thermal inkjet printing (up to 4800 x 1200-optimized dpi, or dots per inch, when printing from a computer onto photo paper) * multi-cartridge system (prints in up to 8 inks) * PhotoREt Pro premier color layering technology for superb, accurate colors and extremely smooth gradations * 2-1/2" LCD for viewing and editing photos before printing * direct printing from compatible HP Photosmart digital cameras or any PictBridge-enabled camera *
1 Great Printer
This printer has far exceeded my expectations. It is easy to use and makes wonderful photos. the only thing I don't like is it goes thru the ink very fast and the ink is expensive.
2 My best printer EVER
This is my 6th or 7th home printer. I have had every brand made for home use. Although I have never bought a top of the line model, this printer was priced in the same price range as all my others.
All I can say about the quality of this printer is WOW. I would have NEVER done digital scrapbooking or desktop publishing with my other printers, as the color was never this good, and they all always had stripes or someother flaw in the printing. Every printer I buy, thinking I can print photos still leaves me buying prints online or from one of the stores.
I love this printer. The colors are exact and FLAWLESS. I havent even used a quarter of the features this printer has, and my mind is blown at the quality for the price!!!
The only negative, and I am stretching here, is the size of it.. Its kinda big, but other than that, I highly recommend it for those who really want to print their own pictures at home. I too have printed 20+ 8x10's and (I dont even know how many 4X6's) and my print levels are still above half!!
I will never buy another brand other than HP!!
3 Absoultely Amazing
I have owned MANY top end printers including the $700 EPson 2200, and Canon I9100, Epson R800, etc.
This HP is amazing. Best printer I have ever owned and prints that are better than ANY I have ever seen from ANY printer or lab. MAKE sure you only use HP paper as teh ink is forulated for use with their paper only. For eyeball popping quality, buy some HP premium plus papers and prepare to be amazed. The blacks are deep, the colors accurate and vivid. At this price, it KILLS my Epson R800 which was almost 2X the $$. The Epson is now clogged and useless, and teh HP will never get clogged due to the print heads being built in each cartridge!
Buy it and you will like it. HP has come a long way over the pasy couple of years, and with their new printers (8450 and 8750) they should be #1. Trust me, Ive owned all three top brands top of the line machines and this is my all time fave. Ill also buy the 8750 for 13X19 when it is released. Its that good.
4 Beautiful outcome of every photo!
I received my printer today and printed out some wedding photos I had taken the previous weekend.
I am overwhelmed by the quality of the pictures. My family's mouths dropped open when they saw them. I was asked, ( That printer did that?)
5 HP does it again
I have owned several printers in the past few years, mostly HP and Epson. But this HP 8450 does it all outstandingly. You do not need a computer to print photos as it has memory card reader slots for any type of card on the market today. The colors are sharp and full bodied on the 4X6's that I commonly use. If you have a digital camera with at least 3 megapixels you should not get any interpolation. The large LCD makes it easy to edit your photos right there in the printer. I own the optional duplexer in order to print regular text on both sides of a sheet of paper without removing it from the printer. All in all this is the best printer I have ever used. I don't know how HP can improve on it, but I am sure they will. By the way the 8X10's will knock your socks off....GREAT!!
6 The best photo printer on the market
No wonder this printer has received so many great reviews. This printer makes it so easy to print photos and the results are amazing. Home photo printing is here to stay in my house. Thanks HP.
