HP OfficeJet Pro 8122e review: A good all-rounder for a light office workload

If the HP OfficeJet Pro 8122e looks familiar, not just because it looks like a HP printer. The 8122e is exactly the same size and shape as the OfficeJet Pro 8022, a printer we reviewed back in March 2021. This isn’t much of a shock – all of HP’s OfficeJet printers follow a similar aesthetic, and can be tricky to differentiate between even when they’re different sizes.

What is different is the price. This model has an RRP of £109, at the time of writing this review, you can buy it for £90 – we’ve also seen it available for less. When we reviewed the 8022 all those years ago, it cost more than £200. If that’s the benefit you get from putting similar parts into an identical case, I’m all for it.

HP OfficeJet Pro 8122e review: What do you get for the money?

Like its predecessor, the HP OfficeJet Pro 8122e is an all-in-one printer, copier and scanner. It has a single paper tray at the bottom, which can hold a generous 225 sheets of letter/A4 paper, and an automatic document feeder at the top that can feed up to 35 sheets into the copier to make single-sided copies. The printer can print on both sides of a sheet automatically at 1,200 x 1,200 dpi, and scan at a resolution of 1,200ppi.

There’s genuinely very little that’s changed in the basic hardware of the OfficeJet Pro 8122e compared to the OfficeJet Pro 8022. I went through the specifications with a fine-toothed comb and the vast majority are identical, including the overall dimensions, the size of the screen, the paper capacity and both the print and scanning resolutions. Considering this printer is significantly more affordable, it looks like a very attractive alternative.

There are two main differences, though. The first is in print speed. I noticed this when running our standard series of tests before I’d checked the specifications, but the 8122e is slower than the older 8022. I’ll go into more detail below, but suffice to say that the printer’s specifications confirm this, so HP appears to have downgraded the speed to help ease down the price.

The other difference is the ink. The 8122e uses HP’s 924 and 924e series of inks, whereas the previous model used different cartridges. It’s hard to tell whether much has changed in these inks, but there’s certainly a difference in the price. Again, I’ll break that down in more detail below, but if you don’t opt for HP’s ink subscription and choose to purchase your own ink cartridges, you’ll pay more for ink with this new printer.

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HP OfficeJet Pro 8122e review: Is it easy to use?

If you’re willing to set your HP OfficeJet Pro 8122e up on a Wi-Fi network, getting going is straightforward. By scanning a QR code in the quick start guide, then following the on-screen instructions, it should be up and running in minutes.

Network connections can be made from the screen on the device itself, or the HP Smart app (available for Windows, Android and iOS), which is easier, especially if you’re planning on connecting more devices to the printer at a later date.

Controlling printing from the device itself, however, is as easy as it gets on such an affordable model. While similarly-priced Epson or Canon printers have rudimentary screens accompanied by external buttons, this printer has a full-colour touchscreen that’s slick, effective and easy to use. It’s not quite up there with the screen on a modern smartphone, but it’s above and beyond what you’ll find elsewhere.

The supplied software is easy enough to use, but somewhat tiresome. I often found I was twiddling my thumbs faced with a series of spinning dots while I waited for the fancy web-connected interface to load when all I wanted to do was change a few simple settings.

HP OfficeJet Pro 8122e review: How fast is it and how much does it cost to run?

When it comes to speed, the printer is actually three seconds slower than its predecessor when it comes to the time it takes to print the first page of a document, and both are slower than the more affordable Brother DCP-J1200W as you can see from the chart below.

In turn, that means churning out single-page documents is also relatively slow. When printing text documents, it falls well behind the previous OfficeJet Pro and the cheaper Brother rival, although it pips Canon’s more consumer-focussed Pixma TR7650 cartridge printer to the finish. It’s more competitive when printing business graphics in colour, but its older sibling is faster once again.

Where this printer comes into its own is in duplex (double-sided) printing. Most affordable rivals don’t offer this as an automatic function any more, but HP still sees it as essential, and it’s very welcome here.

