Product Reviews

Printers

Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 8250 [Computer Buyer]
COMPANY: Hewlett-Packard	PRICE: �135 inc VAT
RATING:	ISSUE: 175 DATE: Dec 05
LATEST PRICES: £68.74 (1 Retailers)

Verdict: HP's 8250 prints high-quality photos quickly. If you're a photo enthusiast, then this is the printer for you

If digital photography is your hobby, you'll know how important it is to own a decent photo printer. It lets you see your photos as soon as you've shot them, giving you the chance to print test copies each time you make an adjustment in your image editing software. There's only one drawback: time. A good photo printer can take between five and 20 minutes to print out a single shot. If you've taken a lot of pictures, you can end up dedicating half a day just to printing.

According to HP, the Photosmart 8250 is the world's fastest photo printer. It's also the first home inkjet to have a separate cartridge for each one of its six inks. This means you don't



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have to replace two or three inks just because one has run out.

HP claims that the 8250 can print a 6x4in photo in just 14 seconds. We couldn't get it to run this fast in our tests. At its top quality setting, the 8250 took just under two minutes to print a single 6x4in photo. But that's still fast. When we lowered the quality to 'draft' this fell to under a minute: very impressive.

What's more, even at the fast draft setting, the picture quality was excellent. There was no banding or graininess, though some of the prints were slightly banded at one edge. The colours in prints made directly from a memory card were highly saturated, making the pictures seem slightly warmer than the original digital images. At top quality our test photos were flawless. Even subtle shifts in shade and tone were correctly rendered, colours were vivid, but natural, and details well picked out.

The quality of text prints was good as well. Characters were printed boldly and crisply in solid blacks. Documents printed quickly, too - at 2.4 pages per minute in our tests.

With its fast print speeds and excellent quality, this is a top-notch printer. If you're a photo enthusiast and really need a six-ink photo inkjet, this is the one to get

By Peter Wood

SPECIFICATIONS:
TYPE six-colour inkjet CONNECTION USB 2 RESOLUTION 4,800x1,200dpi DIMENSIONS 447x385x160mm (wdh) PAPER TRAYS 100-sheet input tray, 50-sheet output tray CARTRIDGES black cartridge costs �23 and last for 800 pages (2.8p per page), cyan cartridge costs �8 and lasts for 350 pages (2.3p per page), magenta costs �8 and lasts for 350 pages (2.3p per page), yellow costs �8 and lasts for 490 pages (1.6p per page), light cyan costs �8 and lasts for 240 pages (3.3p per page), light magenta costs �8 and lasts for 240 pages (3.3p per page)