HP Photosmart 8250 Printer (Q3470A#ABA)

by HP

Product Details

• Item Weight: 20 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 22 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000A6X9CU
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (117 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #5 in Electronics > Camera & Photo > Printers & Scanners
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 23, 2005

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Enjoy easy photo printing with the HP Photosmart 8250, the world's fastest photo printer.¹ Easy to set up and use, it prints beautiful photos and laser-quality black text. Print a 4-by-6-inch photo in as little as 14 seconds for as little as 24¢ each, or print everyday documents at blazing speeds up to 32 ppm black text and up to 31 ppm color text. (Stated print speeds are fastest possible under ideal conditions; your speed will vary.)

Features:

• It's the world's fastest photo printer for beautiful photos from the convenience of home. Get blazing speed for documents, too.
• Print professional-quality 4-by-6-inch photos at home for as little as 24 cents per print.²
• Get quick photo access--view and print photos from your memory card³ or PictBridge camera without a PC.
• Enhanced HP Auto Sense technology delivers the best speed and print quality combination every time.
• Print rich and realistic photos using individual 6-ink color with HP Vivera Inks.
• Photos resist fading for generations⁴ and laser-quality text documents retain clarity for decades.⁵
• Print photos that are water- and smudge-resistant with HP Vivera Inks and HP Advanced Photo Paper.
• Print beautiful photos with or without borders up to 8.5 by 24 inches, including fun panorama sizes.
• The new HP page completion feature ensures you won't run out of ink midway through a page or photo.
• HP's efficiently designed inkjet cartridges can save ink and money.
• Enjoy a new automated 4-by-6-inch tray for dedicated photo printing, plus optional auto two-sided printing.⁶
• View and play digital video on image display, freeze your favorite scene, and print--all without a PC.
• View photos from your card on an HP photo proof sheet, select your favorites, reinsert, and print. It's easy!
• Rely on HP. PC Magazine rated HP service and reliability A/A+ for 13 consecutive years.
• Easily print and share your photo memories from your camera phone--wirelessly or via memory card.⁷
• Automatically remove red-eye and enhance detail in dark areas of photos with HP Real Life technologies.
• Use the 2.5-inch flip-up display plus simple buttons to select, crop, zoom, remove red-eye, and print.
• Organize, edit, enhance, and print photos and create photo projects with HP Image Zone software.
• Easily send and receive photos without large e-mail attachments with HP Instant Share service.⁸

Print from notebooks, PDAs, camera phones, and other wireless devices with an optional Bluetooth adapter. An automatic photo tray is included. Also save valuable time and paper with optional auto two-sided printing.

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. Easily preview, select, edit, and print photos or video directly from memory cards using the 2.5-inch flip-up color image display, or print photos directly from your PictBridge-enabled camera via front USB port.

HP's New Advanced Printing System
The printing system in the new HP Photosmart 8200 series uses six individual ink cartridges and a single, factory-installed long-life print head that contains all six colors. Innovations in the new HP print head allow the printer to deliver breakthrough speeds and outstanding quality for photo and document printing. The 0.54-inch tall print head delivers fast color and black print speeds for photos, text, graphics and more. Tightly compacted nozzles--3,900, or 650 for each color--enable fast photo printing. Integrated components in the new HP print head allow the HP Photosmart 8200 series to deliver precise, accurate drop placement for fast, high-quality printing and consistent, reliable results over the life of the product.

The HP Photosmart 8200 series brings blazing speed and performance to home printing. With fast photo printing, there's no need to wait "one hour" or overnight or to stand in lines for your photos. You can capture every memory and every moment with beautiful, true-to-life photos--then simply print and share. Whether you're printing photos or documents, HP makes high-volume printing fast and convenient.

Notes:
¹ Speed comparisons in default and fastest mode, when printing from a computer, based on HP Internal testing of comparable consumer photo printing products available as of April 2005.
² Special offer with purchase of optional HP Custom 02 Series Photo value pack, 150ct, 4x6, results may vary.
³ Memory card slots support CompactFlash ™, IBM Microdrive, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Duo (with adapter, not included purchase separately), Mini SD (with adapter, not included purchase separately), Secure Digital/MultiMedia Card and XD-Picture Card
⁴ Based on HP Image Permanence Lab light-fade testing under glass on HP Premium Plus Photo Papers; confirmation test in progress by Wilhelm-Research.com. For more information on additional permanence testing factors, visit http://hp.com/go/premiumplusphoto1.
⁵ Based on paper industry predictions for acid-free papers; colorant stability data at room temperature based on similar systems tested as per ISO 11798 and ISO 18909.
⁶ With purchase of HP Auto-Two-sided Print Accessory. Not included; sold separately.
⁷ Wireless printing only supported on the Windows XP operating system and requires HP bt300 Bluetooth Wireless Printer Adapter not included, purchase separately.
⁸ Internet connection required. Internet service purchased separately.

Product Description

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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

78 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautifully engineered printer for serious photographers, March 1, 2006

By 

Roger J. Buffington (Huntington Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: HP Photosmart 8250 Printer (Q3470A#ABA) (Office Product)

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.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Printer, November 6, 2005

By 

MT (Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: HP Photosmart 8250 Printer (Q3470A#ABA) (Office Product)

I bought this printer a few weeks ago, and I have been delighted with the results thus far. I use the printer for some document printing, but primarily for photos. Some of the pros are: built-in image editing, support for most digital camera memory cards, USB 2.0, and individual ink cartridges.

I have to disagree with some of the issues presented by other reviewers. With regards to the "dpi issue", I too noticed the dots in some of the photos, but only when I held the photos extremely close (less than 6") to my eyes. No one looking at the photos would hold them that close, and I don't think the dots are noticeable under normal viewing conditions. Some of the other reviewers also spoke about inaccurate color rendering. I had some color issues as well when I first started using the printer, but after tweaking some of the settings, my printed colors are a dead-on match with my monitor colors. Proper color management is absolutely critical to getting accurate colors regardless of what printer you have. Whether you're working in the sRGB or AdobeRGB colorspace, this involves correctly calibrating your monitor, and correctly setting up color management in your photo editing software (I use Photoshop CS2) and printer.

The only gripe I have about the printer is that it would be nice to have larger ink-cartridges, and make them transparent so that a visual check could be done against the built in ink sensor.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great for photos, so-so for documents, March 3, 2006

By 

Eric I. Borsky "ericb49" (Main County, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: HP Photosmart 8250 Printer (Q3470A#ABA) (Office Product)

Pros:

Print speed is great (once it has performed it's maintenance cycle).
Dedicated tray for 4x6 photo paper.
Photo printing top notch, including great automatic refinishing options (red eye, smart focus, smart sharpness) - as good as any photo lab on the best HP paper.
Direct print from media cards, including still capture from some movie modes.
Hopeful ink cost should be better than combined cartridge models, has 6 individual carts that are ~ $10 a pop.

Cons:

Long and noisy "start up" maintenance cycle or as I call it the daily regiment. Once completed it's fairly quiet and FAST.
Slow transfer to PC from media card readers - will not replace your dedicated USB 2.0 card reader that's for sure.
HP's lovely virtual print driver...if you want to share the printer (or use it for home printing from office VPN/Remote Desktop connections) the driver needs to be manually installed on all PCs - don't bother calling HP for help on that though ;-) had to figure it out on my own.
Black and white printing ... not really black, more of a greenish grey. Oh well, it's a photo printer first.