HP C5580 Ink
Photosmart C5580 Ink Cartridges

HP C5580 Printer Review

An all-in-one printer that costs less than $150 is hard to find. The HP Photosmart C5580 has a low upfront price that will for sure turn buyer's heads. Consumers should beware, though, because a low upfront cost doesn't mean a low cost of maintenance. Though HP C5580 ink cartridges have a very inexpensive price, they also have small page yields, which means users who use the printer to full capacity will be emptying their pockets often to buy printer ink—especially since it has a monthly duty cycle of 3,000 pages. For this reason, this multi-functioning thermal inkjet unit fits best in a home office with minimal printing needs.

Whether the home uses Mac or Windows operating systems, this machine will adapt. It also connects via high-speed USB, and can print directly from memory cards—some supported cards include Memory Stick, Memory StickPro, Compact Flash, Secure Digital, xD Picture Card and MultiMedia Card.

For normal text and graphic documents, two Photosmart C5580 ink cartridges are needed. These tanks of printer ink are black and color, which yield 200 and 170 pages, respectively. Two additional tanks of HP C5580 ink are available for photo printing—photo color (which has a yield of 130 pages) and photo gray (whose yield is 80 pages). Compared to other products on the market, these page yields are quite low.

The copier and printer both have the ability to create 32 documents per minute using only black Photosmart C5580 ink. Using color, though, only 24 pages per minute can be created.

User reviews of this inkjet unit are fairly mixed. Though some find it to be a great at-home device, some argue that it isn't as great as it seems. Among the most mentioned problems was the high HP C5580 ink consumption. However, for some users, this is the best printer they've ever had.