Customer Reviews

HP Photosmart C5180 All-in-One Printer, Scanner, Copier (#Q8220A)

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(33)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(43)

 

 

The C5180 is like most all-in-ones -- it saves a lot of desk space, but can't do everything equally well. It's best used as a home copier and printer. As a scanner, it's only average.

Using HP's new inexpensive 6 color "02" ink, it produces gorgeous photo prints when you use photo inkjet paper. Text on plain paper is a little soft and not as black as I'd like. You really need to use HP's new Advanced everyday paper and photo paper products to get good results.

The C5180 also installs a great suite of software for Mac OS X. It's the most Mac-like printer and scanner software I've used (I've also used Canon and Epson printers/scanners).

The only bad thing about this unit relates to the scanner. The noisy scanner produces so-so results, with a lot of noise at higher resolutions. The scanner doesn't have any descreening functions, so any magazine scans look crummy. The auto color correct is really aggresive and usually introduces more color problems than it solves. Unfortunately, you can't scan with Mac OS X's Image Capture - you have to use HPs scanner softare. It does have a neat feature than you can scan directly to a memory card, so no computer is needed. The included OCR software is mostly worthless. I couldn't get it translate any white text on a black background or normal type at small point sizes.

So in a nutshell:

PROS
-Inexpensive, individual ink cartridges
-Great photo prints with HP photo paper
-LCD makes printing directly from memory card very easy
-Ability to scan directly to memory card
-Compact size
-Great Mac-like software
-Terrific home copier

CONS
-So-so scan quality
-Scanner software missing features
-Noisy scanner mechanism
-Crummy OCR software

I am an avid scrapbooker & organizational nut. I purchased this because I was looking for something that would print nice photos, but would also multitask & free up space in my office by eliminating the need for a seperate scanner & copier. This was just the answer!

The prints, particularly in borderless 4 x 6, are just beautiful! I am very, very pleased with the results on HP Premium Plus High Gloss Paper. Totally blows my old Epson out of the water!

I am also amazed at the ink consumption. With my old printer, after just a few pages of scrapbooking, I'd have to replace ink cartridges. I have done 14+ 12x12 pages thus far - some included borderless high res. 8.5 x 11 photos & I have not even put a DENT in the ink.

As for the paper tray issue someone else spoke of - you just need to pay attention to the settings before you print. You need to select which tray you want to draw the paper from. Easy! :)

All in all - it's a great printer. I'm sure there are better, much more expensive printers out there -- but this does the trick for me. I'm one very satisfied customer!

While it may not be evident from the description, this printer may be connected via the network in addition to USB. This allows all PCs on the network to access the printer, scanner, and card readers, without having any particular machine turned on. (Note, however, that a network install probably slows the first page response somewhat.)

HP's install SW seems to have matured since my experiences with other HP printers. (I had dreaded the install, but had no problems with this.)

I also like the second tray for the 4X6. While I swore off making prints at home (due to the hassle, cost and quality) this feature and the results will probably have me making prints on this machine.

In all, I'm very impressed.

The scan function of this device is truly disappointing. It has especially terrible output from magazine pages. I was unable to fix this with any adjustments. I tried VueScan, which helped, but not enough. I returned it. My good old Epson 2580 gives much better quality output. I think I'll just buy a print-only printer and stick to dedicated scanners. It seems that most of the positive reviews here focus on the printing functions and output, with little interest in the scanning. This device proves the old saying "jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none."

I was looking for a printer/copier/scanner for my parents and this one seemd to be perfect for them. It was not expensive, easy to use and did not have a lot of buttons to confuse them.

The printer is excellent. The photo quality is incredible. I had gone to a number of local stores and printed sample photos from many different printer models and manufactures. The quality of this printer stacked up well against everything else out there. Photos look very smooth and have excellent color saturation. The text/graphics print quality and speed is very good. I have it set up in draft mode for "everyday" printing and it gets about 18 ppm and very legible print quality.

The copier is also very good. I have a very hard time distinguishing the original from the copy. It prints the copies very fast.

The only thing about the unit that is disappointing is the scanner. First of all, let me say that the scanner is not terrible, I was just a little disappointed with it compare to the rest of the machine. While it can scan text/graphics documents well, it does not do so good with photos. It tends to lose detail and alter the colors of the photo. This unfortunately makes the unit less than ideal for reprinting photos. Also, the scanner software for the PC is not user friendly and is kind of slow. (And I have a extremely fast computer.) It is just unfortunate that the scanner, in my opinion, falls show of the quality of my 5-year old Epson scanner I have.

If you want a printer with incredible photo quality output and the convenience of a copier without the need of a computer, then this is a good choice. As for the scanner, perhaps buying a dedicated scanner would be a prudent move to compensate for this unit's shortcomings.

