HP Photsmart C6180

Up until now, I have always gone with the Epson printers and scanners. But I needed something that could be networked, and Epson do not offer this.

Bad news first then. The scanner is easy to use for copying and general scanning, but scanning photos does not produce the quality I am used to from my old Epson device. Also, the lid has a tendency to drop heavily, so care should be taken there. It feels flimsy in this department. However, with the ability to scan multiple pages without the risk of touching the glass, (using the document feeder), there is a saving grace.

That is the end of the bad, which is quite a positive thing to be able to state. As mentioned at the start, networking was key to my requirements, and this does the job in spades. Forget the CD, download the latest HP Multi-Function Products Driver Bundle, Corporate Only edition. This is all you really need, and it can be installed via the command line.

Using the browser, I found that I could access the printer and change the config, giving it a static IP address and an appropriate name. These are then passed as arguments via the command line and the installation happens all by itself. Doing it this way, you can easily avoid all the unnecessary baggage they love to include these days. With no problems, I had 4 PCs, including 2 wireless laptops, ready to roll within 30 minutes. The only thing you need do afterwards is set the printer as the default and you are away.

Now a word or two about the photo print quality. Absolutely Fabulous!

As good as you can expect from Boots or any other photo lab that I have used for digital photography. I printed one shot from a wedding, where I had been a little disappointed with the quality from Boots. It was stunning.

Inks, when bought from a sensible source, are cheap by comparison to Epson. And if you buy the Value Pack, (Q7966EE), for about £23 you get all 6 cartridges and also 3x50 sheets of size 10x15cm photo paper.

Shop around and you will find you can buy this, with an extra Value Pack for about £200, including delivery. (I paid £201.)

But for the general build quality and less than perfect scanned images, I would have given top marks. For the price however, I doubt you could find a better all-in-one on the market today.

Solomalee has the review just about spot on, save for the score - I believe. Scanning multiple pages results in dodgy Tiffs, a basic hinged lid makes scanning thick documents difficult and software is diabolical (absolutely enormous, although I've not had the same reliability problems - touch wood). I've not tried particularly thick media, although it ran off photos at A4 on 190gsm and 6x4 on 280gsm without a hiccup. I don't think the papertray is particularly awkward either. Not as straightforward as a drop in feeder, but fairly standard fayre for this kind of device.

Photo quality and speed is phenomenal. Absolutely stunning borderless prints from six seperate cartridges. Easy printing from a range of media (I've not tried PictBridge, though)

Scan and photocopy work a treat, bar the multiple page issue. Excellent quality from both. Faxing is a doddle and worked without a hitch.

Apart from its competence in the above areas, it's also networkable! Runs reliably on my home network. Currently using DHCP but it looks like there are settings to set up an ip address manually. As my network already has a wireless access point, I've not played with its wireless capability. Looks like WiFi is built in and BlueTooth is an option.

Overall, given that the price of this unit has just dropped to £150 (everywhere except Amazon!), I think it's unbelievable value for money. Very, very happy me :-)

Update Christmas 07 - picked up a blutooth device a while ago for £6 from PCWorld! little plug in USB stick means I can print directly from my 3.2 Megapixel N95 (all my friends' phones have worked a treat as well). Brilliant to come back from a weekend away and print the pics for the kids to see or to take into work. Only downside is I use much more ink!

Firstly when I got this I was very impressed with this product (and wrote a review), however having ended up working scanning/copying/printing large size documents for a few years at my work and this has left me somewhat critical of this type of equipment.

Features:

* 1. Scanner
* 2. Fax
* 3. Printer/Print Tray
* 4. Copier
* 5. Card Reader
* 6. Software
* 7. Duplex Printing Unit
* 8. Ink/CISS

Mine has 2 optional upgrades a double sided printing accessory (official) and a Continuous Ink Supply System otherwise known as CISS (unofficial).

' 1. Scanner. The scanner is quite good, a bit slow for high quality scans. Software also asks you 2 or 3 times if you want to scan which gets annoying if you want to do alot of scanning. There is a document feeder for scanning but often it takes up multiple sheets of paper at once and hence you don't have everything you set to scan. Definitely not the best. Also there is no means of scanning double sided sheets of paper except for manually. Although it offers decent quality, it isn't the most efficient.

' 2. Fax. I set mine up initially. I got annoying advert faxes wasting ink done a test once to my work, it worked but most home users don't need a fax and I have never used it since.

' 3. Printer/Print Tray Prints out very fast, doesn't jam too much. I broke my print tray however (it is quite fragile at the edge) and it threw all the paper on the ground. I fixed it using 2 filing clips and 2 plastic binders and it is better than the original actually. Photo print takes a long time but is pretty high quality for a home system.

' 4. Copier. Copies standard paper pretty quickly, as with the scanner limitation, double sided copies must be done manually. Has a bit for printing out graph paper and lined paper also.

' 5. Card reader. This is nice particularly (CF, MMC, SD, XD, MS DUO) for printing pictures also the computer can access it over the network.

' 6. Software.
For Windows XP the software is fine/much more bloated than it should be but functional, buttons work fine on the device.
For Vista/7 the software is even more bloated and double sided prints don't complete on the last page. Sometimes the printer just disappears when your restart the computer. Several tweaks have to be done manually such as disabling bidirectional printing to get it functional. Not all the buttons configure properly on the device. In 7 I am actually using the native driver in Windows 7 for printing and using Internet Explorer to access the device via LAN to scan.

' 7. Double Sided Printing Accessory. Jams alot more than the standard one sided. In Vista/7 when the full software was installed it jammed alot, with XP it is slightly better. In XP duplex printing worked in Vista/7, text was cut off the top and bottom of pages (not so often with the start and end pages) but always with the end page. An obvious note it will certainly jam if the tray isn't fully extended. I had more problems when I broke my print tray. My fix to the print tray and using the native Windows 7 driver seems to have reduced the problem significantly.

' 8. Ink/CISS When you buy the product at first the ink cartridges print out 1200 pages and as I reviewed earlier this is great. Replacement ink cartridges are costly, the multivalue pack is a con, it gives you 6 cartridges but the ones you use the most the Black, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow all run out very fast. If you buy the full cartridges you get slightly more ink in them but you again pay more. After the first set of cartridges it isn't as efficient. I bought a CISS for about the same price as one of these "multivalue cartridges" it gave me 100 ml black, 100 ml Cyan, 100 ml Magenta, 100 ml Yellow, 100 ml Light Cyan, 100 ml Light Magenta. A HP value pack had 2-6 ml of each colour in each cartridge respectively. This meant had to replace the ink less and was much more economical. Note the ink is kind of water based. Usually if you spill water on printed paper it is somewhat ruined, with this ink it is completely ruined. It doesn't bother me so much but it does bother other people.

Conclusion, I'm not impressed with the software for the later Operating Systems however it worked flawlessly with Windows XP. This is a great product for a student providing they get a CISS and/or the double sided printing accessory. It takes a bit of tinkering to be completely happy with it in Vista/7. General Home/Student use recommended.