Customer Rating: 
Summary: Solid Photo Printer
Comment: I've been using the B9180 for 10 months. I've waited this long to write a review because, frankly, problems with photo printers typically take a while to show up.
1) I use the 9180 with a Mac running OS X. No problems there at all. The HP drivers all work well and there's even a widget available that will provide a quick ink status check. I've printed from iPhoto and PhotoShop without problems.
2) I've followed HP's recommendation to leave the printer turned on 24/7 to avoid ink nozzle clogs. This is one of the primary reasons I picked this printer in the first place. All my previous color inkjets clogged. I'd be out of town for a week or two, come home, try to print some photos and find that I needed to replace print heads, or get more ink, or both. Not going to print for a month? No problem at all with this HP. Others have said that this wastes ink. I'd rather waste a little ink than lose time and money on photo paper only to find that red isn't working today.
3) Prints are beautiful. This is the first printer I've used where I've regularly looked at my prints and found them at least comparable to lab prints from Kodachromes. On extremely close inspection, you'll see only one minor flaw - the paper is pulled through with very tiny spiked metal washers. On dark areas of the print, you'll see remnants of where the metal touched the paper. I notice this particularly on 13x19 prints of astronomical images with a predominantly dark sky. For the majority of work, however, you're never going to see this.
4) Monochrome black & white prints look as neutral and pristine as a darkroom developed print. You can still tell this is a digital B&W print by the glare from the print if lighting is at just the right angle, but side-by-side prints of a scanned Pan-X negative printed on the 9180 vs a darkroom print from the original negative are quite similar. There are pros and cons to both but I prefer the print here on the 9180.
5) No question that ink is expensive. Yeah, well, printing full color in a darkroom wasn't inexpensive either, so if you want prints that are comparable, don't expect to get away inexpensively. A direct comparison of pricing shows that this unit isn't out of line. My technique is to always have a spare of each ink color. If the light gray runs out, I put in the spare and order another light gray using Amazon Prime. No shipping charge and it arrives in two days, long before I'll need it again.
6) HP knows how to include wireless in their printers and should have done so here since the printer is too large to conveniently be located on your desktop. Maybe that will be in the 9190?
7) The paper path setup works well, and I've had much better luck here than with Kodak's dye-subs. I haven't lost any paper during my months with the unit due to misfeeds.
Overall, I'm very pleased with the printer and highly recommend it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Rugged & reliable & super-accurate
Comment: I've had this printer since it was first introduced. Compared to the high-end Epsons & Canons I've had it is more reliable (no constant nozzle clogs & deep cleanings), more accurate (side by side the prints from this printer make the others look like cartoon colors) & more rugged. The black & white prints it produces are outstanding.
I moved a year ago from NY state to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. I removed the ink cartridges and print heads from the B9180, packed it in its original box & put it in storage with our furniture for 3 months (in the fall & winter) while we looked for a house. It was then shipped cross-country in January. When it arrived & I put it back together, it only needed 2 cartridges replaced (they had had low ink) & it runs beautifully & gives me gallery-quality prints every time.
Best printer I've ever owned!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent Printer
Comment: The B9180 printer has proven excellent in printing repro digital prints of my oil paintings and pastels. I'm using Hahnemuhle art paper and the color is extraordinary. Using it with Photoshop, I hardly ever have to correct the colors, so I haven't wasted a lot of high end paper. Your investment will turn out to be more in the ink and paper you buy than the printer itself. I chose it over the Canon because Canon prints a wide border on the paper, and I wanted to have more flexibility with that. I can print without a border, and get buy with smaller sizes of that excellent but very expensive paper.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Poor reliability and mechanical design
Comment: I agree with the few who say that don't believe all the reviews. "Built like a tank" is not a good thing on this case, especially when you have previously had some Canon Pixma printers that have excellent engineering. Tube of vaseline required to move/remove paper trays smoothly on B9180 is NOT included with the printer. And it is noisy.
I have used my printer very little and still it has developed fault where it does not understand when specialty media tray is lowered, rendering that tray useless. Small lever that reports position of the tray to printer seem to work fine mechanically, but pressing it makes no difference. Now warranty just ended and I'm stuck. In fact I have only printed about 80 sheets and have still original ink cartridges.
Printer driver is also bloatware, several hundres megabytes.
