Customer Reviews

HP Officejet Pro 8500 All-in-one Printer

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(19)
1 star:		(61)

 

 

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.

Note that ink for this printer will set you back One Hundred and fourteen dollars!!!

Before purchasing the Officejet 8500, be aware that there appears to be compatibility issues with the current drivers (as of 5/5/2009) and Windows XP. Basically, the user gets the following error: "The printer has not yet responded, but the Microsoft Office program may be able to proceed without printer information". I have spent hours on the phone with their India-based tech support and with their chat technical support. Sadly, HP provides the worst technical support that I have ever experienced. The telephone reps barely speak English and the chat reps serve multiple customers at the same time, leading to long delays between their responses. Moreover, I have been cut off during chat sessions five times, which leads me to believe it is intentional as this always seems to happen when I attempt to corner them on difficult questions. Before getting cut off today (5/5/2009) the chat technical support rep acknowledged that there are known incompatibilities between the drivers and Windows XP. Presumably, this means the software was written for Vista.

Also be aware of the astronomical ink cartridge prices that will set you back half the cost of a new printer.

This is the third HP multifunction printer I have purchased. Historically, I have purchased top-of-the-line models from the HP Officejet line for my home office. Generally, I have been rather pleased and impressed with their ability to work for years with few paper jams, either in the printer or document feeder. My primary complaints with HP and these printers are twofold: 1) the ink prices are exorbitant (i.e. pay as you go) and 2) HP has atrocious tech support. The Officejet 8500 appears to have all-around better construction than the other HP Officejet multifunction printers I have owned. Yet it hasn't been without problems.

Looking back at my other purchases, it is striking how much prices have come down. Yet HP continues to gouge its customers on ink with the four cartridges costing $[...]+ tax. The first Officejet (d155xi) worked almost flawlessly for three years. I finally decided to sell it when moving. The second Officejet (7310xi) worked extremely well until one day it would not power on. Apparently, something had gone wrong with its main processor. The printer was on a surge protector the entire time, so I have no idea why this happened. I do turn the surge protector off every day before going to work to save electricity as this severs vampire loads from the electrical system. Perhaps the on/off cycles were not good for the printer. After determining the 7310xi was beyond repair, I purchased an Officejet 8500 from HP direct. The printer appears to be well made, but it has problems with communicating with my notebook in addition to having issues with photo printing that have been not fully resolved.

The timeline of my Officejet purchases:
2002 - March Officejet d155xi (HP Direct) 800 + tax/shipping
2006 - March Officejet 7310xi (Sam's Club) 368 + tax
2009 - April Officejet 8500 (HP Direct) 269 + tax/shipping -fifty buck trade-in rebate for 7310xi

The 8500 does not come with a USB cable, which was not an issue [at first] since I have so many surplus cables. Apparently, the 16ft cable I used with the 7310xi was not compatible, possibly because it may have been a USB 1.0 version, which I can't determine. So I tried one of the dozen or so shorter USB cables I have, some of which were in fact USB 2.0. While I got the printer to work, I repeatedly get errors such as "The printer has not yet responded, but the Microsoft Office program may be able to proceed without printer information". So, I purchased a new 16ft. Belkin USB 2.0. Unfortunately, I still get the same errors and freezing of the computer. I have not resolved the problem and don't look forward to calling HP's tech support. Their Indian support reps have the worst English I have ever had to deal with in a tech support setting. I do appreciate their new chat tech-support option, which allows the customer to select his skill level such as "novice" or "expert". Yet, the chat sessions abruptly severed communication with me multiple times with a red warning message, "we are having technical problems, please call tech support". What a ridiculous headache!

PRINTER DESIGN AND BUILD QUALITY
Despite HP's less than acceptable tech support, HP's engineers deserve credit for improving the design and build quality of their multifunction printers. Even though the previous printers never had a problem with broken paper trays or document feeders, these plastic pieces seemed extremely flimsy. The 8500 seems to be better constructed in that thicker, rigid plastic was used. Additionally, the parts that require interaction by the user, such as the receptacles for the ink cartridges, are much more accessible.

SPEED
While I have not conducted a side-by-side test, both printing and scanning appear to be faster than my most recent Officejet prior to this one, the 7310xi. Despite the increased speed, the 8500 doesn't shake my printer stand as violently as the 7310xi did, suggesting the engineers used a lower-inertia print head. The scanning appears slightly faster, but really not fast enough for large jobs. Truthfully, I would pay a lot more for much faster scanning. I have a grown accustomed to using a Ricoh 6500 copier/printer/scanner at my day job. The ~50 page/minute scan to pdf capability really changes the utility of the printer.

