Color Performance Summary   • Good Color accuracy • Blacks are deep and dark Print Speed Page 5 of 13 Detail Performance    Color Accuracy (6.73) Color accuracy is hugely improtant in a printer; what's the point in spending time making sure your photographs look great if the printer changes the colors as soon as you print them out? The HP B8850 did a very decent job here; we found that the color accuracy using the default profile and printing onto HP's Advanced Glossy Photo Paper was pretty low, and it got even lower when we calibrated the printer, both on the HP paper and Ilford Galerie Glossy photo paper.  For more details on how our color accuracy tests are done, see here.   HP Pro 9500 Mark II Color Accuracy Comparisons       Original Color HP B8850, Default profile, HP Advanced Photo Paper HP B8850, Custom profile, HP Advanced Photo Paper HP B8850, Custom profile, Ilford Galerie Paper Dark Skin Light Skin Blue Sky Foliage Blue Flower Bluish Green   Original Color HP B8850, Default profile, HP Advanced Photo Paper HP B8850, Custom profile, HP Advanced Photo Paper HP B8850, Custom profile, Ilford Galerie Paper Orange Purplish Blue Moderate Red Purple Yellow Green Orange Yellow   Original Color HP B8850, Default profile, HP Advanced Photo Paper HP B8850, Custom profile, HP Advanced Photo Paper HP B8850, Custom profile, Ilford Galerie Paper Blue Green Red Yellow Magenta Cyan   Original Color HP B8850, Default profile, HP Advanced Photo Paper HP B8850, Custom profile, HP Advanced Photo Paper HP B8850, Custom profile, Ilford Galerie Paper White Light Grey Mid Grey 1 Mid Grey 2 Dark Grey Black Mean Color Error 7.1 4.8 4.5 NOTE: Because of the way computer monitors reproduce colors, the images above may not match the results used for evaluating color accuracy. The chart should be used to judge the relative color shift, not the exact printed colors. The only major issues that we saw here were some problems with the blues; the printer had particular problems with the deep blues, such as you might get in an evening sky. It's hard to say why, but it was consistent across all of our tests on different paper types and with different printer profiles. You can download our profile for the HP Advanced Photo Paper here. We can also compare the color accuracy of the B8850 against other similar printers:   B8850 Color Accuracy Comparisons       Original Color HP B8850 Canon Pro 9000 Mark II Epson R1900 Canon Pro 9500 Mark II Dark Skin Light Skin Blue Sky Foliage Blue Flower Bluish Green   Original Color HP B8850 Canon Pro 9000 Mark II Epson R1900 Canon Pro 9500 Mark II Orange Purplish Blue Moderate Red Purple Yellow Green Orange Yellow   Original Color HP B8850 Canon Pro 9000 Mark II Epson R1900 Canon Pro 9500 Mark II Blue Green Red Yellow Magenta Cyan   Original Color HP B8850 Canon Pro 9000 Mark II Epson R1900 Canon Pro 9500 Mark II White Light Grey Mid Grey 1 Mid Grey 2 Dark Grey Black Mean Color Error 4.5 5.1 4.78 5.3 As you can see, it's pretty much neck and neck between the printers: overall they have very similar performance, but they all have their own strengths and weaknesses with different colors. All of them do have some issues with the blues, though; we see larger color errors on the dark blue than on most other colors. HP B8850 Color Accuracy Score Comparison Color Gamut (6.39) Color Gamut is a measure of the range of colors that the printer can preproduce; the wider the range, the better job the printer cna do of representing all of the colors that we see in the world, especially when printing photos that are taken with cameras such as professional SLRs that can capture a wider range of colors. We found that the B8850 did a middling job here: it could output about 42% of the Adobe RGB color gamut. We don't expect a printer to be able to mange all of the Adobe RGB gamut, but some other printers have managed a wider range: the Epson R1900, for instance, managed to cover 47%.  The Canon Pro 9500 Mark II blew everything else out of the water, though, with 65% coverage. For more details on how we measure color gamut, see here.   HP B8850 Color Gamut Comparison HP B8850 41.55% Canon Pro 9000 Mark II 41.55% Epson R1900 47% Canon Pro 9500 Mark II 65%   HP B8850 Gamut Score Comparison

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