>>> BlackFriday HP Officejet Pro 8500A Plus Wireless e-All-in-One (CM756A#B1H)

Technical Details

• Print professional color documents for up to 50% lower cost per page than lasers.
• Improve your workflow.
• Create professional-quality color prints
• Lower cost per page; item comes with print heads
• Individual Color Cartridge
• Lower cost per page

I have a small home office and use this printer primarily for business type tasks. I replaced a Samsung All-in-One Laser printer with this HP All-in-One. I will also be writing reviews for other devices that I use for business travel and backcountry backpacking including: HP Officejet Pro 8500A Plus AirPrint enabled printer Solio Rocsta H1000 Solar Charger and Verizon MiFi 2200 five device 3G mobile broadband HotSpot. Click on the "See all my Reviews" link above.





=== Background Information ===



The primary features that were critical to my decision were AirPrint duplex printing and double sided copying. None of these features were available on the Samsung. HP is the only company that offers AirPrint. This allows printing directly from iOS4.2 enabled iPad iPod Touch 4th Gen and iPhone 4. ePrinting is not the same and I will discuss the advantages of both. HP also offers a free app for the iPod devices called iPrint. I will explore some of those cool features.



This review will also compare a few feature differences between the 8500A and the 8500A plus. I was very close to buying the 8500A but opted for the improved features of the 8500A Plus. I hope this comparison will allow you to make a better choice too.





=== AirPrint compared to ePrint ===



Another feature unique to the Apple iPod Touch 4th Gen device iPad and iPhone 4 is AirPrint. It should be noted that the iPod Touch 3rd gen with iOS4.2 cannot AirPrint. One more reason that swayed my decision to buy the 4th Gen device. AirPrint is different from ePrinting. AirPrint allows you to print almost anything like documents PDFs photos Internet pages and Internet PDFs to an HP AirPrint enabled printer. You cannot ePrint Internet pages or Internet PDF files. AirPrinting occurs instantly. ePrinting has a slight delay before the job prints.



You can get around this feature by opening Internet PDF files like an owner's manual to an HP printer in HP iPrint. This is a free app available for iPad iPod Touch and iPhone. Then inside iPrint you can email the PDF to your printer from anywhere in the world using WiFi. I enjoy recipe hunting on the Internet and this is a true advantage of AirPrint over ePrint. When you find the recipe just print it straight from the Internet. You cannot do this with ePrint or HP iPrint. Another unique feature of AirPrint is double sided printing to save on paper. ePrint does not allow double sided printing.



Photos look amazing when printing directly from the iPod Touch. Even photos taken from the iPod Touch look good. AirPrint does have a limitation. This is a feature that allows you to print while on the same WiFi network. So if I travel to another part of the state I cannot AirPrint to the home office. However if the hotel has an AirPrint enabled printer then you can print to it. ePrinting is different.



Many HP printers and other brands offer ePrinting. This is a very cool feature that allows you to print from your iPod Touch 4th Gen to an ePrinter through email. Your ePrinter must be connected to a WiFi network and it is assign a specific email address. Then while travelling on the road away from the home network I can email a document or photo to the ePrinter's email address and viola done. The limitation with ePrint is that not all applications will allow you to send an email from within the application. You cannot ePrint Internet pages or Internet PDFs. Only HP printers (and only a handful of models) are equipped for AirPrint. Check out this page for AirPrint enabled printers: [...]



Only the Photosmart series comes with AirPrint in the firmware. The Officejet A series printers require a firmware upgrade. I did this in the initial installation process and it was very easy to perform. You cannot download the firmware from the HP website. I wasted 30 minutes trying to find it. You upgrade the firmware by accessing the user panel on the printer. Go to Setup Menu / Web Services / Product Update.





=== HP iPrint app for iPod Touch iPad iPhone ===



Another cool application is iPrint by HP. It is a free app for iPod devices and probably other android devices too but not sure with those. iPrint will allow you to print photos saved files like PDFs and direct printing from your iPod Touch or iPhone camera. I can really get all this with the AirPrint feature so no big deal here.



iPrint differs in that you can directly scan documents and work files directly to a saved folder in your iPod device. You can then open view share and print those scanned pages. They will automatically be saved as PDFs. Another feature is that you can wirelessly transfer files from your home network computer to your iPod device. Then you can open share and print those. For example I can upload some recipes from home and share them with co-workers at the office. Do note that you won't be able to open word documents with file extension .doc or .docx. So be sure to convert those files to PDFs before importing.



iPrint also seems like it would be very useful for android devices too since it allows for options to be selected unlike ePrinting. In HP iPrint you can print grayscale or color select your paper size and choose double sided printing.