STILL NO DOUBLE SIDED SCANNING
One of the features that really attracted me to the original Officejet was its double-sided printing capability. Unfortunately it doesn't provide true double sided scanning. Some of scan options suggest the 8500 can perform double sided scanning but this appears to be more of function to interleave the second (back) set of pages. For larger double-sided documents, I find myself using the industrial strength Ricoh 6500.

PRINT QUALITY
The black text quality appears to be slightly better than that of the 7310xi. In fact, it appears indistinguishable from laser print quality. However, there have been some problems printing in color. First, when printing on plain white paper on regular ink volume settings, the colors appear a bit less vivid than the prints I made with my 7310xi. In fact, I have a few samples of color documents printed on the 7310xi that I was able to compare side-by-side with the output of the 8500, which clearly showed the difference between the two prints. Yet, this may be a result of HP's strategy to market this printer as being more ink efficient.

When printing on photo paper, there appears to be some issues when selecting the photo quality settings and "HP Advanced Photo Paper" as the paper type. Using both HP photo paper and Kodak "everyday" photo paper, there were striations across the center of the page. It isn't clear if the HP photo paper I was using was truly their "advanced" paper as this was a sample pack from HP. When using the "other photo paper" option, there were no striations. With certain other papers, however, I found that the ink would run with the slightest exposure to water - even after drying for more than one hour. Barely visible drops of water would cause easily visible spots on the page. While it isn't clear precisely what was done with the ink and requisite paper compatibility, the 8500 does appear to be more fickle than the predecessors.

In summary, the 8500 appears to be better designed and constructed than previous Officejet models but is less user friendly. My guess is that many of the problems I am experiencing will be resolved when new drivers are made available. However, as a fairly technical user, I would not expect so many difficulties getting the printer to work. Moreover, HP's consumer tech support is so unforgivably bad the company does not deserve your business.

Cons:
*Tech support is totally unacceptable, off-shore reps have both a poor command of the English language and weak technical skills
*Online chat tech support is disjointed with reps chatting with multiple customers simultaneously
*Printer communication problems unresolved as of 5/5/2009
*Photo printing requires more adjustments of settings
*Still doesn't have a true double-siding SCANNING mechanism
*Drivers for XP seem to have compatibility issues


Pros
*Fast printing and scanning for a piece of home office equipment
*Sturdier construction than predecessors
*Reasonable price for the performance/functionality
*Smoother/quieter than previous Officejet printers

In our small office we print over 5000 sheets a month and share the printer over a USB switch with 4 of us. We use it also for scanning and sending out customer documents. Speed for faxing and scanning was important as we often scan and fax 20 to 40 pgs.

The price per page was excellent due to the oversized ink cartridges printing 2 or 3 times the number of pages as we had previously obtained with other HP ink jets. For every day printing we have further cut printing costs by 75% by using refilled cartiridges from ebay. Overall the best color printer we have purchased in the last 4 years.

Only drawback that we have found is that for pdf scanning, a direct usb connection to a PC is required. Bottom line: Its got speed and the initial price is higher, but with much lower ink costs, payback is in a couple of months.

I've owned various HP inkjet and laser printers since 1984. Once got an old LaserJet II from eBay that had an asset tag from the City of Beverly Hills for $125 that ran for 3 years after I replaced the paper pickup clutch. (I'm a nerd...I work on EVERYTHING I own!)

A couple of years ago, I got a Lexmark All-In-One, new, at Target, for $25 on sale. Seemed a no-brainer until I realized it was an ink sucking nightmare. Photo quality was below average as well, even with "premium" papers. It finally died 2 months ago and I started shopping for a new AIO printer.

Found the OfficeJet 8500 at Office Depot on sale and paid $199, quite a bit less than the MSRP. Got a 25% discount on the 940XL cartridges, and went home to install the printer. Took less than 30 minutes to unbox, attach to the house network, and install the drivers on 2 PCs. (both Windows XP, SP3) The test pages looked good, but one of my needs was to be able to print 8x10 photos I use for my acting auditions. I'm usually told to bring 2 headshots and a resume, which translates to $6-7 per audition, if I get prints from CVS or Wal-Mart self-service kiosks. That doesn't include driving and my time.

So, the first thing I sent to the printer after setup and alignment completed was a hi-res color headshot from my portfolio. WOW! I use HP and Kodak papers as a rule, but NEVER got anything this excellent from the Lexmark. In fact, a side-by-side comparison with prints from the pro machine at CVS were identical. AND, the ink doesn't smudge a bit.

