Canon Pixma Pro 9500 Mark II Photo Printer Review

HP B8850 Comparison

HP B8850 Comparison Summary

• Both printers are slow to produce prints
• The Canon has a wider color gamut and deeper blacks
• The HP has slightly smaller color error

Performance

The Canon Pro 9500 Mark II was the superior printer in most of our performance tests; we found that it had a wider color gamut and deeper blacks. There was not much difference in terms of color accuracy, though; both printers had decent color accuracy, but had some issues handling some of the colors that we use in our tests, particularly with blues.

Inks & Media

The Canon Pro 9500 Mark II uses 10 ink cartridges, while the B8850 uses 8. Both printers include two blacks (one for matte papers and one for glossy) and a number of lighter inks; the HP uses a light magenta, a light cyan and a light grey, while the Canon uses a grey and a photo magenta and photo cyan. The chemistry of the inks is different; the HP uses normal ink, while the Pro 9500 Mark II uses pigment inks.  What this also means is that the pigment inks of the Pro 9500 Mark II won't work well on most glossy photo papers; you need to use paper that's designed to absorb the pigment ink.

**In Use **

The HP is the faster printer, but neither are going to win any land speed records. Printing a 13 x 19 print, the HP took 9 minutes and 13 seconds, while the Canon took a lengthy 11 minutes and 24 seconds.