HP Photosmart Pro B9180

I got this because it's supposed to make good prefessional prints, brochures, etc. NOPE. The ink is terrible with 8 seperate (and pricey) toner cartridges. It has not delivered quality at all. I would… never give a client something this had printed because their fingers would be covered in ink. No joke. Right now, it's a really expensive drafting printer for what we give to the printer shop to make ACTUAL brochures. AND THE JAMMING!! EVERY FRIGGIN DAY!!!!!!!!! Advice: Don't put it in front of a wall because you will need to access the back to remove countless pages every day. I do..

expand

collapse

The release of this product seemed like a dream come true for those who wanted an inexpensive archival printer. The 8 pigment inks, replaceable print heads, and self calibration loop made for a great… package. However, in long term use this printer is inadequate for anything but wasting ink, paper, time and money. The primary point of failure for this printer is in a device called the NEDD. The NEDD is a little sensor that the printer sprays ink onto with every cleaning cycle. It can determine which printheads are clogged, and adjust the cleaning cycle as necessary to keep the printheads healthy over time with minimal user intervention. Unfortunately with time the NEDD will become caked in ink, leading to false clogged head readings, leading to longer cleaning cycles with overspray that clogs the NEDD, leading to rapidly depleting print cartridges and printheads with false failure statuses. I recently replaced one of the printheads (a $70 investment) a few months ago the printer is already claiming that the printhead is failing. Cleaning the NEDD is simple but because it is a delicate sensor it will eventually fail. Once this happens there is no way to prevent the longer head cleaning cycles and ink waste. At this point the printer will become a huge money sink. Every time you have to replace an ink cartridge (which started to happen about every ten 8x10 prints for me) you will have to decide if you want to continue sinking resources into the printer or start saving up for a replacement. HP seems to given up on the support side. When I contacted them about the problems I have with my B9180 this was their response: "In order to response you, I want to mention that The Photosmart Pro B9180 inkjet photo printer is HP's first pigment based inkjet. Since its introduction in 2006 HP has now released several printers in different carriage lengths that use the Vivera inkset. This inkset consists of eight colors: Photo Black, Matte Black, Light Gray, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Light Magenta and Light Cyan. There is also a second model, the Z2100 that uses these 8 inks. HP has also introduced a 12-color printer in the Z3100 in both 24 inch and 44-inch lengths geared for the professional imaging market." Or, "buy a new printer (at well over $1000) because you can't expect us to get it right the first time." With the B9180 you get a poorly engineered product, terrible customer support, and lots of headaches. I strongly recommend avoiding this printer. Its feature set was ambitious, but the implementation was poorly engineered.

expand

collapse

I have owned the printer for 16 months now, and it was great for the first 7 months. After that, it's all downhill. If there is one product that would tell me never to buy from a particular manufacturer… again, this would be it. I would never buy any HP printer or any other product for that matter. Here's a summary of this printer. Pros: - Print Quality - Wide format - Ethernet connection Cons: - Require a lot of ink to do alignment and calibration - Requires a lot of alignment and calibration when you encounter problems - Fails just after warranty expires - Fails even if it only had very minimal use (50 prints over its lifetime not counting all the test prints that I had to do) - Useless Customer support - I knew more about the printer than their reps - Do not care about customer satisfaction - Unorganized customer support - No one seems to know what's in warranty and what's out of warranty. I've been told different stories each time I call their support - Overall a waste of your money Here what my experience was like: The print quality is great, definitely professional quality. The ability to have it connected via ethernet is also good. The inks are not too outrageously priced when compared to other similar products. (There's a caveat, more on this later). After owning this printer for 7 months, the printer started to act up. It started burning through the one of the black ink cartridge even though it is idle, and I had to replace the ink cartridge on it. I contacted HP and was told to run a bunch of calibration, tests, and so on, which required the use of a lot of ink and HP Advanced Glossy paper. After all the tests, I never got a definite result of whether there was a problem or not. Three months later, with only minimal use, may be 2-3 prints a month, the same ink cartridge I replaced ran out again. This seemed odd, so I contacted HP, and were told to run the same tests, and so on. By this time, my inks were running low because of all the tests that I've been running, so I had to order new inks and replace the cartridges. I was also getting married around this time, so didn't a lot have time to spend on the printer. so I left it for a few months after replacing the inks. When I finally came be to print some wedding photos, the photos had streaks and weird color casts. So I ran through more tests, print head cleaning on so on. Eventually, I clean all the heads manually, but the printer started complaining about a particular print head being defective, so I had to replace that. When I had the print head replaced, the printer started complaining about alignment problems. By now, it's been out of commission for over 4 months, and I am couple hundred dollars in the hole for all the ink and paper it needs to use for alignment, calibration, and tests. I swear, everything it goes through an alignment and calibration cycle, it must use at least $50 worth of consumables, and if you have problems with the printer, you will be running a lot of these cycles. Even after replacing the print head, I still had problems with alignment and banding on photo black and light grey blocks. So I work through it more with HP support, still no luck. At the end, they said it needs to be serviced, and wants to charge me $160 for it. I asked them, I am already $1000 in the hole with this printer, you are asking me to put another $160 in to service it, given that I seem to know more about the printer than any of the people that I have talked to, what guarantee do I have that this is going to be fixed? The guy came back saying that they can't guarantee it, and may be I should consider buying a cheaper version of another HP printer again. So I told them if I buy another printer, it would be an Epson, not an HP. If you are considering this printer, trust me, save yourself the trouble and frustration. Go with Epson or Canon. HP sucks.

expand

collapse

I am an amateur photographer, but have been so since high school (over 30 years now). I did a lot of research prior to purchasing the B9180 because I had just traveled to Turkey for a month, and had… several hundred pictures. I wanted to "professionally" print out some of the better shots. From what I read on both the "professional" Epson and HP printers, both had pluses and minuses. I ended up going with the B9180 and have been very happy. The 11x17 prints I made on the "art paper" are of professional quality, and I have since printed some basic 8 x 10s that are great. So far I am happy I bought this. Plus Amazon's shipping and delivery was outstanding.

expand

collapse