HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless review

HP’s Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless is far more expensive than the other inkjets here, but it’s designed to compete with colour laser MFPs.

It has a comprehensive web interface, automatic duplexer, 10/100 Ethernet, 802.11b/g wireless, a 250-sheet paper tray and a 3?in touch screen. It’s the only inkjet here to provide a duty cycle figure; at 15,000 pages, it’s on a par with more expensive laser printers.

Its separate print heads reduce costs, as headless ink cartridges are cheaper to produce. The heads are easy to replace if they become blocked. The first time it’s switched on, the printer takes about half an hour to charge its ink reservoirs, align its print heads and auto-initialise. Irritatingly, we couldn’t find a way to switch the default Letter paper size to A4 using Windows’ printer preferences or the printer’s onscreen menus and web interface.

The Officejet produces mono text prints that rival those of most laser printers. It prints at 15.6ppm, and its colour print speed of 5.2ppm exceeded every colour printer here except for Lexmark’s X544dn laser. Colour print quality was outstanding, even on cheap 80gsm paper, while thicker media produced even better results. However, photo prints suffered from poor shading and visible dithering.

The scanner’s software interface is poor, with key settings buried several mouse clicks away. Fortunately, you can configure it to scan files to a designated format and location at the touch of a button on the device itself, which is far more convenient.

HP claims that the 8500 can print at half the cost of a colour laser, while producing prints of a similar quality. Print costs are indeed among the lowest we’ve seen, at just 0.9p per sheet of mono A4 and 3.5p per mixed colour page. It’s also power efficient, as it draws just 35W while active. It’s expensive to buy but cost-effective to run. With brilliant document quality, fast printing and low ink costs, the Officejet Pro 8500 is an ideal Business Buy.