This is also one of the few areas where it is faster than the OfficeJet Pro 8022. In my tests, the 8122e churned out double-sided prints at a rate of 3.1ppm. It isn’t the quickest double sided printing we’ve seen, with larger office printers printing at a far faster rate, but it’s good that it isn’t lagging behind its rivals in this department.

As I mentioned previously, there are two types of official HP cartridges you can buy for this printer, the 924 series and the 924e. Both come in four colours, with one cartridge each required for black, cyan, magenta and yellow printing. The 924e series cartridges offer twice the capacity of the standard ones, but are a little less than twice the price, so we’ve based our per page cost calculations on these.

Based on 5% coverage, using the ISO/IEC 24711 standard printing pattern, HP states that the 924e colour inks (£25 each) can print 800 pages, while the black cartridge (£51) can produce 1,000 pages. That breaks down to about 5.1p per mono print and 9.4p per colour print.

As you can see from the chart below, that makes it more expensive to run than its rivals, with Brother offering significantly more affordable prints across both mono and colour prints, and Canon managing to outprice the HP even though it uses a fourth cartridge for colour prints.

It’s also notable that the cartridges for the 8122e cost more per page than for the older OfficeJet Pro 8022, which in turn is more expensive than its rivals. (The one exception is the Canon Pixma TR7650, which is more expensive for colour printing.) However, it’s worth remembering the 8122e is significantly cheaper to buy than the 8022, and you’ll need to print a lot of pages before the price difference of the new printer is cancelled out by its more expensive ink.

As usual with HP, buying cartridges is one option but it isn’t the only way – there’s also the company’s Instant Ink subscription service. It’s tricky to work out whether it’s better or worse value for money, with a raft of tiers and the fact that the subscription is the same price per page whether you print colour or mono pages.

The middle £5.49/mth subscription, for example, lets you print 100 pages per month, which works out to 5.5p per page whether it’s mono or colour, but only if you print all 100 pages. If you fall short of using the full quota, the price per page effectively increases.

You can roll unused pages over and add them to the following month, but they do expire if not used up. If you go over your quota, you’re charged £1 for every 10 additional pages printed.

HP OfficeJet Pro 8122e review: What’s print quality like?

Mono printing of text documents is arguably what this printer is best at. Printed letters are sharp and clear, and stand up well to scrutiny under a magnifying glass when printed on standard copier paper. The Canon Pixma TR7650 falls short in comparison, as printed characters are rougher around the edges.

I noticed slight banding in blocks of colour on business graphics but it’s no worse than I’ve seen on the similarly-priced cartridge-based rivals such as the Brother DCP-J1200W. Photo printing proved washed out and unsatisfactory, however, particularly on darker images. If you want decent photo prints you’ll be far better off with the Canon Pixma TR7650.

The device also made a good first of copying and scanning. Colour copies end up not looking quite like the originals, particularly when reproducing subtler shades, and again the Canon Pixma TR7650 does this better. However, if copying is more about casual page sharing than accurate reproduction, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Scanning is a similar story, with high-resolution scans looking colourful and bright, but muddy in the detail.

HP OfficeJet Pro 8122e review: Should you buy it?

For the low cost of entry, the HP OfficeJet Pro 8122e is a decent office printer. It’s best at carrying out office-type jobs, with decent quality mono text and good enough copying and scanning for digitising documents and the like. It has a strong set of features for the price, with no shortcuts taken on things such as paper capacity, duplexing, automatic sheet feeding and screen-based controls.

However, I wouldn’t recommend it if you want to print photos, or if colour printing is a key element of what you print regularly. It’s not terrible in this department, but other cartridge printers, such as the Canon Pixma TR7650, are much better suited to this type of work.

For an even more affordable device, the Brother DCP-J1200W is a strong contender, and does most of the things the 8122e can do at a lower price. It doesn’t have a touchscreen or an automatic sheet feeder, however.

And if you need to print a lot, ink tank printers are the way to go. The printers themselves are more expensive, but if you print hundreds of pages per month, you can’t argue with the running costs, which work out at a fraction of a penny per page.