HP Photosmart C4180

Author's product rating:   

Picture quality	Excellent
Printing speed	Fast
Colour sensitivity	Good
Reliability	Very poor
Value For Money	Very poor

Advantages:	All singing, all dancing machine, good quality photo's and print outs .
Disadvantages:	Technical faults, software faults, but whose fault?

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

Wholly unworthy of even two words, the PhotoSmart C4180 experience is definitely something not to write home about. Forgive me for my forthright prelude, I am a fan of HP. Having owned a Hewlett Packard Pavillion notebook (that is still going strong after 5 years and has helped my sister's coursework enormously), and several small Inkjet printers for home use, I have valued HP as an enduring and affordable brand, whose products stand the test of time.

Why a 3-in-1?

The C4180 was something we compared alongside other general desktop printers, and we were initially attracted by the price. Maybe that was the first stumbling block. Growing up in a throwaway culture, and where quality is no longer really measured by the expense of a product, most of us are looking for what we can get at the most reasonable possible price. Hence our attraction to the HP Photosmart Printer.
The overall attraction of the HP Printer was the fact that we would have something that took up little space, and performed multiple tasks, thus removing the hassle of having several machines in the house, or paying extortionate prices to obtain photocopies at the local library. The other attraction was the Photosmart bit, the ability to print photo's up to A4 size and in blinding quality, from a memory stick, camera or straight from the computer.
Yes, like most we were looking for a timesaving, space-saving bit of kit that would, inevitably stand the test of time and not need to be replaced for a while. But boy, how wrong could we get!!

Product Overview:

The C4180 is a twin cartridge (colour and black) printer, scanner and copier, with the additional capability to print photo’s up to A4 size.

Featuring a 2.4 inch LCD colour screen, the C4180 enables you to print photo’s traditionally via your computer or camera, or by using one of the supported formats of memory card. (Compact Flash, Memory Stick, MMC and SD cards).
The LCD screen flips up and has an in-built, automatic backlight, which recognises when you have inserted a memory card. The LCD screen will then display four options, from which you can choose to print your photo’s in various sequences and slide-shows. I must admit that the HP Premier Photosmart Software takes a little while to get used to. There are literally so many options, such as whether you want to print photo’s with/without borders, in what sequence and so-forth, but half an hour of accustoming yourself to the menus, and you should find it pretty easy to navigate.

In terms of direct print function the C4180 is as good as it’s word and delivers approximately 24 pages per minute in Mono colour, as opposed to the rather excessive claims of 30 p.p.m. You’ll expect around 12-15 pages per minute for colour as the printer sometimes struggles with web pictures with a lot of detail. Strange, considering the results of photo printing are actually very crisp, clear and the clarity is excellent, even when printing to A4 standard.

The printer’s ink output is something of a mystery. The ink levels are always displayed on-screen, each time you carry out a print job, and the levels seem to diminish very quickly. This applies to the black cartridge as well as the colour as they work in conjunction with each other. The price-point of cartridges isn’t as extortionate as the likes of Canon, at £17.99 for a replacement twin-pack, but it does bear some thinking about if you are considering this unit for small office or business use.

The scanning and photo-copying functions can be carried out without the use of your PC, and with a resolution of up to 1200 x 2400ppi, images remain clear and concise, often removing any visible fold lines the original master copy might have. Saying that, the scanner itself does seem quite slow in comparison to a Lexmark, which I personally use at work for day-to-day office requirements.

The Problems:

You may be thinking that the HP C4180 sounds like a good overall piece of machinery, that does what it says on the box. It well might serve it’s purpose, but only for a short period of time. The first sign that something wasn’t quite right was two days after purchasing and setting up the printer. We must have used it for about ten photo’s and eight word documents within two days, so we knew there were no prior visible faults.

On powering up the printer the stand-by light started flashing and it switched itself off, and upon a second attempt the same thing happened. After checking all connections, including the mains lead, it appeared that the 3-pin connector that plugs into the back of the printer was slightly askew, so we moved it and set the whole thing back up, only to experience the same problems with the printer not powering up. Well, obviously we went straight back to the shop with the damn thing and after some negotiation, managed to get a sealed replacement, minus the cartridges due to the fact we had used the previous printer.

On setting up the printer, we noticed that the print carriage (near to the cartridge points) was further along than it should be, and when we tried a test print the thing wouldn’t budge at all. We had gone from no power capability to no print capability. On our return to Argos we were advised we would have to contact Hewlett Packard directly as the warranty was held with them, and as this was the second fault we were experiencing, it was up to them to rectify the problem.
Following two, hour and a half phone-calls and being passed around the service centre because no-one seemingly had a clue what to do about the fact we had just bought the printer, we finally made some headway, and were told that a replacement would be sent within 3 days.

A further two phone calls and ten days later, we received our replacement by standard Royal Mail Parcel Service. The accompanying documents read that this was a reconditioned replacement, so you could imagine our disgust in the first instance. Well we decided it was worth a shot and set it up, checking everything meticulously toensure nothing could be down to our own error. Sure enough, when it came to power up the printer, nothing happened. We’ve since tried the adaptor from our old HP InkJet Printer and still nothing happens. It’s now been just over a month since we bought the first printer and we are still waiting for a response from Hewlett Packard regarding the situation. Argos won’t allow us to return this one as it came direct from HP and we therefore have no way of obtaining a refund from the retailer. Catch 22!

The experience has thoroughly changed my opinion of Hewlett Packard, more specifically the service centre we have spoken to on now nine occasions who have promised to get a Product Manager to call us. It has also altered my opinion of the ‘cheap and cheerful’ market. As with mp3 players, I am now more inclined to spend that little bit extra on quality and a current model!