Simply being among the best makes the B9180 competitive with printers that cost about $150 more, notably the Canon Pixma Pro9500 and the Epson Stylus Photo R2400, our current high-end Editors' Choice for prosumer models. That counts as another good trick, especially for a company that hasn't been playing much in this particular sandbox until now.

The B9180 uses an eight-color ink system, with cyan, yellow, magenta, light cyan, light magenta, gray, and both a matte black and a photo black. The matte black is primarily for matte paper, and the photo black for glossy paper, but HP says the printer uses both on non-glossy paper at some quality settings to get deeper blacks and smoother transitions.

Like the R2400 and Pro9500, the B9180 uses pigment-based, rather than dye-based, inks. Pigment inks tend to offer better longevity; HP claims they'll last more than 200 years in dark storage or behind glass on the company's advanced photo paper and all its fine-art papers.

The B9180 is a little different to set up than most ink jet printers, but it shares one important feature with its most direct competition. The printer itself measures 9.5 by 26.5 by 16.9 inches (HWD), but as with the Canon and Epson printers, you need extra room in front and in back, because of the way the 13-by-19-inch paper feeds. The hardest part is finding a spot for it and moving the 37.7-pound unit into place.

The printer has an input tray in the front, but specialty paper feeds through a front slot that's normally hidden behind a door. After you insert the paper through the slot, the printer feeds it in a completely flat path out through the back, positioning the leading edge under the print heads, and then feeds the paper forward again to print it. There's no tray in the back, but you need 13.75 inches of clear space for the paper. The front tray extends 10.75 inches, although it doesn't need support. All of that works out to a total footprint of 26.5 by about 31 to 42 inches.

One difference from most other ink jets is that after you've completed the initial setup required by any printer, you also have to install four print heads, each of which handles two ink colors. According to HP, the print heads are meant to last the life of the printer, but you can buy replacements ($59.99 each direct) if necessary.

The next step is also unusual. The printer comes with a calibration pack of letter-size photo paper. After you load the paper into the standard tray, the printer runs its hour-long, closed-loop self-calibration routine, a one-time process. The closed loop refers to the B9180 printing a stored target image, then using a built-in densitometer to measure the printed colors and compare them with the colors it expects. If they don't match, the printer recalibrates to ensure that once you start printing, it will print the colors it's supposed to print.

With the calibration step finished, you can connect a cable and run the automated installation routine. One particularly nice touch is that the B9180 includes a network connector, something you won't find on its competition. Whether you're a prosumer or a professional in a small graphics or photo shop, that's a useful convenience if you want to be able to print photos from more than one computer. I used the network connection to confirm there were no hidden complications setting up on a network.

The B9180's default driver settings assume you'll want to use photo paper, but HP also recognizes that you might need to print an occasional document. A predefined Document Printing setup shortcut in the driver lets you change paper and quality settings with one click. For the sake of completeness, I ran our business applications suite, using the Document Printing option.

The printer turned in a reasonably fast total time on the suite, at 15 minutes 30 seconds (timed with QualityLogic's hardware and software). That's a lot faster than any of the competition, which ranged from 25:58, for the low-cost prosumer Editors' Choice Canon Pixma Pro9000, to a slow 47:49, for the Pro9500, but it's not very meaningful, since you wouldn't buy any of these printers for standard documents.

The more meaningful time is for photos, with the B9180 turning in midrange averages of 2:13 for 4-by-6 prints and 3:51 for 8-by-10s. The R2400 averaged 1:17 and 2:38 and the Pro9500 3:32 and 6:44. I didn't time any of these printers for 13-by-19 output, because they all require manual steps to load the paper, and there are too many variables in the paper-loading step to make meaningful comparisons.

With this class of printers, of course, photo quality trumps speed. The B9180 scores extremely well here. I printed a range of output on an assortment of papers, including HP's glossy and semigloss advanced photo paper and several fine-art papers, such as photo rag and canvas. The quality was as good as anything I've seen. Even monochrome photos were superb, with smooth shading and no hints of an off-gray tint. Graphics output on photo paper is also in the top tier, making the B9180 a good choice for graphic artists, too.

The business-document output on plain paper was far less impressive for photos and graphics, but that's not what this printer is meant for. Even so, the graphics were good enough for internal business use, and text is good for an ink jet, with more than half the fonts in our tests easily readable, with well-formed characters at 5 points and some passing that test at 4 points. Although you wouldn't buy the B9180 for standard business documents, you can use it to print them if you have to.

Ultimately, the HP Photosmart Pro B9180 Photo Printer's most compelling trick is its price. It stands toe-to-toe with the Canon Pixma Pro9500 and Epson Stylus Photo R2400 on output quality and features, yet it costs significantly less than either. That gives it a tremendous advantage and makes the B9180 our new Editors' Choice for a high-end prosumer photo printer.

Benchmark Test Results
Check out the HP Photosmart Pro B9180 Photo Printer's test scores.