Text printing is equally impressive. Crisp, clean, and no jaggies, even with small point sizes using average 20lb. stock. Made perfect copies of some legal documents I needed and sent a fax to a business associate as well with ZERO problems.

My wife is totally non-technical and she LOVES this printer. She has a small HP DeskJet in her office, but occasionally needs copy and fax functions it doesn't have. The printer goes to "sleep"...power saving mode...but wakes up nearly instantly if either of us send a job to it. So far, no jams or issues of any kind.

I will also mention that both of us have iPhones and take a lot of pictures. Got the free HP iPrint app from iTunes and it found the 8500 first try and printed excellent 4 x 6 photos from our Camera Rolls on the phones. Zero problems, excellent output.

In short, this is the nicest, most full-featured "home" printer I've ever owned. The only "issue" was opening TCP port 9100 on my firewalls for the printer. For some users, this might be a problem, although the installer and docs tell you how to do it. (yes folks, it DOES pay to RTFM!!) Everything else was so simple and/or automated, a (reasonably bright) child could install this printer.

I recommend the 8500 without reservation.

I purchased my Officejet 8500 in early August, 09. I had delayed my purchase for some months milking my old 7410 to the bitter end because of the generally horrible online reviews of the 8500. Finally I decided that the main failure of the 8500 was in its inability to feed multiple sheets without skipping pages and that seemed only to happen to 30-40% of the printers reviewed.

When I received my printer I tested its ability to accurately feed longer documents by both copying and faxing a 10 page document and it appeared to work, so I felt somewhat relieved and other than the bloatware provided by HP decided it was a pretty good purchase. And the bloatware can be avoided by using the Vista or Windows 7 drivers without the software.

Unfortunately within 6 weeks my 8500 has picked up the inability to consecutively load pages placed in its feed tray. It took 5 tries yesterday to fax a 15 page document. The first 4 tries faxed between 11 and 14 of the pages as the feed mechanism tried to work. I am not even certain that the 5th try worked completely but by that time I figured the recipient had enough copies of the document that they could compile one complete set.

So if you need to copy, scan for fax more than 2-3 page documents this is not the printer for you.

An additional problem is that it will not act as a stable member of a network if you use it as a wireless printer on your network. About once a week it will either go offline or get constipated with a print job. When that happens it generally takes a couple of hours of starting and stopping the puter, the printer and the print spooler and clearing the spooler to get it clear enough to delete as a printer and than it must be added again. I have heard that it is because HP has been unable to make the printer work with the Windows 7 DHCP system and that setting a static IP address may help. I suppose it does a bit as I only have to spend this hour or two every week now and was doing it every 2-3 days with a dynamic IP address being used.

Too bad they don't sell the older HP 7410 any longer as that was a great printer. The 8500 Premier Wireless is simply junk.

Jan 2011: update; again the printer goes offline. Unfortunately it does it most often when I have a lot of different printing jobs in the queue (some of which) I may have deleted. The static IP address for wireless use does help as it only goes offline and loses connection about once a month now when it was 2-3 times a week with a dynamic IP address. Also I am getting good enough at recovering the printer to online status that this time I didn't lose my 10 queued print jobs and it only took an hour out of my busy day to recover it.

Also the printer has picked up the propensity to not print the first 1-3 pages of a multipage document. For some reason a reprint of those pages generally works. So other than being annoying it is not a fatal error.

Do be ready to become a wireless expert if you buy this and plan to use it wirelessly.

PK

I am a Pastor with 2 copiers at my home office, one at the church, and one at our Church School. We just had to chuck all four of our great old HP 7130 all-in-one printers in the garbage, because we could no longer get parts for them. So we thought we'd try the new Samsungs. We got two just printers CLP-315s and two all-in-ones CLX 3175s -- but what a disaster! We got less than a thousand copies out of each $45 laser color cartridge -- and the Treasurer was screaming! After two months, they started breaking down, and instead of fixing them (even under warranty) -- we just started throwing them in the garbage! Well I just got the HP OfficeJet Pro 8500s -- and everybody has flipped out! These things are fantastic! Hey, forget laser -- go back to inkjet! These new 8500 inkjets from HP are unbelievable -- and less than half the original and production costs!!! They are an absoulte piece of cake to set up -- and make the most beauitful copies you have ever seen . . . Why I ever thought about getting something other than HP -- I'll never know! In 6 months -- I'll give you an update . . . But so far -- WE LOVE THESE THINGS!!!HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-In-One Printer

First, this printer would have scored a five star rating had not the first machine had a loose piece in it that obstructed the carriage return and my subsequent dealings with HP Tech Support. I had tried to deal with HP rather than return the machine to Staples, but in the end I returned it to Staples for a swap. That was a much better decision.

