The HP Photosmart B8550 is a good, wide-carriage 13×19 printer, with the convenience of photo preview from its LCD display. It’s compact enough to fit on most desks.

The LCD keeps you informed of current tasks and works as a navigation system when viewing and printing images directly from a memory card. The control panel has buttons to browse through images and make menu selections, zoom in or out, and access to an extensive help system.

Some built-in features include a handy School Papers option that will print out standard rule paper, graph paper, and several other types; and a Create option that has presets for printing albums, wallets, passport, and panoramas. HP’s Real Life Technology is built into the HP Photosmart B8550. This applies some automatic adjustments to images. On-board editing includes basic image adjustment as well as monochrome conversion, cropping, red-eye removal, and framing.

The HP Photosmart B8550 uses four dye inks – Photo Black, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow for photo printing, and has a larger pigment Black for text documents. But print quality from the HP Photosmart B8550 is surprisingly good for a four-color printer. Print speed is also very good with a 13×19 borderless print taking less than six minutes. If you’re printing text documents, you’ll be pleased with both the quality and speed – about 30 pages per minute. Only the ink cartridges are small and you’ll burn through them all too soon.

The HP Photosmart B8550 – Specifications & Features:

• Inkjet printer produces lab-quality photos as large as 13 x 19-inches
• 125-sheet tray holds paper from 4 x 6-inches to 13 x 19-inches
• Specialized tray for three common photo sizes
• Up to 32 pages per minute for black-and-white draft-quality letters
• 95 seconds for 13 x 19-inch color photos
• Five-ink system to let you replace only the colors you need
• 2.4-inch color LCD to review, select, and enhance photos without your computer
• Compatible with Compact Flash, SD/SDHC, xD, Memory Stick/Memory Stick Duo, and MMC Memory Cards
• Computer Connection: via USB 2.0
• PictBridge port to connect your camera directly to the printer
• One-year limited hardware warranty

More detailed information you’ll find at photographyblog.com