HP Photosmart 8250 Printer (Q3470A#ABA) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This is an excellent printer for the serious photographer. The images are clear, sharp, and crisp, and professional in every way, at least to my amateur eye. I am a picky amateur photographer, and I bought this printer so that I could easily print 8x10, 5x7, and 4x6 photos from my several digital cameras. This printer does the job. This is a beautifully engineered and solid piece of equipment.
Some technical issues. Beware, when the ink first prints, it smears easily, so let it dry for a few minutes--it dries quickly enough. I am happy to say that the photo download from the card reader slot (I measured it on the CF card reader--I haven't tried it for my SD cards yet) is lightning fast, as compared to my older HP printers, I guess that is the USB 2.0 that this device features. This is a welcome improvement--earlier HP printers lagged behind even cheap card readers in speed. No more.
So far my print feeds have been flawless and jam-free. You can effortlessly switch between 4x6 and 8x10 prints, and the feeds are fine. (Haven't tried 5x7s yet, but I expect no problems.) When you first take the printer out of the box it will prompt you to put paper in the printer and let it test the ink cartridges. Beware--you need to install them first. This only takes a second, and these are the most foolproof printer cartridges I have ever seen, but the printer does not tell you that the cartridges are not yet installed, at least not until you try to run the diagnostic. No big deal; I installed them, and the printer calibrated itself perfectly!
The printer installed perfectly and effortlessly the very first time. Simply insert the supplied CD and follow the instructions. Remember not to insert the (not supplied!) USB2 cable into the computer until the software prompts you to do so.
It appears to me that some of the other reviewers (here on Amazon) of this printer made the same initial mistake I made. Specifically, here is the deal: this printer can detect what kind of paper you are feeding it (if it is HP paper anyway)--it detects it from a code on the back of the paper and it adjusts the ink application accordingly. Further, this printer is very precise as to how it applies ink to a given paper type. So if you try to manually tell it what kind of paper you are using, and if you guess wrong, you will get lousy pictures with the ink incorrectly applied. Once I figured out the rather amazing fact that this printer KNOWS what kind of paper it is printing on, I started getting wonderful pictures. (It literally never occurred to me that it could do this--I had to, you guessed it, read the manual to find this out). This is cool--you can insert different kinds of HP photo paper in the same stack, e.g. matte, glossy, etc. and expect to get perfect pictures without having to look in the printer to see what paper is next. Just tell it on the print menu to automatically select the paper type. I love the 21st century!
Personally, I think that HP has hit a home run with this one. While I cannot compare this one to its rivals from Epson or Canon (I have not reviewed these), I can say that I am completely satisfied. Recommended.

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Box Contents: HP Photosmart 8250 Printer, HP 22 Tri-color Inkjet Print Cartridge, 5 ml ink volume, HP Image Zone Express Photo and Imaging Software on CD-ROM, Setup Poster, User's Guide, Power Supply, Power Cord The HP Q3470A Photosmart 8250 Printer lets you enjoy easy photo printing, the world's fastest photo printer. Easy to set up and use, it prints beautiful photos and laser-quality black text. Print a 4 x 6 photo in as fast as 14 seconds for as little as 24¢ each, or everyday documents at blazing speeds up to 32 ppm black text, up to 31 ppm color text. Six convenient individual ink tanks help avoid the hassle of running out of specific inks in the middle of a photo or page by letting you easily replace only the inks you need, when you need them. Also accepts custom sizes Memory card compatibility - CompactFlash Type I and II, Memory Stick (including PRO, Duo, MagicGate), Microdrive, MMC, Secure Digital (SD), mini SD (optional adapter required), xD-Picture Card Max. Memory - 64 MB Also connects to HP bt300 Wireless Printer Adapter or HP bt450 Bluetooth Wireless Printer and PC Adapter System Requirements(PC) - Intel Pentium II (or equivalent) or higher; 64 MB RAM (256 MB recommended); 600 MB available hard disk space (2 GB recommended); Windows 98, 2000, Me, XP Home, XP Professional; SVGA monitor (800 x 600, 16-bit color); 4x CD-ROM drive; USB port; USB cable (not included); Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 System Requirements(Mac) - G3 processor or higher, 128 MB RAM (256 MB recommended), 150 MB available hard disk space, Mac OS X v 10.2 or higher, SVGA monitor (800 x 600, 16-bit color), 4x CD-ROM drive, USB port, USB cable (not included) Uses c8721w, c8771w, c8772w, c8773w, c8774w, c8775w ink cartridges Dimensions(WxDxH) - 17.59 x 19.13 x 8 Weight - 18.7 lbs.

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