HP’s OfficeJet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One is a colour inkjet multifunction printer built to take anything that a small office can throw at it. Granted, it’s expensive, but if you do high-volume printing, consider buying it for the low consumables costs if nothing else.
This MFP’s generous paper-handling features include a 250-sheet input tray, a 150-sheet output tray, and a 50-sheet automatic document feeder. Duplexing is automatic. An optional second 250-sheet input tray (for plain paper only) costs $80. Ethernet, USB, and Wi-Fi connectivity are standard. Media slots cover CF; MMC/SD; xD; and MS/Duo, and you also get a USB/PictBridge port. Most of the control panel is displayed on the unit’s 3.45-inch, color touchscreen LCD, which makes navigating the many settings fast and easy.
The unit’s 35-page-per-minute text speed and 34-ppm graphics speed are possible only in draft mode. In tests conducted at the MFP’s default settings, it printed text pages at 15.6 ppm and graphics pages at 4.5 ppm–far short of the company’s promises, but plenty fast nonetheless. Text output looked black and fairly crisp. Photos and graphics appeared grainy but had natural colors on plain paper. On HP’s own paper, the images tended to be slightly dark but very smooth.
The icing on the OfficeJet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One’s substantial cake is its incredibly low ink pricing. The machine ships with a 1000-page black cartridge priced at $26, and three 900-page cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges for $20. A page printed with all four colours would cost just 9.3 cents. But the economic picture gets even brighter with the high-yield cartridges: A 2200-page black cartridge costs $36, while each 1400-page colour cartridges costs $26. A page containing all four colors would cost a mere 7.3 cents.
A colour inkjet multifunction printer built to take anything that a small office can throw at it
