I’ve been looking about at various all in one type printer options to use at home for small amounts of random school/kids stuff and the odd photo.

If I was just looking for something that mostly focused on the photos I would probably be drawn to something like the epson expression photo XP-8600 or canon PIXMA TS8350. However, having seen previous threads on here about HP printers and their instant ink subscription I’m having second thoughts as this might work out to be a far lower cost proposition in the longer term.

My only worry about going with the HP printers is that I can’t find a single review online that goes into any detail at all on their photo printing prowess. So, does anyone here own an HP printer (I’d probably be looking at their officejet models, possibly 8025 or 9022that they use for producing photos to give me some idea of how they turn out (or ideally how they compare to photo prints from the epson/canon alternatives).

Alternatively, if anyone has anything else to recommend for this sort of this I’ll be all ears as it’s been at least 10 years since I had a home printer of any sort.

I have a HP Envy 7000 series. Very decent quality on photo paper. Drivers not brilliant at giving you options such as shrink to fit, crop ends etc, but that can be worked around by opening photo on a PC first and selecting options in the app. Also very good colour reproduction on their Color Lock paper, it’s not a photo paper, but only costs half as much again as regular office stuff and makes printed reports and newsletters way better than usual.

We’ve got an older photosmart all in one and its been really good. We use remanufactured cartridges these days. Photo quality is very good, and superb on photopaper. The new ink deals are excellent for regular use, but not available on my old printer.

These days they are all pretty good, just buy the features you want and look at ink costs.

Hello

I recently purchased a 8025. Must admit I’m a bit underwhelmed with the print quality although all I’ve printed so far is PowerPoint slides.
Also this was on cheap paper
My thoughts are that it’s more of an office printer so than a photo printer.
I bought it because of instant ink, they already sent the next cartridges.
If your looking to buy hp check their site as the had been doing a cashback offer so I’m awaiting 30 quid from hp at present.

Also this was on cheap paper

I guess this is one of the pitfalls of using inkjets rather than laser printers for normal documents in that they tend to look a lot worse unless you use the nicer paper. @winston2005 Do you know if the prints you’ve seen so far have been with the standard settings or did you give it a try with the higher quality print options?

We do our photo printing on a Canon Pixma Pro 100S, but I’ve also got an HP office jet 9019. I’ll stick some decent photo paper in later and try one

Answer – not great.

I chose this ugly mug shot as it has plenty of detail and blacks. Printed from phone on ‘best quality’ setting on Canon Photo paper plus – see the vertical banding (excuse the lighting – best I could do in the lounge on my phone)

Original

[url=https://flic.kr/p/21GHGzh]DSC09810[/url] by davetheblade, on Flickr

Print

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2j2fUE4]2020-05-15_09-41-33[/url] by davetheblade, on Flickr

I have an Envy with the subscription. The printer came with a £35 voucher so at the cheapest subscription that is 17 months free printing. I like printing photos and it is acceptable. It’s not fantastic but these are a case of you get what you pay for. It is better than printers I’ve had before at photos though – even those that called themselves photo printers. There are only two cartridges unlike the better ones so it is limited but the trade off in terms of cost savings is worth it in my mind. You don’t have to limit your print quality to save ink so in theory you could print 50 A4 photos a month for your £2.

If you need a general home printer anyway, I’d recommend it. Even if you think the photo printing isn’t good enough, you’ll probably cover the cost in terms of savings anyway.

TAFKAS thanks very much for running a print on the 9019 to see how that looks. I’m more impressed than I thought I would be with the quality of that print but suspect I would notice any banding like that if I’m sticking things up on the wall at head height or into a photo album.

I guess it’s time to have a think about what this will be getting used for the most and try and work out which one we go with.

@bigginge – no worries.

I might try a less dramatic one and see what the results are.

What’s quite interesting, is that I’d edited most of the skin tone out, but not quite monochrome, as you can see in the original Flickr pic, but the print has brought it back to almost normal.

I’d say that was just a quirk of how it had come out, but the faded black hoodie and painting in the background have reproduced more true to life colours too. Strange

@bigginge the settings where straight out the box.
My feelings are the 8025 is designed for office printing. To me the pages per minute where quite speedy.
The Hp app for the phone I thought was a plus point, although others probably have this also. It’s also solidly built (although paper tray feels a little flimsy)