=== HP 8500A vs. 8500A Plus ===



The most obvious difference between the two models is a larger LCD screen and a slightly larger ADF tray. The 8500A Plus holds 50 sheets compared to 35 on the 8500A. When looking at the specs it is hard to see the differences. When I played with two machines at a local store there are several key features beyond the screen size.



The 8500A Plus has a full scale copy feature similar to what you would have with a $5000 copier at an office. It will perform the following key tasks:

1 sided to 2 sided

2 sided to 1 sided

2 sided to 2 sided

Printing can be done to short edge or long edge.



The 8500A would not copy 2 sided to 2 sided which is the most common type of scanning and printing tasks that I perform. For this reason alone I opted for the 8500A Plus. I did see a few other tasks that the 8500A Plus would perform over the 8500A but I do not recall the details.





=== Summary ===



HP 8500A Plus is a step up from the 8500A offering key features with printing and copying that will save you time and money like 2 sided to 2 sided copies. Both of these printers will allow for ePrint HP iPrint and the highly beloved Apple AirPrint. Only the AirPrint feature will allow you to print directly from the Internet to an HP AirPrint enabled printer. All these features come with a reliable high quality printer with high capacity ink cartridges for cost savings.

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HP OFFICEJET PRO L7680 Color All In One Printer/ Fax/ Scanner/ Copier. It is the worlds fastest desktop AiO for business color with up to 25 percent lower cost per page. It produces laser quality prints faster than most color laser all in ones up to 12 ppm black/10 ppm color. It contains a breakthrough inkjet draft mode with speeds up to 35 ppm black and up to 34 ppm color. The built in wired networking allows user to share powerful all in one capabilities. Features outstanding scanning with up to 2400 dpi CCD optical scanning for documents photos projects and more. Scan and store documents and photos directly to a network folder with Direct Digital Filing. Quickly and conveniently copy scan and fax multiple page documents using 50 sheet auto document feeder. Never miss a fax even without power faxes store in memory when device is on or off. Enjoy efficient high volume printing with optional 350 sheet paper tray for a total of 600 sheets. Archived documents retain laser quality black text and lab quality photos for decades without fading. Do more without a PC using the large 2.4 inch color graphics display and intuitive control panel. Easily preview select and print photos from memory cards using HP Photo Proof Sheet.

• Robust professional-grade all-in-one printer fax scanner and copier


• High-quality scans at 2400 dpi resolution


• Prints up to 35 pages per minute


• Windows and Mac compatible; built-in network card


• 1-year limited manufacturer's warranty

More detail ...

Quick Reliable Compatible

I purchased this printer through a local retailer and was debating between the HP and a similarly priced wireless printer from Brother. The replacement toner cartridges are a bit more for the HP but then again they come with the drum assembly built in. This greatly reduces maintenance and potential hardware failures.



Setup:

As for setup under Windows it's a snap. Put the CD in and follow the directions.



Under Linux (I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx)) the install was easy. I visited [...] web site and downloaded the drivers. From there I just followed the directions on the web page and it works like a charm.



I've not used it with a Mac but I did note that OSX is listed on the box.



Printer quality:

As for the printer itself. It has a very small footprint on the desk when the paper trays are not extended and a small one when they are. It has excellent monochrome print quality and is very fast. As with all laser printers the ink is waterproof once it's on the paper. I'd recommend it any day of the week.



The printer's body feels solid when you handle it. The input trays are similarly solid. The output tray feels a bit light but as long as you aren't abusing the tray it'll be more than sufficient.



HP Experience:

For me HP printers are generally very reliable and always has good driver support both under Windows and Linux.More detail ...

Comments on HP Officejet 8500a

I have been looking for a networked color laser printer suitable for home and small office use for some time. Then I received an ad for this printer. I was convinced to try it because of the new ink technology the relatively low cost of replacement ink cartridges and the duplex printing capability. So far I've been completely satisfied. It's easily fast enough for my use. Print quality is high. It seems to have good color accuracy; I've printed a couple of photos on high quality photo paper and been quite pleased. It was a breeze to install (we are a Mac household). The scan and copy functions are easy to use. Duplex printing is slow but adequate for the times it is used. I've yet to have to replace a cartridge so I can't speak to the cost per page of printing.More detail ...

