Read our comprehensive review of the HP Smart Tank 580, and find out if this is the all-in-one colour printer for you!
HP Smart Tank 580 All-in-One Printer
Designed for homes and small businesses, the HP Smart Tank 580 is an all-in-one printer with scan and copy capabilities, and wireless connectivity. It has four separate ink tanks which can be topped up independently.
The HP Smart Tank 580 comes with a set of four ink bottles, allowing it to print up to 18,000 pages of black, and 6,000 pages of colour. Assuming you only print 150 pages a month, even the included ink bottles will last you nearly three years. Thereafter, you can simply buy ink bottles to refill the Smart Tank 580.
Thanks to the ink tank design, the cost of printing is also low at just 0.004 cents per page, regardless of whether it’s black or colour!
Together with support for wired USB printing, the HP Smart Tank 580 also supports wireless printing through Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct.
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HP Smart Tank 580 Specifications
Here are the key specifications of the HP Smart Tank 580 printer:
| Specifications | HP Smart Tank 580 |
| Key Functions | Print, copy, scan |
| Print Technology | HP Thermal Inkjet |
| Print Resolution | Black : Up to 1200 x 1200 dpi Colour : Up to 4800 x 1200 dpi |
| Print Speed | Black : Up to 12 ppm (A4) Colour : Up to 5 ppm (A4) |
| Print Duty Cycle | Up to 3,000 pages (A4) per month |
| Recommended Volume |
400 to 800 pages per month |
| Processor Speed | 980 MHz |
| Memory | 64 MB DDR |
| Display | 33 segments + 1.2-inch iCON LCD display |
| Connectivity | USB 2.0 port Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi Direct |
| Wireless Capability | 802.11b/g/n (2.4 GHz) |
| Paper Input Tray | 100 sheets maximum |
| Paper Output Tray | 30 sheets maximum |
| Paper Sizes | A4, B5, A6, DL envelope, Legal |
| Paper Weights | Plain paper : 60 to 90 grams/m2 Envelopes : 75 to 90 grams/m2 Cards : Up to 200 grams/m2 Photo paper : Up to 300 grams/m2 |
| Borderless Printing | Yes, up to 210 x 297 mm |
| Duplex Printing | Manual |
| Scanner Type | Flatbed |
| Scan Technology | Contact Image Sensor (CIS) |
| Scan Resolution | Up to 1200 dpi, 24-bit |
| Scan Size | Up to 216 x 297 mm |
| Copy Resolution | Up to 600 dpi |
| Copy Speed | Black : Up to 10 cpm Colour : Up to 2 cpm |
| Copy Limit | Up to 99 copies |
| Power Consumption | Off : 0.109 watts Sleep : 1.096 watts Ready : 3.023 watts |
| Dimensions | 434.6 mm wide 361.53 mm deep 259.37 mm high |
| Weight | 5.03 kg |
| Warranty | One Year, or 30,000 pages (whichever is earlier) |
HP Smart Tank 580 Box Contents
The HP Smart Tank 580 comes as a complete kit, with everything you will need inside the box. Once you unbox it, these are the items you should find inside:
- HP Smart Tank 580 printer
- One set of printheads (Black, Tri-Colour)
- One set of ink bottles (GT53XL Black, GT52 Cyan, GT52 Magenta, GT52 Yellow)
- One set of three power cables with different plugs
- USB cable
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The provided set of ink bottles is enough to print 18,000 pages of black, and 6,000 pages of colour. However, this may vary according to country, and region.
But if your region offers this complete kit, then you can get printing very quickly, as installation and setting up takes less than half an hour.
Next Page > Features + Performance
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HP Smart Tank 580 Features + Performance
Now, let us go through the key features of the HP Smart Tank 580, and share with you our experience using it…
Spill-Free Ink Tanks
Like Epson EcoTank printers, the HP Smart Tank 580 uses an ink tank design, with four separate colours – Black, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow.