I absolutly love this printer with its networking capabilities!!
I needed a printer that would be compatible with (Windows Vista Home Premium) that came preinstalled on my new HP Notebook. My goal was to set up a wireless network in my home to give my wife the freedom of movement she needs while working on the computer.I DID MY RESEARCH THOROUGHLY!!
I read almost all of the reviews on numerous sites and decided to give the HP C5180 a try.Boy am I glad I did. The first thing I encountered in the box was an addendum stating "to use with Vista operating systems plese visit the HP web site" and it gave me the URL.I went to the website and it was very user friendly. I quickly located what I needed,downloaded the file and set up, including the network portion, was a breeze.I am new to HP products and relativley new to setting up my own stuff when it comes to computers,printers,routers etc....I honestly had no problem understanding and executing the directions given.I definetly recommend this printer for its ease of setup,print quality and stand alone printing abilities.

I'm not sure that I'd buy this device if I was going to attach it to a single computer. There might be better all-in-one's for the money. But if you want a Printer/Scanner/Copier/Memory Card Reader for your network at home, you'd have a tough time finding something better for the price.

I bought this because it had decent reviews and because it was network ready. I have not been disappointed. Previously, I had to either have a printer connected to one of the computers and shared, or I'd have to buy a router with a print server or a separate print server. This dropped onto the network without a hassle and was up and running after the software install. And when the network is rebooted, the printer is immediately available, without a hiccup. As the only "IT" support in the house, it makes my life easier.

While the installation process is time-consuming, it is mostly unattended. But once the software is on the various networked computers, then they can all access the device for any of the functions it supports; Scanning, Printing, Copying, and Memory Cards.

Scan and Print Quality is certainly good enough for most home use. It does more than an acceptable job for me, even on some of my more demanding graphics. And as a stand-alone Photo Printer, it again does an acceptable job.

Speed is fine, considering the home environment. It does sometimes take a bit of time when scanning and transferring, but not much. Just a bit longer than might be expected.

Obviously, if you're into ultra-high print quality, you're probably going to go with different technology altogether. But for home use this fits the needs of a small network very nicely.

The ONLY flaw I have found with the device so far is a minor problem with the software agent. As it requires a network sniffer to locate the printer (in case addresses change, etc.), the agent doesn't always shutdown cleanly when using a shared Windows XP computer and multiple people have been logged into it. Windows XP notes the issue and gives the software a chance to shutdown, after which it takes care of it automatically, so there's no real burden. It is just a bit annoying. Hopefully they will have a patch for the software that will address this.

Just bought this printer a few weeks ago and it has performed beyond my expectations. It prints lab-quality photos right out of the box without having to hook it up to a computer. The ink and 4x6 photo paper is very inexpensive compared to my last inkjet printer. Best Buy sells a bundle of all 6 inks + 150 4x6 HP Advanced photo paper for $35. That puts the cost of photo prints to roughly 24 cents/print. Can't beat that anywhere else! The 'reprint' feature works great and will duplicate any photo using the scanner to any size you wish. You can't tell any difference between the two.

My only gripes are with the included software and scanner noise level. The scanner is not all that bad, but it is a bit louder than my old Canon scanner. The software seems a bit buggy. It's hard to explain, but there were some advertised functions in some of the programs that didn't do what they were designed to do. Oh... and the ink level window that pops up after printing a photo/document seems to be inaccurate. It will display 100% ink levels up until you are about to run out of ink. It will only start to go down once you have a few photos left to print before it completely runs out. You may want to have an extra set of inks laying around.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love this printer. In fact, I think I'm going to buy another one for my parents so they can finally utilize the digital camera I bought them for Xmas 2 years ago!

Printer works fine. Easy to install across a home network. However, the software that drives the printer seems to be full of bugs. The printer driver causes the computer to continuously check the network connection, using up computer resources; and the printer driver causes windows xp shut down routine to hang up, with an error given as "windows is trying to close xxxhp program, program not responding". These bugs are just irritating and do not seem to effect the performance of the printer. Hp should have done a better job with the software.

Overall all in one works fine. excellent print quality. print and scanner is noisy. Scan quality is a bit less quality than my old epson. My beef is with the software, a real memory hog that took 40 to 50 minutes to install on our pc and laptop that are not really that outdated. Both sony, pentium IV, XP machines. Constant annoying popup alerts, both machines. Software failures, updates, feedback... I suggest installing the basic drivers required and not the hp software that takes up more than 250 megs if possible. If you are running on the ethernet, turn it on for use then off before you shut down pcs, all kinds of software hangups. Don't walk away from your machine when you shut down and assume it will, hp software will hang up shut down most of the time. They seriously need to rethink the software they package with these machines. If the purpose is to irritate the user they certainly succeeded here.