This printer is replacing a HP 6310 All-In-One. It is physically larger and was an awesome buy as the model year ends and using the HP program that you can get $50.00 off on certain printers for turning in any printer, regardless of manufacturer or working condition. I walked out of the store having actually paid $149.00 for this printer.

The unit is a bit noisy, but that does not bother me. It also takes a minute or two to warm up since it cleans the print heads when it is turned on. There are two print heads that each control two colors of ink. There are four different ink cartridges, which is both a plus and a minus. The plus is that you don't need to replace an entire color ink cartridge if one color runs low, you simply replace that one cartridge and not throw away (or recycle) other perfectly good ink. The minus is having four ink cartridges to buy. The net result is that you are supposed to save money over the life of the printer by only buying consumables that you actually need.

Installation was easy. HP actually has great installation instructions online in its printer support area for this printer. It gave all the instructions clearly and in order. I was actually very impressed with how easy it was to accomplish. Also, the duplexer unit that comes with the printer installed in a snap, which was contrary to what I had read somewhere online.

I like to fax documents directly from Microsoft Word. Previous editions of the HP Solutions software, and also the fax drivers that are installed, have been, at best, problematic. Before the installation I uninstalled the previous 6310 printer and took the additional step of using CCleaner to check the registry and removed all remaining entries regarding the printer and software. I then installed the software and it went in perfectly and the functions, including the fax setup, also all worked the first time with no issues. In the past this has not always been the case so I was very pleased with that development.

The print quality is excellent. The printer is also fully capable of printing in the draft mode, which reduces the use of ink. The result is noticeable, but for a draft document it is acceptable and the plus side is that you are saving ink.

The duplexer is interesting. It prints one side and almost ejects the printed copy and then a pause to wait for the ink to dry and then pulls the paper back in and prints the reverse side. This makes the printing process slower than simply printing on two pages, but it does save paper.

Compared to my 6310, print speed is phenomenal. It takes a few seconds to get the printer to print from a resting state, but once it is printing it is very fast.

The downside to this is dealing with HP Tech Support. I called on my first printer and the piece that had been loose and then jammed the print head. I tried to explain this to the tech support person, who sounded more like he was in Pakistan than India. After five or ten minutes it was clear that this person did not understand the details of what I was trying to communicate despite his insistence to the contrary. He also refused my polite request to perhaps speak with someone who might better understand me, such as an American or Canadian. All he was concerned with was seeing if my machine could scan and then proclaim my machine fine, despite the fact that I had a piece of the internal workings on the table next to the printer. The good news is that after the fact that I did manage to get a hold of their customer support personnel and explained the situation to them. The person I spoke with was concerned about me not being provided someone who spoke better English when I requested it after trying to converse with the Tech Support person for 10 minutes. It is too bad that there is such a difference between the quality of their customer support folks versus the front line tech support staff, who are mostly outsourced Asians that create communication issues.

As I said this printer would have received a 5 star rating had HP Tech Support been better. I also didn't think it fair to reduce my rating too far on a nice piece of equipment so that explains my rating of this printer.

I set it on the filing cabinet by my desk, let it go thru its 20 minute initialization, plugged into my Apple Airport Extreme via Ethernet, and then went into Printer Preferences on my MacBook Pro running MacOS 10.6.1 Snow Leopard. I hit the "+", and the printer showed up in the list of Bonjour printers with no action required on my part to tell the printer to show up on Bonjour. I selected it, it set itself up as a printer in MacOS, and voila. Click over to the 'Scan' tab in the printer preference, and it initialized the scanner part too. Print out a couple of short documents, yep, it works. Technical support? What would anybody need technical support for? It all just works!

The printer does make the filing cabinet shake a little from side to side while it's working, but who cares? That's why it's on the filing cabinet, not on my desk! So far everything works quite well. The printer works, the scanner works, the copy works, either from flatbed or the page feeder. The network printing from my Macbook in the bedroom to the printer in the living room works via the Airport Extreme's wifi, so no need for wifi on the printer itself. My understanding is that the 8500 Wireless adds a wider paper feed path and a touchscreen. Other than that, I don't see the point. The printer is fast, the duplexer while slow (it waits for ink to dry before sucking the paper back in) is good for saving paper for short printouts, and the ink costs are reasonable when you consider how many pages each cartridge prints -- the black is basically the same per-page cost as my Samsung laser printer, the color is more expensive but still cheaper than the HP Color Laserjet at the office. Note that you do *not* install any software off the HP disk if you have MacOS 10.6.x Snow Leopard -- the drivers come with Snow Leopard, including the scanner drivers.

