent color and blacks, neither the range of colors the HP B8850 could reproduce or the depth of the blacks were as good as some other printers we've tested. The Canon Pro 9500 Mark II, for instance, could reproduce a much wider range of colors, and it also had much deeper blacks. But this is a significantly more expensive printer: it costs $850, nearly twice as much as the B8850.


For a more in-depth review, visit the HP Photosmart B8850 review at our partner PrinterInfo.com