By using permanent printheads and allowing for the refill of ink, such ink tank printers cut down on waste, and offer much cheaper printing – just 0.004 cent per page with the HP Smart Tank 580!
It is easy to fill and refill the HP Smart Tank 580, because it uses a spill-free design. However, the nozzles of its ink tanks, and its ink bottles, are generic in design and not “keyed”. So it is possible for you to fill the wrong ink tank with the wrong ink!
In that respect, Epson EcoTank printers (like the L3150/ET-2710) have a better design – their keyed ink bottle and ink tank nozzles prevent the wrong ink from being filled into the wrong ink tank.
Low-on-ink Sensors
To ensure you don’t run out of ink, the HP Smart Tank 580 not only lets you visually eyeball the amount of ink left in its four ink tanks, they also have low-on-ink sensors.
This is much better than the Epson EcoTank L3150/ET-2710 for example, which lacks low-on-ink sensors, and requires you to visually monitor the ink levels in its ink tanks.
Recommended : Epson EcoTank L3150 / ET-2710 Printer Review
USB + Wireless Connectivity
Like other printers, the HP Smart Tank 580 can be connected to your computer using a USB cable. However, it is not even necessary to use the cable.
The HP Smart Tank 580 has WiFi-N connectivity built-in, so you can just plug in the power cable, and print wirelessly from your computer, or even a smartphone or tablet!
And I have to point out that its Wi-Fi connectivity appears to be much more stable and reliable than the Epson EcoTank L3150, which can fail midway, causing a print error.
HP also provides both desktop and mobile apps to help you setup your printer wirelessly, as well as print your photos directly from your computer or mobile devices.
Plain Paper Printing Performance
The HP Smart Tank 580 supports plain paper of between 60 to 90 grams per square meter (16 to 24 lb), with a recommendation to use 75 grams (20 lb).
It can print up to 12 black / grayscale pages per minute at a maximum resolution of 1200 x 1200 dpi, and up to 5 colour pages per minute at a maximum resolution of 4800 x 1200 dpi. The speed of its printing, of course, depends highly on the amount of detail in the page, and the type of paper used.
In this video, we tested its plain paper printing performance using two photos. The less complex photo of an American flag at Alcatraz island took 1.5 minutes to complete, while the more complex photo of the Golden Gate Bridge took a minute longer.
Needless to say – plain paper printing delivers a duller, flatter look in photos. You should restrict colour printing on plain paper to flatter graphics like posters.
Please note that by default, the print driver defaults to Letter size, so you need to change it before printing. It also defaults to Borderless printing, which is not supported with plain paper printing. But what’s really odd is that the print driver cannot detect the portrait orientation of the Golden Gate Bridge photo, so you will need to manually select the correct orientation.
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Photo Paper Printing Performance
If you intend to print photos, please make sure you use photo paper. The HP Smart Tank 580 supports photo paper of up to 300 grams per square meter (80 lb).
You don’t have to splurge on premium HP Photo Paper. Any kind of photo paper would produce far better results than plain paper when it comes to photos.
In this video, we tested its photo paper printing performance using the same two photos as we did in the earlier video.
The HP print driver defaults to plain paper printing, so make sure you select one of the Photo Paper options before printing. You should also make sure to check the orientation, because the print driver defaults to landscape, and cannot seem to detect photos in the portrait orientation.
By default, Borderless printing is enabled for photo paper printing. However, the photo appears to be cropped at the four edges, even more than with borderless printing disabled!
With photo paper printing, both photos took 3.5 minutes. Far slower than the “up to 5 pages per minute” specification, but the output was fabulous.
The HP Smart Tank 580 can print at up to 4800 x 1200 dpi – less than the Epson EcoTank L3150, but you can’t really tell their prints apart, even if you compare them side-by-side. The resolution on photo paper is really good.
The colours are also vivid, with accurate colour reproduction. Needless to say – we highly recommend you use photo paper whenever you use the HP Smart Tank 580 to print photos.
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Colour Scanning + Copying
Flip open the top cover, and you will find a high resolution colour scanner, which can scan at up to 1200 dpi, with a 24-bit colour depth.
