Customer Reviews

HP OfficeJet 6210 All-in-One Printer

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(36)

 

 

We are a long-established, technology-based counsulting and services company. We have thirty computers and nine HP printers on the LAN. We bought two 6210s for use at work stations for light to medium use (5 - 30 pages per day).

We could not be more pleased with the quality of the printed pages and the operation, but avoid heavy use because of excessive ink cost per page. (This is the reason why the printer cost seems absurdly low.)

Scanner, printer, and fax all worked great. The unit is very, very compact and handsomely styled - a far cry from the earlier all-in-ones that these replaced. The paper feed tray could perhaps be improved. A small amount of care must be used to prevent stuffing the paper in too far.

Print cartidges have very little capacity. The color cartridge has a list price of $32.00 and yields 260 "standard" pages. That's 12 cents per page. For the same standard page our older HP R60 all-in-one delivers 690 pages for a list price of $40.00 or $0.06 per page. I have not investigated black printing costs; but the black cartridge is also small. Googling "cost per page" and printer model will get you the cost info from a third party.

I just got my HP 2610 and like everyone else says, the software blows.

It took me maybe 4 hours to install the minimum drivers onto my Windows 2000 box. First of all, the CD-ROM that came with my printer would crash out at the same point in the install everytime. I ended up having to download the 350MB driver file off the HP support website. The install program isn't very straight forward nor intuitive. Instead of directly installing drivers, it actually uses the windows new hardware detection wizard to find the appropriate drivers. It of course, tells you to insert a CD-ROM with the drivers, but I was installing off the 350MB image. In my mind, when I download 350MBs, it shouldn't have to _ask_ me to find the drivers - it should know where they are. Then the program seemed to hang for about 20 minutes on the last step in installation. It got past all that, and everything was finally installed!

Oye!

Right now everything seems to be great! I don't notice any slowdown on boot times, nor does it seem like the HP Software seem to take up a lot of memory (only have 256M).

The printer itself is nice. I think a lot nicer than the 5510. The button layout seems more intuitive to me. I was considering the Canon Pixma 780, but the control panel of the Canon was cryptic. I'm a big stickler for good user interfaces.

Otherwise, like another reviewer mentioned, this printer is for light use since it uses super small print cartridges. 250 sheets per tank. So consider that. Move up to the 7210 if you think that's going to be an issue. I did a calculation to see when i'd break even buying the 7210 with the larger ink cartridges. factoring in the initial price of the 7210, i'd have to print something like 7500 pages for the cost to be worth it. That's a number I'm not going to cross anytime soon...

I was really excited, plugged everything in and tried it out.
The first try was just a plain color copy of a photo on to plain paper... Amazing... worked like a charm, not bad output.
Next test was a printout of a scanned in photo using imaging software... I used glossy photo paper and the thing jerked the paper out in spurts and printed only partial lines on the photo paper. So 1 expensive piece of paper wasted... so I tried another one and this time just using the copy feature of the all-in-one and bam... spit out the paper in the same way only printing a line every inch or so... then PAPER JAM ERROR. I cannot get rid of the message, I did everything HP says to do and still nothing. It's going back to the store today and that's it for this thing.
Over all it seems like a great machine but I've lost confidence in it now and will most likely purchase something from Cannon now.

I bought this all-in-one after my old HP D135 died after 3 heavy years of use and this thing couldn't be better. I have not had any of the problems others claim with the installation. It took me about 5 or 10 minutes to set up! Although many complain about the cost of the ink, I just changed mine from the original that it shipped with last week. The trick is to print it just under normal settings, the black still comes out great and it lasts way longer. The other thing I do to keep the cost of ink down is order third party ink, there are quite a few sellers and I've never been disappointed.

The color quality is great, I print my own pictures off of a new digital camera.

I fax at least once a week from Wisconsin to Florida without ever having a single problem.

If I had to say there is a downside in comparison to my last all-in-one I would say that the printer says you have low ink, but it doesn't specify how low in a percentage or bar like my last one did which was quite convienient. But, I just print until the black looks dull and then switch it out.

Overall, this all-in-one has been a great solution for my needs and I would definitely recommend it to others.

(UPDATE: It died after one year of light-to-moderate use. The scanner light bar doesn't come on anymore; therefore the scanning and faxing function are not working, making it just a printer. The "all", in All-in-one, broke.)

First, this machine is for light use at home. If you intend to print books off of this thing, get a laser jet. And the ink will cost you a FORTUNE!

I won't go over the details that are mentioned above, but here is what I have noticed:
1) You MUST inhibit your "plug-n-play" desires; if you plug this machine into your computer BEFORE you load the software you WILL have problems! (follow the directions)

2) Yes, the software does take a while to load. But it's worth it to have the ability to use all the cool features. (When it works.)

3) It's a bit louder than I thought I heard in the store, but not too loud. I am using it at home, and I can hear it down the hall, so if that's too loud...

