The B8850 is designed to enable photographers to create and publish professional-quality portraits, landscapes, marketing collateral and other image-rich materials. That's one of the reasons for its not-inconsiderable price tag: US$550. But you get what you pay for, and if output is at the top of your list when it comes to a printer, the HP Photosmart Pro B8850 Photo Printer must be considered.

The printer contains several color management advancements that simplify the printing experience. For example, it integrates with Adobe Photoshop CS3, enabling users to print directly from their preferred workflow. The choice is then automatically synchronized with the color management setting, eliminating issues associated with “double color management.”

The HP Photosmart Pro B8850 Photo Printer offers neutral black-and-white printing with individual HP Vivera pigment inks -- including photo black, matte black and light gray -- so you don't have to swap out cartridges to print in matte or gloss. Set up is pretty straight-forward.

HP’s Vivera pigment inks are formulated with pigment dispersion Electrosteric Encapsulation Technology, offering a rich palette of life-like colors, deep rich blacks and true neutral grays for fast-drying, color-stable, water-resistant photos with fade resistance. HP claims the photos last more than 200 years, but I can't verify that. Also, though replacement cartridges are a tad pricey ($34), they hold almost twice as much ink as those for competing printer.

The HP Photosmart Pro B8850 Photo Printer supports an assortment of media, including HP Advanced Photo Paper, and digital fine art media up to 0.7-mm thick, including canvas and fiber-gloss, for professional, color-accurate prints. The media portfolio includes HP Hahnemühle Smooth Fine Art Paper, HP Hahnemühle Watercolor Paper, HP Aquarella Art Paper, HP Artist Matte Canvas and HP Professional Satin Photo Paper for prints up to 13×19 inches in as fast as 90 seconds.

However, where's one of the complaints I have with the printer. You'll have to juggle media trays. There's a standard tray and a special media tray for media heavier than 220 grams per square meter, such as some watercolor, canvas, and photo rag papers. HP's manual on how and when to use the different trays is a bit confusing. You can figure it out, but may go through some costly photo paper in the process.

Also confusing are the printer settings, which offer a confusing (to me, anyway) array of paper option choices. The documentation should be better.

So should HP's tech support. When I first tried to use the B8850 I kept getting error messages that there was no paper loaded (though there was) and that the media type I had selected didn't match what I had loaded. Perhaps it was user error caused by the confusing media tray juggling because the problem disappeared during a follow-up session with the printer. That's great, but it's inexcusable that HP's tech support never responded to emails about the problem (and, no, I didn't tell them I was a journalist doing a review).

Despite the problems, the B8850's output is gorgeous. I've printed 13-by-19-inch photos, 13-by-39-inch panoramas and black-and-white images. All looked wonderful and print speeds was decent (less than four minutes for an 8 x 11 photo). If output is paramount and you don't mind a hefty printer (almost 40 pounds and 9.5 x 26.6 x 16.9 inches) and a learning curve, HP has got a device for you. However, it's overkill if you're going to mostly be printing text or using plain inkjet paper.

Also on the positive side, the printer is self-sufficient on many levels. For instance, if it sits idle for more than a day, it powers on, wakes up, and checks each of its 4,884 ink nozzles to make sure they’re unclogged so it can be ready to go when you are. Then it powers down and goes back to sleep. Pretty cool.

The HP Photosmart Pro B8850 Photo Printer is Mac OS X 10.5 (“Leopard”) compatible out of the box. In addition, the HP Photosmart Pro B8850 Photo Printer is compatible with Mac OS X 10.3.9 or higher.

Macsimum rating: 7 out of 10

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