Well-suited for the home or the home office

I thought I would make what is normally the conclusion the beginning section because not everyone may have the time or the disposition to go through all these paragraphs unless actually interested in making a purchase. I am providing more detail that should support my conclusions AFTER the evaluation section.





Evaluation

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The reviewed unit meets the claim of it being a all-in-one solution. While it is not likely that any individual user would take advantage of all its features on a regular basis it is reassuring to know that the features are there. The supplied software and the printer's own console interface allow for a tremenduous amount of flexibility and customization. Some of the more advanced features will require an above-average level of computer expertise but even without a lot of customization this will be a useful worthy printing/faxing/copying/scanning appliance.



While the superior quality of output would make this printer a good 'small office' candidate its speed would probably disqualify it if the small office was doing any significant amount printing. I provided some personal benchmarks so that any prospective small business buyer could decide. As a 'home' printer this comes as close to perfect as they come. I will be using it as a home printer so please do interpret my rating within that context.



A minor observation regarding 'design'. I found it interesting that some of the functions available on the touch screen are duplicated on physical buttons on the printer's console. This was striking because I actually saw this model for sale at New York's Fifth Ave. Apple store. It immediately occured to me that an Apple designer would have none of those buttons if allowed to redesign the product. This is not criticism it's only an observation also prompted by the fact that for example when specifying the number of copies to be printed I could NOT use the physical number pad but had to punch the number on the virtual keypad displayed on the touch screen.



The strong almost violent shaking the printer brings itself to when not on a perfectly steady surface was a little disturbing to me. I have little doubt that if improperly placed the printer would quickly lose its printheads alignment and it might even experience other technical trouble.



Finally I am happy that the HP Tech support solved my Vista-related problem but it would have been better if a printer that was manufatured only a few days before I received it had an updated CD or at least a flyer advising Vista users how to obtain the updated driver.



Considering all of the above the this printer gets a strong very positive 4 stars.



_______________________________________________________________________________





First impressions

-----------------



The HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-In-One Printer integrates print copy fax scan document and photo-processing functions. HP supplies the printer itself 'starter' ink cartridges print heads and a phone wire. Ethernet or USB cables are not included. Thin manuals are provided for wireless and FAX setup. A quick installation poster is provided as well. The full 300+ manual can be downloaded from the HP site. The CD has drivers for the several supported Operating Systems and a number of additional applications such as OCR (optical character recognition).



Besides the Ethernet and USB ports other physical IO include 2 telephone jacks in the back and slots for several types of memory cards in the front. The printer can be controlled from a PC or directly through a touch-screen color display and several buttons that generally duplicate options on the menus available through the touch-screen interface. To satisfy energy saving concerns the printer goes to sleep if not used for a while but it can be reactivated by either touching the screen or one of the buttons or remotely from a networked workstation.





Software

--------

Drivers are available for the most recent flavors of Windows (Vista XP 2000) and for the Mac. It can be configured to either a local printer connected to a PC via a USB cable or as a network printer wired (Ethernet) or wireless (802.11g). Another option (not tested by me) would be for one PC to connect the printer via USB and then share it over the network. I experienced problems installing the Vista drivers but HP's tech support addressed it by replacing the CD-supplied drivers with a version available at HP's site.



While installing the drivers HP will also install a number of applications and services. Of these the HP Solutions Center is the most versatile. It monitors the printer's status including the ink levels and allows for configuring printing scanning faxing and other capabilities such as the forwarding of documents to network folders (tested) or to email (not tested yet). In addition the home page can be used to control fax and scan operations to convert a graphic image to text and to launch other applications such as the HP Photosmart Essential. I posted images of the Home and Configuration screens.



I did not fully test the Photosmart Essential application yet but I expect it to meet most basic photo management and printing needs and perhaps more.



If staying with the defaults at drivers installation HP will install other generally unneeded or unwelcome applications and services. One of them the HP Customer Participation Program seems to be taking hundreds of megabytes but not doing anything useful from the end-user's point of view. I found Web discussions indicating that the 'program' was guilty of a memory leak. I removed it. Another unwelcome (to me) addition is the 'Yahoo Toolbar' to my Internet Explorer which I don't use anyway. This was done without asking for my permission. I had to use Vista's Control Panel to remove it after the fact.