It's not an office Color Laserjet with all the options including duplexer, page sorter, etc. that'll print 35ppm in glorious duplexed color (and even an optional stapler!). And it's sad that it doesn't have a duplexer for the page feeder like the gigantic laser copier-printer-fax machine at the office. But it doesn't cost five figures either. For a home office printer at its current price, this is one great honkin' deal and with the water-resistant pigment-based inks ought to handle pretty much all your needs without having multiple printers, a scanner, and a fax machine. I freed up a huge amount of space in my home office by replacing the laser printer, inkjet, fax machine, and scanner with this one device, and thus far I haven't regretted it.

After having read a lot of reader reviews I decided to still buy this printer. Setup is a little more involved than with most other (mainly, non-networked) printers. Other readers complained about the printer not being "seen" by their computer, that is, it would be offline.

Due to my technical background I realized right away what the problem is. If the printer cannot be seen, the first thing to try is to temporarily turn off your firewall. If it prints, then you need to change some settings in the firewall. Each Internet security program works differently. In general, print out a network setup page from the printer to find out its IP address. Go into the firewall settings and "trust" that IP address. Next, you may need to go online and search for tech notes (most likely found at hp.com) regarding the in and out settings for certain UDP ports. I had AVIRA Premium Security Suite on one of my computers, had difficulty with getting the settings right, and had to switch to Norton Internet Security. I wrote down the settings and performed the same on the other computers. With that done, I have not had any more problems. So, if you're frustated with the printer and think it's defective, it's most likely not. However, you may need to get someone with some technical expertise (not just someone who thinks they know what they're doing) to help you.

The other complaint of users is the amount of ink it seemingly uses. First, the ink cartridges that come with the printer are like "trial" cartridges. They don't have the amount of the ink as the ones you buy over-the-counter. I chose to buy a set of cartridges at a reduced price from Amazon.com at the time I bought my printer. It's going to be more expensive to purchase them in the store. Secondly, I changed my default settings under Printer Properties to high-speed draft. If you do this at the time of printing, the settings will automatically revert back to normal print quality. If you want to change the default the draft, you need to do this by going into the Printer Properties under the Control Panel without being in an application such as word processing. Then, if you occasionally need high-quality, you would simply change it under Printer Preferences at the time of printing.

The theory behind having separate cartridges to save money, which this printer does, for CYMK (Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, Black) does actually work, if you do a lot of color printing and use up one color more quickly than another. However, granted, HP really does make its money on the cartridges. Please note that the printer also comes with a set of printheads. You do not replace these that often. They do extend the life of the printer.

We do a lot of mixed printing including printing out various multipage articles we find on the Internet. We like saving paper as well. One of the neat features of this printer is the ability to print on both sides of the page. You will also find this setting under Printer Properties or Preferences and can set it to automatically duplex print by default or at print time (as with the print quality).

The printer is fast, print quality is good, the fax feature, copying, and scanning work well. It does make some noise when printing. There are four graphic bars in the basic printer window that show you the ink level for each cartridge. The paper tray can hold a lot of paper. You can purchase an optional paper tray.

Before you get frustrated with trying to figure out how to operate the printer, do yourself a favor and download or copy the printer manual (PDF file) to your desktop and read through the basics. It will help a lot. Happy Printing!

OK, so I admit that this is only the second all-in-one printer I've owned, but from my experience and those of friends and associates who've fought with their home office machines, I give this machine two thumbs up! So far it has done everything I've tried on it very well, with no hiccups, misfeeds, or paper jams. And it does it fast!

I'm also quite happy with the ink, in that it seems quite water resistant and doesn't smear like other inkjet inks I've used. The colors are great for brochures, promotional materials, and photos I print.

The only negative I can think of so far is that it doesn't automatically enter a sleep mode after being on for a period of time. Though I admit that it may be that I didn't set it up right considering I haven't opened the destructions once yet. And that's really another point in favor of the HP OfficeJet Pro 8500, the fact that it works right out of the box without complicated and extreme setup procedures.

Anyway, you get it by now. I like this machine and am glad I bought it. It's twice the machine when compared to some of the competition at similar pricing.