Are you still happy with your Hp B9180?

[Joakim Ahnfelt]

Hi
I'm getting nearer to bying a printer and since the B9180 seemed to be the one to go for last spring I'm curious whether those of you who has one are still happy with it. Or has there been a new release from some other maker that I should look in to. I'm not interested in larger/more expensive models. I can imagin that I will print around 3-4 prints a week on average. Mainly B&W.

Cheers
Joakim

[Colin Graham]

Joakim, I'm still very happy with mine after 6 months or so, but I mainly use it for digital negatives so probably not much help to you. I'm started to get interested in printing inkjet B&W as the silver papers I like keep getting discontinued, but the only prints I've done have been on drugstore paper, just scanning a silver print in and spitting it back out on the printer. That said, they look pretty convincing aside from the sealed-plastic sheen of the cheap paper. I have noticed some very slight pizza wheel marks visible at glare angles, but this may be more an artifact of the mirror surface of the glossy paper. I've heard that there is a way to shrink-wrap the pizza wheels but haven't explored it.

[sanking]

Joakim, I'm still very happy with mine after 6 months or so, but I mainly use it for digital negatives so probably not much help to you. I'm started to get interested in printing inkjet B&W as the silver papers I like keep getting discontinued, but the only prints I've done have been on drugstore paper, just scanning a silver print in and spitting it back out on the printer. That said, they look pretty convincing aside from the sealed-plastic sheen of the cheap paper. I have noticed some very slight pizza wheel marks visible at glare angles, but this may be more an artifact of the mirror surface of the glossy paper. I've heard that there is a way to shrink-wrap the pizza wheels but haven't explored it.

I am still very pleased with my B9180. Although my original intention was to use it to print digital negatives I have actually used it much more as my workhorse printer for text and B&W and color images, for which application it is a great improvement over my old Epson 2200 which is now reserved for digital negatives. At the original purchase price of $480, which included shipping, I consider the B9180 one of the best values in digital printing.

Sandy King

[Oren Grad]

I've been tinkering with a B9180 for a few months. You may want to take my comments with a grain of salt, because I'm not a fan of inkjet prints and my experience with the B9180 so far hasn't given me any reason to change my view.

But that said, here are a few observations:

* It seems like a pretty competent printer overall, as photo-grade pigment inkjets go.

* The self-maintenance routines are amusing. You leave the printer plugged in and turned on all the time; even once in a while it wakes up, spends a few moments hiccuping and burping and then shuts down again. But whatever it's doing seems effective - I've had no problems at all with ink clogging, even when the printer has sat unused for a few weeks at a time.

* I get occasional pinpoint surface blemishes - the infamous pizza wheel marks? - on glossy RC papers. You have to hold the paper at just the right angle to see them, and they don't interfere in any way with normal viewing, but I'd rather they were not there.

* When switching papers or trying new, non-HP papers, you need to be very careful about making sure the new settings allow for the proper paper thickness. A single head crash can be enough to damage one or more of the print heads beyond usability. On the plus side, print head replacement is easy to do yourself; replacement heads cost about $50, and if there's a problem the printer diagnostics will help figure out which of the four heads is messed up. I don't know how sensitive the Epsons are in this respect, though if something goes wrong with the Epson print head I believe they require a trip to Epson for service.

* There's supposed to be a special utility to make printing from Photoshop really easy. I could never figure out how to install it for CS3 - I'm not even sure CS3 is officially supported - and eventually gave up. Working through the regular Photoshop print dialog is tedious - the HP driver likes to default to factory settings at the slightest provocation, so I have to be constantly rechecking and resetting things to make sure the printer will do what I want. I'm working under Windows XP; I don't know what the situation is with Macs.

* The ability to switch freely between photo (glossy) black and matte black is a huge plus compared to the Epsons.

* The officially supported HP papers don't come in as many size/finish varieties as the officially supported Epson papers. Of course, you can use papers from other brands if you're comfortable tinkering with profiles and printer settings.

* As for B&W, the best B&W prints I've been able to make with the B9180 so far aren't as rich or as smooth tonally as the best B&W I've seen from experienced users of the Epson X800 series. I should also say, I find B&W on the standard HP RC papers to be just ghastly. Output on matte "art" papers is better, though not nice enough for me to really like it or want to use it for anything other than occasional special purposes.

[Brian Ellis]

"The ability to switch freely between photo (glossy) black and matte black is a huge plus compared to the Epsons."

Oren - I don't know about other Epsons but the 3800 switches back and forth automatically, depending on whether you're using matte or glossy paper. It doesn't get much easier than that though there is some ink consumed when the printer makes the switch so it isn't a completely free lunch.

[Oren Grad]

Brian - Good point. The switch is cost-free on the HP - no ink is consumed. But that was definitely a welcome improvement in the 3800. If I had to buy again, and if I found myself wanting to do more intensive work with B&W inkjet, I'd give serious consideration to the 3800.

[Ted Harris]

The 3800 is a good printer but costs twice as much as the B9180.

[Colin Graham]

Yeah, I was seriously looking at the 3800 but just couldn't get there. The next generation of printers I'll probably be ready to spend some serious money on.

Oren, I had similar problems installing the 'special utility'. The error dialog just says 'Can't find Photoshop. Please press close to exit.' No chance to browse or enter the location manually. Must not work for CS3, but it seems like they would have patched it by now.

Anyway forgot to mention earlier I get much better WYSIWYG when I turn off the 'controlled by printer' defaults and use the canned profiles along with 'controlled by application' in the color management options but that's the extent of my tinkering. Oddly, I had much better results out of the box with PS6; when I upgraded to CS3 I had to tweak this to get back where I was before. It is very very irritating that the software wants to reset to defaults on each print; if you forget to check it it's a waste of a print. I'm curious what settings others are having the best luck with.

[butterfly]

I've had mine for 6 months and have used it lots. Print quality is outstanding, especially on HP hahnehmule fine art paper. Operationally the automatic cleaning routines are a nuisance, coming on at the most inconvenient times. And my biggest problem, totally ignored by HP in my mails and calls to them, are around the sudden loss for no apparent reason of communication between computer and printer. One day it's fine, the next I send a print job and nothing will get it going again except a total power-down and reboot of computer. It is infuriating! I think HP should address this problem with a firmware upgrade. I am disappointed in their lack of after-sales care.

Steve

[Oren Grad]

For color I'm using exclusively "controlled by application" for color management. For B&W I've mostly been using the printer-controlled black/gray only option.

I had some teething problems early on with the printer and got some pretty intensive telephone support from HP. Some time was wasted because I had to speak to more than one person and the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing, but on balance I give them high marks for responsiveness and patience for that episode. I've not had reason to call on them since the initial setup.