Finally one 'glitch' that occured after my initial installation from the supplied HP disk had a pop-up constantly telling me that the "HP product assistant" had to be installed or updated and asking me to provide a path. Providing the path for the requested file which I found burried 3 levels deep inside the supplied CD was not helping and the cycle kept repeating endlessly. Some Web research revealed that this was a common problem and there were not many known solutions. I was able to find at the HP site a utility that tried to remove all HP drivers software from my PC but 4 reboots later and after re-installing the drivers the popup returned. A call to the HP support was answered and a technician was able to address the problem after taking over my computer performing the 'cleanup' job that I tried myself and then installing an updated version of the drivers downloaded from the HP site. The file name for Vista 32-bit is OJP8500vA909_Full_12.exe. I will post an image showing how to get to the drivers from the HP Solution Center. The HP suppport remediation completed after about 2 hours. The HP technician stated that 'only Vista' installations experience this problem. XP or Mac users should be safe.



Print

-----

Ink-jet printing outputs clean documents even on the 'normal' resolution. Printouts can be either color or black and white one-sided or two-sided. Print quality can be set to anything form 'general everyday printing' to presentation photo-quality or to ink-saving 'fast/economical printing'. The supplied paper tray can be loaded with up to 250 sheets up to 'legal' size. One-sided print speed is adequate but duplex printing can be quite slow.



The print operation appears to involved a great deal of physical movement inside the printer. If placed on anything but a very steady platform the printer tends to swing quite violently from left to right and back. This had me concerned enough to move it from its initial location.



Copy

----

The copy function allows for anything from one-sided/one-sided to two-sided/two-sided copies. As in the case of printing two-sided copies are much slower to produce. The copy quality is good enough to make the copy almost indistinguishable from the original.



Fax

---

I did not fully test the FAX capabilities but it's worth menioning that a lot of flexibility is provided including the ability to direct the faxes to a network folder (which I did test with the scan function) rather than having them printed. It is also possible to block 'junk' faxes by maintaining a list of the offending phone numbers.



Scanner

-------

As a scanner one can file the output to any of up to 10 preset network folders or if when the scanning process is initiated from a PC output can be directed to a designated user's local folder. Scanned documents can be translated to text via the integrated OCR function. My experiment with a printed document produced with Microsoft Word returned 100% accuracy for content but as expected the formatting (headers footers margins) was not properly handled.



Photo processing

----------------

Photo processing can be controlled either at the console and the interactive touch screen interface does allow for some flexibility. Input is provided by inserting one of the supported memory devices containing pictures (MMC SD CF XD MS/DUO or USB). Some crude cropping and sizing is available as well as color processing - sepia or gray scale prints can be produced and the colors can be manipulated to be darker or lighter. The more flexible solution and the one more likely to be used is via the provided HP Photosmart Essential application. Either through the touch screen interface or via HP Photosmart the printer can be configured to use photo paper from either HP or 'other' manufacturers. Inks more suitable for photo printing are available from HP but the quality of prints that I produced with the supplied ink on Canon Photo Paper Pro was satisfactory.



Document Management

-------------------

I did not test the claimed document management capabilities yet.



Support

-------

I was satisfied with the quality of support provided. After a slow start (20 minutes) where the Help Desk person asked many questions related to my identity the printer's identity and the nature of the problem I was forwarded to a technician that was able to actually solve my problem (see above under 'software'). It's hard to tell whether the better than expected support came because I mentioned that I was in the process of reviewing the printer on behalf of a known vendor.



In addition the HP Web sites provide a lot of material including updated drivers and the full manual which I still have to print.





Benchmarks

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I am including a few personal benchmarks with the hope that they might help someone make the right decision when it comes to purchase a home-printer or a small office printer.



- Printing



Was done on 10 pages of a Microsoft document that had some graphics and some color. The print quality was set to 'General everyday printing'.



10 pages (10 sheets) one sided - 56 seconds.

10 pages (5 sheets) duplex - 2 minutes 56 seconds.



- Copying



Set to 'color' 'General everyday printing' quality.



1 page 1 copy 1-1 side - 24 seconds.

1 page 5 copies 1-1 side - 1 minute 6 seconds.

5 pages 1 copy 1-1 side (5 sheets) - 1 minute 22 seconds.

10 pages 1 copy 2-2 sides (5 sheets)- 3 minutes 55 seconds.More detail ...