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Print Speed Summary |
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 • 13 x 19 prints at the highest quality took 9 minutes and 13 seconds
• 10 x 8 took just under 3 minutes
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Product Tour |
Page 4 of 13 |
Performance |
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Photo Print Speed (1.00)
The B8850 proved to be a tortoise of a printer when it came to printing photos: we found that in the highest quality mode (called maximum dpi), it took a lengthy 9 minutes and 13 seconds to produce a standard 13 by 19 inch print. A 10 by 8 print at the same quality setting took 2 minutes and 51 seconds, while a 4 x 6 took 1 minute and 49 seconds. That's not fast by any measure: only the Canon Pro 9500 Mark II was slower. However, it is worth noting that this maximum dpi print mode deliberately slows the printer down; it uses multiple passes of the print head and extra processing to maximize the detail of prints. The printer was a little faster in the Best quality mode, taking 1 minutes and 26 seconds to produce a 4 x 6 print. For more on how we test print speeds, see this page.
| Canon Pro 9500 Mark II Photo Speed Comparison |
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HP B8850
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Canon Pro 9000 Mark II
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Epson R1900
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Canon Pro 9500 Mark II
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HP B8850
Photo Print Speed Score Comparison |
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Document Print Speed (1.66)
The B8850 was something of a slowcoach when it came to printing documents as well: printing our test document in the highest quality mode (called Best) on plain paper it managed to print 1.78 pages a minute. That's somewhat slow by general printer standards (most multi-purpose printers manage to print at 4 to 6 pages per minute), but it's not bad compared to most other photo printers. If you need a quicker print, putting the B8850 into Normal quality mode, the speed is upped to just over 3 pages per minute, although we did see some slight evidence of banding in areas of flat color.
| Canon Pro 9500 Mark II Document Print Speed |
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HP B8850
1.78
Pages Per Minute
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Canon Pro 9000 Mark II
0.88
Pages Per Minute |
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Epson R1900
2.06
Pages Per Minute
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Canon Pro 9500 Mark II
0.56
Pages Per Minute
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Our overall analysis would be that the B8850 is fine for occasional document printing jobs, but you should buy an additional cheap laser printer or other dedicated document printer if you want to do a lot of document printing.
HP B8850
Document Print Speed Comparison |
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Print Initialization (5.0)
The B8850 is a rather physical printer: in use, it produces a lot of clunking, grinding and buzzing sounds when starting a print. Before it grabs the paper, it often takes about 30 seconds to get itself up and running, and produces a symphony of sounds as it does so. And it is also seems to have something of an obsession with cleaning itself while printing; when producing a number of large prints for our timing tests, it often seemed to stop and make another set of noises, presumably while it was cleaning the printer heads.
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