HP C5180 all-in-one short review

I have a few thoughts about the HP Photosmart C5180 All-in-one. Yes, it is a copier, scanner and photo printer. Steer away. There really should be no reason to aquire one of these.

Scanner: Inaccurate, too light, not good colours, only 8 bit, no proper TWAIN/WIA driver. In addition the glass on the scanner surface is of poor quality and there is a massive upbuild of film on the inside from even fairly limited use. Of course, the scanner is on the surface, having hot components underneath printing and not being properly sealed from influx. It is normal for scanners to develop film on the inside, but this is pretty bad.

Copier: Who cares, you can use the one at the office. It would probably be cheaper, and much more convenient to use a copy shop.

Photo printer: It has a very narrow colour space. From a fairly accurately calibrated monitor the colours printed out will not be recognizable. Especially greens are off. Black tones are muddy. In order to get the best results, you have to use printer managed colour space. Turn off the function called RLT - which is meant to improve the images you print. You should also adjust the brightness in advanced properties on the printer properties dialogue.

Overall impression
This all-in-one is geared towards people never having touched a computer. It works fine printing JPGs straight from memory cards. It can function without being connected. It has a nice little screen and one can rotate, crop, fix red eyes, improve sharpness/contrast/colours straight from the menu. You have no opportunities for fine-tuning.

The printer chews paper like a hungry yeti. Especially the letter/A4 feeder is prone to jam.

It only handles HP paper properly. I have had fair luck with the HP advanced paper. All other paper is completely unpredictable. Do not buy this printer quality paper.

It drinks ink from tiny cartridges holding 10ml. They contain expiration data which the printer will complain about, for a good reason.

Buy a dedicated scanner for your precious memories. Buy yourself a Canon Pixma if you want to print easy photos. Better software, more accurate, better colours altogether and more versatile when it comes to paper. If you want really quality prints, go get an Epson or use a professional lab.