HP’s first actual pigment-based printer was released to the market in 2006. Named the Photosmart Pro B9180, it provided good quality and brought some innovative features. After many years of getting the job done, the B9180 finally got a follow up model, retailing for a respectable price of $550, the Photosmart Pro B8850. Like many other HP models, the B8850 makes use of HP’s famous Vivera inks.




The same inks can be found in the B8850′s predecessor, the B9180 and the same cartridges and printheads will work on both models. So, you’ve guessed it, the print quality is the same. Eight pinkment inks can be found on the B8850 and include matte black, photo black, light gray, magenta, light magenta, cyan, light cyan and yellow.

As you might soon discover if you’re considering purchasing one, the B8850 is a rather bulky printer at about 40 pounds. What’s surprising is that some of the advanced features that the B9180 includes were left out when HP built the B8850. Hence you won’t be getting a LCD display in an attempt of the manufacturer to keep this printer more affordable by the reasoning that you’ll have the printer connected to a nearby computer anyway and except for the basic controls you won’t need previewing or navigation on a screen onboard the printer .

Another ‘downgrade’ and way to keep costs down refers to connectivity. The B8850 only comes with an USB port and limits its user to an USB connection to a PC. The B9180 came with both USB and Ethernet. While it’s not a must have, one can figure out the appeal of Ethernet if there is more than one user and computer relying on the same printer. Still, the B8850 can work for multiple printers if you must use it with more than one computer, through USB. But keep in mind that these HP color printers were designed for the amateur photographer who wants the same quality printing as in the case of the B9180. This means they’ll prefer a lower price and won’t care that much about the features that were removed.

The B8850 can handle a wide variety of media types including glossy, matte, semigloss or fine-art. Both the paper tray with a paper capacity of 200 sheets and the single-sheet manual feed tray can hold paper sizes of up to 13 by 19 inches. The Vivera inks included in the printer are really worth their money and provide great photo quality. The area in which the B8850 clearly surpasses all competition is black and white photography. The quality of those is similar to the one produced by printers of over $1000. Printing speed is not that great, however. A 4 by 6 inch print will process in about 70 seconds and a larger format photo will take minutes.

As a conclusion the B8850 is more of a downgrade rather than an upgrade from B9180 but the price on it also went down as a consequence. So if you’re looking for the quality of those famous HP color printers with a more attractive price tag and aren’t very interested in the features HP left out, then this is the perfect choice for you.

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