You can use the HP Smart Tank 580 to make black and white, or colour photocopies, albeit only at a lower scan and print resolution of 600 dpi.
Low Printing Cost
According to HP, the printing cost for the Smart Tank 580 printer is dirt cheap at just 0.004 cents per page, regardless of whether it’s black and white, or colour.
That’s because the large GT53XL black ink bottle (135 ml) can print up to 18,000 pages, while the three GT52 colour ink bottles (50 ml each) can print up to 6,000 pages.
Next Page > HP Smart, Summary + Verdict
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HP Smart Software : Biggest Stumbling Block
The HP Smart software is an app for desktop and mobile devices, that is designed to make it easier for you to setup and use their printers.
After setting up the Smart Tank 580 printer, you will need to install and run the HP Smart software on your computer, or mobile device, to connect to it wirelessly. Then you can start printing, or scanning.
The setup process using the HP Smart software is easy, and makes it pretty effortless even for non-techies to quickly setup and use the Smart Tank 580 printer. That said, the HP Smart software leaves much to be desired in other aspects…
For one thing – the HP Smart app requires you to create a HP account, just to print your documents or photos through the app! This is really ridiculous.
I can understand if you need to create an account to print via the cloud – printing a photo or a document on your printer at home, while you are overseas, for example. However, it is ridiculous if you need to create an account before you can print your photos or documents on your own local network!
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So fine – I created a HP account, only to discover that the HP Smart software does not support the modern HEIC files using the High Efficiency Image File Format!
Whenever I select HEIC photos, it will give me the error message – “This file type is not supported“. I could only select photos using the older JPEG format.
This is a big problem because HEIC files have been in common use for many years now, becoming the standard for iPhones in 2017, with Android devices supporting it since 2019. It is unthinkable that any modern app would still not support the High Efficiency Image File Format!
On top of that, the HP Smart app only supported simple photo printing – just one photo at a time. You can change its orientation, crop it, rotate or flip it, add a border, but that’s about it. You cannot, for example, select multiple photos and print two or four of them in one page (2-Up / 4-Up printing).
Fortunately, you do not need to use the HP Smart app beyond setting up the printer. You can use other photo editing apps to create 2-Up, 4-Up images to print. I wouldn’t waste my time registering a HP account to use its extremely basic printing features.
HP Smart Tank 580 Review Summary + Verdict
The HP Smart Tank 580 is an impressive colour printer with scanning and copying capabilities, and wireless connectivity. It produced excellent print-outs, with outstanding results on photo paper.
It is also extremely cheap to use – as low as 0.004 cent per page, regardless of whether it’s black and white, or colour.
Of course, the cost will be higher when you print on photo paper, but it is still very cheap even if it uses 10X as much ink. In fact, the photo paper will certainly cost far more than the ink you use to print.
In any case, you won’t need to worry about refilling the HP Smart Tank 580 for some time. It comes with a full set of ink bottles that will last some three years, if you print an average of 5 pages per day / 150 pages per month!
When the time comes to refill the ink tanks, you must be extra careful as the ink bottles and ink tanks are not keyed. People have, and will continue, to wrongly fill the ink tanks with the wrong ink.
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I also like how easy it is to setup the printer, and get printing, using the HP Smart software. Unfortunately, that’s about all the HP Smart software is good for. It has extremely basic printing features, and cannot even support the HEIC file format. Fortunately, you can simply ignore the HP Smart software, and just use any other photo editing, or printing app you want.
I am a little annoyed with the HP print driver, which always reverts to Letter, Plain Paper printing, and Landscape, even after I set my preferences. HP should definitely look into these usability issues. It’s not a deal-breaker, just annoying.
But if you can ignore those niggling issues, the HP Smart Tank 580 is an affordable colour printer that does a great job printing, scanning, and copying photos, with a very low cost of printing. If you run a small business, or just need a cheap and easy-to-use printer with scanning, you should definitely consider the HP Smart Tank 580.
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