7 Color My World
I purchased an HP8450 over the holidays to produce some photos as gifts. For years I worked in photography, and I consider myself a professional with professional standards. I had actually very seriously considered just getting an HP 7960 printer as they are now clearanced in the US and available for about $150. The 8450 still hovers at a premium price of around $250, though I bought mine on sale for $220. In the past I've owned lower-end HPs, two Epsons which, due to their heads clogging after two months, I vowed never to buy Epson again, despite some excellent output while they're working. The Canon's are supposedly excellent printers, but the models I looked at seemed to be lacking in onboard features and had some ergonomic problems (like "push and click" doors that wouldn't stay closed) that were bothersome enough for me to eliminate them as a choice. HP's former top-of-the-line photo printer, the 7960 has recieved unanimous, excellent reviews and it's now lowered price makes it a very attractive option. But heading down to Staples, I had the chance to lay my eyes on the 8450. It just looked so much more solid than the 7960 that I had to find out if it was going to offer any improvements in photo quality. There are some comparison photos available at Photo-i (an excellent review site based in the UK) showed there was some difference between the two printers http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/printers/HP%208450/page-3.htm . The 7960 looked a bit over-sharped, resulting in some jaggedness, as compared to the 8450's smooth (and somewhat off-putting) unfocused look. But as the reviewer points out here, these are huge blow-ups. For those who took away the same erroneous impression as I did, let me say that I've never seen crisper images from any photo printer I've owned than the 8450. They are really stunning. The pics from my Canon G2 have never looked better. Certainly better than any photo lab I've recently use (albeit generic services). Any fears of losing sharpness in gaining smoother prints were quickly abated when I began putting the 8450 through its paces. Now, how did the 7960 compare to the 8450? I think that's what's on a lot of people's mind considering which HP, at the moment. Honestly I could only do a rudimentary comparison at Staples, but it was enough to give me that final steer towards the 8450 (although it's superior build had already nudged me towards that precipice). The test anyone can run is using the HPs built-in sample photo -- one of those dreaded flower shots (why do manufacturers always insist on sticking flowers in my face. Are all photographers closet horticulturists?). I ran a printhead cleaning on both machines and then printed out the built-in test photo onto a sheet of HP Premium that had strayed nearby. Even from this little test, the 8450 appeared (to me) to best the 7960 in clarity. The stamin of the orchid was much better defined. All I can attribute this to might be the 8450 being a bit more precise in delivering its ink, resulting in better definition. Both samples looked very good, but the 8450 just shone more realistically. I studied the samples for 10 minutes, trying to give a reason for liking the 8450 print, whereas, at home, my wife picked up the two-side test print and immediately declared the 8450 the winner. Enuf said, I guess. I purchased the 8450 a half hour later. Eight prints later at home, I'm really in love with the printer. It's the FIRST time I haven't had to burn sheet after sheet of paper to get what I see on the screen. Almost true WYSIWYG color printing on my eMac 1.5ghz without any fudging with print settings. I think this is the printer's greatest strength. If you've ever tried getting acurate color from your computer screen to your prints, you know how hard is can be (plus a waste of ink and paper). The HP 8450 is the first printer I've ever owned that does it almost perfectly without any tinkering. It's absolutely simple to turn out a great prints straight out of the box. Great quality, combined with sturdy HP technology. A winning combination.
Side Notes: Inks ARE somewhat expensive. The gray HP 100 (about $25, and nearly impossible to find the cheaper) cartridge only let me print about 13 8x10 prints (and not heavy in black areas) before running out. I'm not very happy with this aspect of the printer. The other tri-colour cartridges have about 60% of their ink left, so be prepared to be buying additional gray cartridges. I really wish Hewlett Packard would put more ink into their supplies, it's not very fair to the consumer. It would cost them a few pennies, instead of multiple dollars for the customer.
It's for this reason I am giving an otherwise excellent product four stars.
Final Note: The HP software that comes with the printer is excellent under Mac OSX. Connectivity and ease is excellent. BUT... the additional HP printing software, namely the printing utility that lets you create "album pages", uses a terrible algorithm when resizing or rotating prints. I'd say you lose about 20% of your print quality; it's terribly noticable. If you want to resize or rotate your prints, you're much better off sticking with iPhoto.
8 why did I wait so long??????
I just bought this printer after considering several others. I even went to the stores and tried different ones. I have a sony dsc-p10 digital camera as well as a sony digital video recorder. I have printed so many pictures with the hp 8450. I also have the sony printer dpp-ex5, which is very technical to use. The hp printer is very easy to use and prints great pictures. If you are going to print lots of pictures...I recommend this printer...it is alot faster and quieter than the sony. All I can say is I love it and I am now a printing maniac.
9 Absolutely Amazing
I picked the 8450 up after my Canon i950 died. I initially set it up in the kitchen so my wife could try it out. It's been 5 days now and the printer is still in the kitchen. With the media card slots and on board photo editing my wife has no need to use a computer. The red-eye removal works better than any software package I have ever used. The photos that print out are extremely close to that of dye-sublimation printers. The only cartridge that runs out the fastest is the Gray cartridge #100. The tri-color #97 and the photo color #99 are still reporting 3/4 full. This is after printing around (40) 4x6 photos and (15) 8.5 x 11 full page prints.
Definately use the HP Glossy paper. I originally printed on the leftover Canon Photo Paper Plus which was impressive. When I tried the HP Glossy paper, I was blown away by the difference. The Canon paper had a yellowish tinge to it which covered up the light pinks and blues, and the flesh tones looked a bit jaundiced. The HP paper brought out the colors as I have never seen before. Absolutely perfect right down to the subtle pinks in the flesh tones.