To HP's credit I must say that this printer consumes really little ink when not in use. That is probably it's best feature. I was away for 3 months and it consumed less than 5% of ink. I have had this printer over year in stand-by and still have original ink cardridges. Years ago I had a few Epsons and these were wasting most ink for head cleaning, making final prints very expensive. B9180's print head cleaning is quite intelligent and I hope other manufacturers will catch up in that respect.
Don't buy this printer if you like high gloss prints (a la Canon Photo Paper Pro) as HP does not have any good glossy paper. Buy it when you want to print mostly on matte paper like Hahnemühle Smooth Fine Art.
Overall I'm unhappy with this expensive product and will probably switch back to Canon unit. I remember that I was quite often impressed how well my previous Canon Pixma was designed and how flawlessly it operated for a mechanical product.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent with XP, need some Vista work arounds...
Comment: I've been comparing printers to upgrade my Photosmart 8750 for the B9180 - all said and done, HP is still ahead of the Canon and Epson photo printing peers. Taken, HP's customer service and tech support sucks, depending on who you get you may get different answers, some more helpful than others but with some luck I was able to proof the following workarounds I found on other bbs and tech support validated:
- Under vista, I was having trouble with 13x19 too, borderless leaving a 1 1/2 inch blank white tail at the end of the sheet. It seems to stop if I print at 200 dpi and manifests at 220 dpi and higher. It is a matter of spooling file size and is a Vista issue. My Desktop Photo station dual boots with XP and I do not see the problem. It occurs either with the HP plugin or "print with preview" in CS2. I wasted some materials before I fortunately found the problem.
- Another factor is CS2 isn't Vista friendly. Do a Google search: "CS2 and Vista." CS3 works much better. Lightroom 2.0 is good too.
- Another workaround is to use the specialty media tray instead of the main tray you can print any size or dpi file without the blanks areas. Does not make much sense but it seems to work for the few prints I tested.
Lastly, above workarounds resolve a Vista "May 2007" review that is outdated, since then, HP posted a firmware upgrade to the B9180 that works very well and integrates printer very tight with Photoshop CS3 version, specially for color correction under Vista.
Hope this helps,
Summary: Solid Photo Printer
Comment: I've been using the B9180 for 10 months. I've waited this long to write a review because, frankly, problems with photo printers typically take a while to show up.
1) I use the 9180 with a Mac running OS X. No problems there at all. The HP drivers all work well and there's even a widget available that will provide a quick ink status check. I've printed from iPhoto and PhotoShop without problems.
2) I've followed HP's recommendation to leave the printer turned on 24/7 to avoid ink nozzle clogs. This is one of the primary reasons I picked this printer in the first place. All my previous color inkjets clogged. I'd be out of town for a week or two, come home, try to print some photos and find that I needed to replace print heads, or get more ink, or both. Not going to print for a month? No problem at all with this HP. Others have said that this wastes ink. I'd rather waste a little ink than lose time and money on photo paper only to find that red isn't working today.
3) Prints are beautiful. This is the first printer I've used where I've regularly looked at my prints and found them at least comparable to lab prints from Kodachromes. On extremely close inspection, you'll see only one minor flaw - the paper is pulled through with very tiny spiked metal washers. On dark areas of the print, you'll see remnants of where the metal touched the paper. I notice this particularly on 13x19 prints of astronomical images with a predominantly dark sky. For the majority of work, however, you're never going to see this.
4) Monochrome black & white prints look as neutral and pristine as a darkroom developed print. You can still tell this is a digital B&W print by the glare from the print if lighting is at just the right angle, but side-by-side prints of a scanned Pan-X negative printed on the 9180 vs a darkroom print from the original negative are quite similar. There are pros and cons to both but I prefer the print here on the 9180.
5) No question that ink is expensive. Yeah, well, printing full color in a darkroom wasn't inexpensive either, so if you want prints that are comparable, don't expect to get away inexpensively. A direct comparison of pricing shows that this unit isn't out of line. My technique is to always have a spare of each ink color. If the light gray runs out, I put in the spare and order another light gray using Amazon Prime. No shipping charge and it arrives in two days, long before I'll need it again.
6) HP knows how to include wireless in their printers and should have done so here since the printer is too large to conveniently be located on your desktop. Maybe that will be in the 9190?
