Speed is a significant plus – we had a preview in seven seconds, and a 10 x 8in print fully scanned, at 600dpi, in 1min 10secs.
#Hp photosmart c5280 printer review archive#
There’s nothing so wrong with the images that they can’t be fixed post-scan, but those with enormous batches of photos to archive will want a scanner that simply gets it right first time.
#Hp photosmart c5280 printer review driver#
Our test images were often over-exposed, and HP’s TWAIN driver lags some way behind Canon’s in terms of features. Scans from the 2,400 x 4,800dpi scanner are acceptable, although not as good as those from the Canon MP600. The highly efficient Vivera system comes into play too, as it means little ink will be wasted to “clean” print heads. Mono pages, using HP’s large black ink cartridge (part code C8719EE), work out at just 2.1p per A4 page. The best cost per page for photos comes from using HP’s value pack (part code Q7966EE), which comprises 150 sheets of 6 x 4in photo paper and six cartridges – at £16, that’s a mere 10.5p per print. Printing costs have traditionally been a strong area for HP, and the C5180 impresses with its six-ink Vivera system. Dropping print quality to draft sped things up to a laser-like 15ppm, but at the obvious expense of text quality. Speed is underwhelming, though, with our 5% ink coverage documents emerging at a rate of just six per minute. Accurate skin tones, perfect colour gradients and unnoticeable amounts of grain mean that any size print, from 6 x 4in to A4, will look exactly as it should.Ĭanon’s current crop of inkjets holds the advantage over HP’s when it comes to mono text, but the C5180’s results are still impressively close to those of lasers. When it comes to producing the results, the C5180’s output comfortably rivals that of a professional lab. Note the lack of a PictBridge port, though, unlike both the Canon Pixma MP600 and the 3210. And if the family is so busy that it can’t wait to edit photos on the PC, there’s a multitude of memory card slots -including CompactFlash, SD card, xD-Picture card and Memory Stick – on offer, with a 2.4in TFT to preview the images. The C5180 is aimed at what HP calls “busy, networked families”, with the tell-tale sign being a built-in Ethernet port.