The market leader in printers HP, has come out with another very impressive, reasonably priced, all-in-one (photo printer, copier, scanner) - the HP Photosmart C5180. Ever since HP introduced the Photosmart series, it has taken the world of printers and digital photography by storm, allowing people to print photos of excellent quality from their home printers. The HP Photosmart C5180 is one of the latest in this series and is specially aimed for those with a home/home-office network, who wish to carry out photo editing without their PC, and get high quality photo printouts, with the facilities of features like copier and scanner. The Photosmart C5180 meets all these requirements admirably.

The HP Photosmart C5180 has an attractive glossy exterior in cream, silver, and light gray, measuring 17.6 inches wide, 15.2 inches deep, and 7.4 inches tall and weighing just 21 pounds. To accommodate the requirements of a home network, this printer can be connected to a single PC via USB or on a network via Ethernet or even a shared wireless connection via a wireless router. The one big advantage of the Photosmart C5180 is that it supports both Windows and Mac PCs. There is an extensive control panel located along the front edge with functions for copying, photo printing and scanning, a neat, 2.4 inch QVGA color LCD and four memory card slots (these slots can accommodate CompactFlash, xD, SD/MMC and Memory Sticks). Each one of the functions in the control panel has many options that you can customize for your task on hand.

The photo printing function has the most number of choices, letting you to view photos from a media card, to optimize them, and then print them with quality that can match those from any professional photo lab. HP also claims that the Photosmart C5180 can print 15 x 10cm (6 x 4-inch) images of very high quality in 12 seconds while documents in mono and color have speeds of 32ppm and 31ppm respectively. The Photosmart C5180 uses six colors and these come in as individual ink cartridges. All you need to do is replace each color as it finishes, thereby making it very cost effective.

The HP Photosmart C5180 puts in an excellent performance with very good speeds for printing, scanning and copying as well as fairly high quality outputs. There are plenty of features in each function and simple menu options give you great flexibility and control over the job on hand. There are a few features missing as well - the printer does not have a duplexer to allow for double-sided copies or prints forcing you to do this manually. The scanner hinges do not lift enough to allow thick documents to be scanned. The feature most customers will sorely miss is a PictBridge port, which allows you to print directly from a digital camera. The Photosmart C5180 is thus an affordable all-in-one with speeds and quality that can match with the best. However, there are concerns that this may not quite match with other printers in the same price range, which possibly have more features to offer.

HP has built a formidable reputation over the years in the technology market with products and services ranging from personal computers, printing, and imaging, software and IT infrastructure. Small wonder then, that HP is one of the world's leading IT companies. The HP imaging and printing group not only provides printing, scanning and copying hardware as well as printing supplies but more importantly provide complete solutions to all their customers, be it individual consumers or large scale enterprises. In fact, till recently, more than half of HP's operating profits were accounted for by its imaging and printing group. With simplicity and usability as the key features in all its technology products, HP has led the market with its emphasis on innovation. It was the first to introduce the LaserJet printer as well as the DeskJet printer in 1984. The Photosmart series is just a continuation of this tradition of innovation and the HP Photosmart C5180 with its powerful set of features and affordable pricing, will not fail to impress.