7) The paper path setup works well, and I've had much better luck here than with Kodak's dye-subs. I haven't lost any paper during my months with the unit due to misfeeds.
Overall, I'm very pleased with the printer and highly recommend it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Rugged & reliable & super-accurate
Comment: I've had this printer since it was first introduced. Compared to the high-end Epsons & Canons I've had it is more reliable (no constant nozzle clogs & deep cleanings), more accurate (side by side the prints from this printer make the others look like cartoon colors) & more rugged. The black & white prints it produces are outstanding.
I moved a year ago from NY state to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. I removed the ink cartridges and print heads from the B9180, packed it in its original box & put it in storage with our furniture for 3 months (in the fall & winter) while we looked for a house. It was then shipped cross-country in January. When it arrived & I put it back together, it only needed 2 cartridges replaced (they had had low ink) & it runs beautifully & gives me gallery-quality prints every time.
Best printer I've ever owned!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent Printer
Comment: The B9180 printer has proven excellent in printing repro digital prints of my oil paintings and pastels. I'm using Hahnemuhle art paper and the color is extraordinary. Using it with Photoshop, I hardly ever have to correct the colors, so I haven't wasted a lot of high end paper. Your investment will turn out to be more in the ink and paper you buy than the printer itself. I chose it over the Canon because Canon prints a wide border on the paper, and I wanted to have more flexibility with that. I can print without a border, and get buy with smaller sizes of that excellent but very expensive paper.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Poor reliability and mechanical design
Comment: I agree with the few who say that don't believe all the reviews. "Built like a tank" is not a good thing on this case, especially when you have previously had some Canon Pixma printers that have excellent engineering. Tube of vaseline required to move/remove paper trays smoothly on B9180 is NOT included with the printer. And it is noisy.
I have used my printer very little and still it has developed fault where it does not understand when specialty media tray is lowered, rendering that tray useless. Small lever that reports position of the tray to printer seem to work fine mechanically, but pressing it makes no difference. Now warranty just ended and I'm stuck. In fact I have only printed about 80 sheets and have still original ink cartridges.
Printer driver is also bloatware, several hundres megabytes.
To HP's credit I must say that this printer consumes really little ink when not in use. That is probably it's best feature. I was away for 3 months and it consumed less than 5% of ink. I have had this printer over year in stand-by and still have original ink cardridges. Years ago I had a few Epsons and these were wasting most ink for head cleaning, making final prints very expensive. B9180's print head cleaning is quite intelligent and I hope other manufacturers will catch up in that respect.
Don't buy this printer if you like high gloss prints (a la Canon Photo Paper Pro) as HP does not have any good glossy paper. Buy it when you want to print mostly on matte paper like Hahnemühle Smooth Fine Art.
Overall I'm unhappy with this expensive product and will probably switch back to Canon unit. I remember that I was quite often impressed how well my previous Canon Pixma was designed and how flawlessly it operated for a mechanical product.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent with XP, need some Vista work arounds...
Comment: I've been comparing printers to upgrade my Photosmart 8750 for the B9180 - all said and done, HP is still ahead of the Canon and Epson photo printing peers. Taken, HP's customer service and tech support sucks, depending on who you get you may get different answers, some more helpful than others but with some luck I was able to proof the following workarounds I found on other bbs and tech support validated:
- Under vista, I was having trouble with 13x19 too, borderless leaving a 1 1/2 inch blank white tail at the end of the sheet. It seems to stop if I print at 200 dpi and manifests at 220 dpi and higher. It is a matter of spooling file size and is a Vista issue. My Desktop Photo station dual boots with XP and I do not see the problem. It occurs either with the HP plugin or "print with preview" in CS2. I wasted some materials before I fortunately found the problem.
- Another factor is CS2 isn't Vista friendly. Do a Google search: "CS2 and Vista." CS3 works much better. Lightroom 2.0 is good too.
- Another workaround is to use the specialty media tray instead of the main tray you can print any size or dpi file without the blanks areas. Does not make much sense but it seems to work for the few prints I tested.
Lastly, above workarounds resolve a Vista "May 2007" review that is outdated, since then, HP posted a firmware upgrade to the B9180 that works very well and integrates printer very tight with Photoshop CS3 version, specially for color correction under Vista.
Hope this helps,