During the launch of HP Photosmart C4580, the printing major also revealed that all the future Photosmarts would be Wi-Fi enabled before 2010. C4580 is an economical printer that offers much more than the price suggests, such as excellent printing quality and wireless connectivity at a decent printing speed.

The printer is smartly designed with a touch of classic HP feel coupled with modern simplicity; controls are located on the top end like most HP inkjet printers.

Installation of this printer is a tedious process, very much unlike HP. The printer doesn’t have permanent feeder trays and the temporary ones result in misfeeds, quite often. Putting this printer onto a wireless network requires this printer to connected to a computer through USB during setup, which can pose problems if your printer is situated far away from the computer.

Printing quality for monochrome text is almost-laser-like. Colour graphics are no lesser than the monochrome counterparts, matching the original to the finest detail. Photo printing is exceptional with an ideal combination of natural looking colours and good definition. Photos fared better on HP Advanced Photo paper as advertised by the company.

Printing speed is relatively good over printers in the same segment but well below par over laser printers. Monochrome printing speed was tested to be at 6ppm where the claimed speed is 50% over at 9ppm. Colour printing speed is worse at 2ppm whereas the claimed is 300% more at 6ppm. A 4” X 6” photograph took around 2 minutes to print.

The printer is moderately priced at £80 but it was found that the price of printing was on the higher side, especially for colour graphics. It was estimated that the cost-per-print for a monochrome print is around 2.6p and for a colour document at 9p.

It’s definitely a good printer for the quality of printing and the features it offers at the price. Misfeeds can be annoying. Ideally suited for homes and home offices.