10 Excellent Photo Printer
This printer is great. Photo quality is excellent. Set up and printing are easy - very straight forward. Price of the cartridges are ok - $25 range for each of the 3. Printing from your camera or memory card is a breeze. Editing functions using the LCD are also easy and straight forward. The only real con is the size. It's a bit bulky and takes up a lot of space. If your looking for a quality easy to use photo printer - this is it!
Update: After 2 months use, I have had some minor issues. One was a Microsoft compatibility issue with the printing software. The other the toner "contacts". When replacing cartridges, make sure you clean the contacts in the printer and on the toner cartridge. Still - a great printer and very happy with the quality of the photo's. Just made an 8 x 10 of daughter with Santa that came out great.
11 RedEye Removal Locks Up HP 8450 and 8150 Printers
Clearing up redeye from photo cards is a major reason to choose the HP PhotoSmart 8150 and 8450 over HP's 7760 or all Canon or Epson printers.
In looking for a printer for my daughter for Christmas, I settled on HP PhotoSmart 8150 for its size, convenience, and especially for the redeye removal from photos. However, when I tried to remove the redeye from a photo of my granddaughter on an SD card, the whole printer froze with a yellow screen and an error code (TBD). I did this at Office Depot.
I went to Office Max and Best Buy to find the same result, trying to remove redeye on three different 8150s. Of interest, the same thing also occured with the 8450.
Using the same photo on the SD card, I was able to remove redeye on comparable HP models 375, 2355, 2610, and 2710 in different stores.
Once the printer locked up, pressing the cancel and on/off buttons did not clear the problem. I had to unplug the power to restart the 8150 and 8450 printers.
Interestingly, the small HP 375 seemed to use the same algorithm as the 8150 and the 8450. This algorithm showed the photo when checking for redeye and cleared it (on the 375) or stated "No redeye detected" on photos without redeye. The other printers showed a "working" generic screen and did not state clearly if redeye was removed or not.
I will amend this review when I find the error code.
12-9-04: The error code for the HP 8150 is 881921DA or 8819217A, as seen on two different machines.
12 This is one terrific printer!
The HP Photosmart 8450 is so easy to use a child could figure it out. Within 10 minutes of removing it from the box I was printing pictures of outstanding quality. I must admit this is the first photo copier I have ever owned, but I am really pleased with it so far. The editing features are easy to use. There's no need to even hook it up to a computer, everything can be done with the LED screen and your memory card. The only thing I don't like about the printer is it's size. It's quite a bit larger than the Canon I was looking at. Other than that I am thrilled with it and plan on giving it as a Christmas gift to my daughter-in-law.
13 Hp does it again, another must buy!
When I first saw this powerhouse printer on the shelves at CompUSA I couldn't believe they had replaced the 7960 printers already, but after further investigation, I found that this new model had some great improvements. Print quality is a bit better than last years models in that the colors seem more vibrant, and accurate to what the camera saw. The print speeds have jumped nicely, and the product itself feels more rugged. HP has thought of everything with this model. They included an Ethernet adapter in the unit to allow me to plug it right into my home network, and simplified the many options in the front of the printer for one touch printing, no PC necessary. The sales rep I spoke with also stated that they have found the new inks to last longer, so I won't be purchasing ink as often. He also said the pictures won't fade for over 100 years. I am very impressing with this printer! It has taking digital imaging to a new level at home.
14 8450 review
This printer is so easy to use. It prints the best photos any size you want. You can print 4x6 using the paper tray, or you can print any other size you want on 8 1/2 x 11 paper. You can choose the format you want to use and it show you everything you do without using your PC. The quality is the best yet! The consumables cost much less than Epson!
15 So far I am impressed
I have been an HP fan for a long time. I picked up this printer a couple of days ago and so far, I have been very impressed. The Photosmart 8450 is an 8-ink printer just like the Photosmart 7960 which this printer replaces. I have owned a 7960 for over a year now and have been very happy with it. When I saw this model, I wasn't planning on replacing my current printer but the 8450 is network ready, a feature that I could really use. On first impressions, this printer is extremely well built, even more solid than it's predecessor. The photos that I printed off so far have been every bit as good if not better than the 7960 and in less time. The interface is very easy to use and it makes it simple to select multiple prints on a single page. No matter what type of digital camera you have, this printer will be compatible with it. It has card slots for all memory types as well as a PictBridge port for easy printing from a digital camera. I expect this printer will give me the same satisfaction as the one before.