4) In order to FULLY open the lid (to the glass), you will need at least 3.5 inches (8.9 cm) in clearance behind the machine. So, shoving this all the way against a wall is not recommended.

5) Paper jams. Had a few that took a good long while to figure out. There's a little gray door on the back that you will become intimately familiar with -- it's the key to most printing jams (that happen quite frequently.)

6) The quality of the scan is great! Works with Adobe's Acrobat and Photoshop CS. You just push the "Scan To" button until you see the program you want to scan to and then hit "Start Scan." So easy (when it chooses to recognize that you have these programs installed - which is about every other time.)

7) Fax works well; easy to use.

8) If you are a dust freak... the dark gray plastic shows dust easily.

9) As another reviewer stated, the ink DOES NOT last all that long. There are, however, cartridges that have twice the capacity (at twice the price.)

10) I recommend testing the outlet you plan on plugging this into. First, be sure it has a working ground, and secondly, make sure it is producing the required voltage (115-120 volts). Why? My printer was giving me a "carriage jam" error after every page, among other problems. HP's website has a 5-step walk-thru that found and fixed the problem (which was inadequate power from the outlet.)

1) Had recurring issues with the software, and HP help line was of no help. They kept telling me to just uninstall it and reinstall it. Then they got to the point where they were telling me that I didn't know what i was doing. (Ummm, good thing it was done over the phone, buddy.)

Hmmm, I have changed my "HIGHLY recommended" review to a maybe-not-so-hot review. We had a bunch a small pestering problems the whole time we owned it. Not really built well.

I used to own an HP Officejet 6110 and when it recently broke down I replaced it with the HP Officejet 6210. The negative reviews posted here on Amazon gave me momentary pause but I went ahead with the purchase because I was very satisfied with the 6110 and the 6210 is essentially the new and improved version. It turned out to be a smart decision: it took me less than an hour to set it up, and I am by no means tech-savvy. In addition, the 6210 is smaller, lighter and considerably quieter than the 6110. Plus, in addition to the usual four functions (print, copy, fax, scan) the 6210 is also digital camera-friendly. I am very satisfied with its performance and plan to continue using HP products in the future as I found their tech support to be excellent the few times I used their service. Highly recommended.

Good basic printer, sharp quality and nice colors. Decent photo printing. But BEWARE -- this machine is reasonably priced for a reason. It DEVOURS ink, and HP will earn a lot more on refill cartridge sales. Expect to spend more on refills in the first three months than the cost of the printer. That is my experience and I print less than 200 pages per week.

This is a attractive, compact all-in-one with almost flawless performance. Like other reviewers, I also had software installation issues, and it took a *long* call to HP tech support to get the device installed and working properly. Since then, I've faxed, printed, and scanned nearly every day, with no complaints. Print quality is excellent, but ink is expensive and short-lived. Scan auto-feeder is great, but quality is only good enough for duplication and documentation (Not good enough for photos). Faxing and copying is perfect. The one-button scan, especially to Adobe Acrobat, is excellent. If I were buying now (Jan 2007), I would look for a similar unit with an Ethernet connection instead of USB, the HP 6310.

One word - don't. I use this, like most, for a multiple purpose office machine. I have barely had the product one year and it's toast. I spent over 45 mins (not exaggerating) online with the "support" staff to find out that they won't even tell you what is wrong if it is 10 mins out of warranty -- and you won't find that out until 44 mins into the call.

If you are looking for a reliable machine with good quality printing, keep looking - this is not a company that stands behind it's products. I've been burnt twice now with HP products and support service, never again.

I bought this printer at 2:00pm today. At 11:30pm, I've finally given up. I've spent many hours of repeated trials on my own with a faulty disk with unreadable files. Then I spent more hours downloading the very large files from the HP website (well maybe the first download was corrupted? the second? try the basics file instead of the full file? <sigh> nothing works). Then I spent more hours on several calls to customer support in India, and endured repeated attempts by those same customer suppport personnel to sell me other, unrelated programs from HP, interspersed among the steps of incredibly convoluted and grueling multiple attempts to get this nightmare programming to run - all of which were failures. Finally they decided to send me a new disk, which will take a week to get to me while the time on my warranty ticks away and the hardware gathers dust. No wonder the store I bought this unit at is selling them at a discount. Still not worth it though. I'd rather pay more for something that actually works!

Meanwhile, while poking through the older HP drivers that came with the Windows XP I found that some of the older OfficeJet drivers could produce a black-and-white test page with this printer - an exceedingly disappointing achievement, but after today's torture I guess any scrap of success is worth noting.

As for the machine itself, well I haven't really been able to do much with it, and don't see any reason to try now since (1) the primary functions for which I wanted the unit seem to be impossible to achieve, and (2) I'm just too exhausted to consider it.

If the replacement disk gets here within the next two days, I'll try it. Otherwise this unit will go back to the retailer.

Altogether, I just wish I could bill HP for the incredible waste of my time this thing has been.