Press Release: HP Photosmart 8250 home photo printer


HP today announced the launch of the Photosmart 8250 Photo Printer, a ground-breaking new model capable of printing photos in as little as 14 seconds. Believed to be the fastest home photo printing in the world , this is the first consumer printer from HP to feature six individual ink cartridges. As well as providing high speed performance, the HP Photosmart 8250 Photo Printer with Scalable Printing Technology boasts a remarkable new ink delivery system. Unlike any other system on the market, HP’s new platform features a recirculation technology which minimises the need for priming - and therefore any associated wastage - to ensure that a far greater proportion of the ink is used for printing. 

HP Smart Printing features
Like all individual ink cartridge systems, only those inks that have been used up need replacing. HP’s new printing platform features intelligent ink level monitoring as part of HP Smart Printing features. Before printing a photo or document, the HP Photosmart 8250 Photo Printer checks that sufficient ink is available to complete the job. This means you never need to experience the frustration of wasted ink, paper and time you normally get when you run out of ink mid-photo or document.

Print faster than ever before
Designed for economical, high volume printing, the most immediate benefit of the sleek and ultra-modern looking HP Photosmart 8250 Photo Printer is its speed. As well as being able to print a standard 10 x 15 cm photo in just 14 seconds, it will also breeze through black text at up to 32 pages per minute (ppm) and colour documents at remarkable speeds of up to 31 ppm. This impressive performance is achieved by means of a wide printhead carrying 3,900 nozzles which, between them, deliver up to 140 million drops of ink per second. A wide print swath ensures that more ink is delivered onto the page with each pass, while the high number of nozzles ensures maximum accuracy to allow professional quality printing at up to 4800 x 1200-optimised dpi.

Photosmart 8250 printer with HP 6-ink technology
HP’s separate 6-ink technology boasts a number of innovative features including an in-printer pump, air vent, ink reservoir and ink sensor. The key benefit of this highly ink efficient system is the ability to maximise the amount of ink that’s available for printing. When left unused for any period of time, all print systems take in a small amount of air bubbles through the printheads, and unless this air is cleared from the ink, print quality suffers. The traditional solution used by most printer manufacturers is to prime the printheads by ejecting quantities of ink until all the ink containing air bubbles has been removed.

HP Photosmart 8250 - Cartridge
HP has developed an innovative solution which removes the affected ink from the main print system, extracts - or purges - the air bubbles and recirculates the ‘clean’ ink back to the ink reservoir. As a result, a significantly greater proportion of the ink in each cartridge makes it onto the printed page. The system also allows accurate measurement of the amount of ink remaining in both the cartridge and the separate ink reservoir above the printhead. When a cartridge begins to run low, an alert is sent with a warning that it will soon need replacing. Once the printer detects that there is insufficient ink to complete a job, the printer will pause before starting to print the next page, and offer options to complete the print job using the other inks available. In addition, using individual ink cartridges means only those colours that have been used-up actually need replacing. This is particularly beneficial to photographers who make significantly greater use of certain colours, such as greens or blues.

Photosmart photo printer - Excellent image quality
The quality of printing is excellent, with rich, fade resistant 6-ink colour and crisp black text printing provided via new HP 363 Ink Cartridges with HP Vivera Inks. Each cartridge is clearly identified by the use of both colours and icons, and easily replaced via the convenient front panel. The focus on ink efficiency can be seen here too. While all six inks are permanently installed in the printer and used when the highest quality results are needed, you can choose to utilise just the four standard cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks for everyday documents and test proofs.

HP 363 Series Photo Pack
For maximum economy, HP has introduced a special value-for-money HP 363 Series Photo Pack which includes all six replacement cartridges plus 150 sheets of HP Photo Paper. And for maximum convenience, the ink cartridges used in this printer utilise a technology that detects when an ink cartridge will soon need replacing and automatically launches an online re-ordering form whenever a cartridge is running low.

HP 8250 photo printer - USB port
There are often times when you may not want to have to start up the computer just to print out a few photos. The HP Photosmart 8250 Photo Printer is fully equipped for this, with a full range of memory card slots plus a front USB port for PictBridge-enabled cameras or flash drives. You can even buy an optional HP bt300/400 Series Bluetooth Wireless Printer Adapter and print directly from Bluetooth devices such as camphones and PDAs. Whatever your print source, camera or card, you can view and select the shots you want using the built-in 6.4 cm colour image display and use the on-board tools to edit, zoom and crop - all without a PC.

HP 8250 photo printer - Extra features
For noticeably better photos, switch on HP Real Life technologies such as Automatic Red-Eye Removal, which removes red-eye in the printer, and Adaptive Lighting, which improves results by revealing detail that would otherwise be lost in shadowy or badly lit areas of a photo. The HP Photosmart 8250 Photo Printer also allows you to transfer digital video clips from your camera and watch them on screen. You can then select a favourite scene and freeze and enhance it before printing out an enhanced quality action still. And if you do want to print photos from your PC, you can create albums, edit and organise them using the included HP Image Zone software. Using HP Instant Share, you can share them by email - with recipients being able to choose which they want to download.

Great photos on a wide range of paper types and sizes
The HP Photosmart 8250 Photo Printer is the first model to feature HP’s new Auto Sense technology. Building on the success of the company’s existing paper sensor technologies, HP Auto Sense works with HP Photo Paper, a new generation of HP paper that features a bar code on the reverse. This enables the printer to detect the type and size of the photo paper in the tray and automatically optimise the print settings accordingly. For special occasions consumers can opt to print onto HP Premium Plus Photo Paper for outstanding quality photos that will resist fading for generations.

HP Photosmart 8250 - Versatility
As a specialist photo printer, the HP Photosmart 8250 offers real versatility in terms of photo formats. It is capable of printing on paper with or without borders right up to large panorama (215 x 610 mm) size. It also features a motorised photo tray for 10 x15 cm prints. If you select the photo tray as the media source on screen, it automatically engages. Or, if you’re printing without your computer, you can engage the tray directly using a convenient on-printer button. The HP Photosmart 8250 Photo Printer is available from August 18, 2005 at a manufacturer’s recommended street price of €199 including VAT.  

Posted: Mon - July 11, 2005 at 05:43 PM          

©