HP Photosmart 8250 Deal
Buy.com has the HP Photosmart 8250 on sale for $95. There is no shipping and tax in only a few states, so for a lot of people that will be the final price. Right now it’s selling for $120 on Amazon, so this is a pretty good discount.
The two main draws of the Photosmart 8250 are its speed and the fact that it uses individual ink cartridges. HP introduced these cartridges last year but there still aren’t that many printers that use them. This is too bad for people who use HP printers because the cost of their ink goes up almost every year, so individual ink cartridges would be a big bonus.
HP rates the 8250 at 32 ppm for black and 31 ppm for color. They call it the world’s fastest photo printer, but then they also make a point of noting that the official speeds are specifically from text printing, something that most other printers do not note. It’s usually just 32 ppm black, but for the 8250 it’s “32 ppm black text”. HP claims that it can print a 4 x 6 photo in as little as 14 seconds, which kind of sounds like hogwash, but who are we to argue? It’s got all the usual connectivity options, two-sided printing, a special 4 x 6 photo paper tray for dedicated prints and a 2.5″ LCD. It is also a wide-format printer which can print up to 8.5 x 24.
Here is a fancy picture on how its ink stystem works. AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Please leave us some feedback if you think this printer stinks. If you need HP Photosmart 8250 ink cartridges, you know what to do.
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October 26th, 2006 at 6:38 pm
Given the collective costs of the multiple ink cartridges in printers like this one, I would like to see a comparison study of costs and duration related to a single tri-color cartridge. My feeling is that HP is making even more profit on ink cartridges. What do you think?
October 27th, 2006 at 8:49 am
I think it depends on the type of printing you do whether this type of ink cartridge system is the most economical route. If you print a lot of one or two colors this type of printer make sense because you do not have to replace every color cartridge just the ink cartridges you need. These ink tanks are still fairly small so I am not sure how much difference it makes. I am sure it is much better than some of the new tri-color printer cartridges HP is putting out, i.e. HP 22, HP 95, etc. These cartridges are nothing like the larger HP 78 which was HP’s previous flagship Tricolor. Another factor to consider is whether or not users of the new printers are going to need to replace other components on the printer since these are only ink tanks. If there are maintenance kits or print heads to replace the cost to own one of these printers is going to go through the roof. Perhaps someone knows the answer to this question?
This is a good question, but so far we haven’t heard anything about having to replace parts on these newer machines. While this technology is new for HP commercial inkjets, they have used a similar system before in some of their specialized printers. But, since this specific system has only been around for year, it’s tough to say whether or not the printers will face long-term maintenance issues.
Also, yes these cartridges are smaller than ones HP had in the best, but it’s still better than most other HP cartridges currently on the market. Yes, they are much smaller than the old HP 78, but it’s at least a step in the right direction for them.