HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-In-One Printer

Other products by Hewlett-Packard

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 17.8 x 22.5 inches ; 38.2 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 39 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B001PM6RX6
• Item model number: OJ PRO 8500
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (139 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank

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  Electronics > Computers & Accessories > Printers > All-In-Ones

• Date first available at Amazon.com: January 14, 2009

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

From the Manufacturer Want laser-quality printing at prices your business can afford? Cut your print costs and forget about messy printer cables with the HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One. Print professional color for up to 50% lower cost per page and less energy use than lasers[1], plus easily print from any room using built-in wireless networking[2]. When you add up the savings, your bottom line could increase up to $576 per year compared to lasers[3].

To make sure your documents look sharp and vibrant, choose Original HP Officejet Pro pigment inks. These inks even let you highlight your documents without smearing the text. Want digital copies of large photos and documents? This HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One can scan legal-sized paper with a maximum scan size of 8.5" x 14". Stay organized by saving your scans directly to a network folder or your email with the touch of a button. You can also save paper with automatic two-sided printing, faxing, scanning and copying. Want a printer that's easy to use? Manage all of your printer functions at the touch of a finger using the large 3.4-inch touchscreen LCD. Also, view images directly from your memory cards. Need time for other tasks? The convenient automatic document feeder handles up to 50 pages at once. Boost your business image and your bottom line with the HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One Print professional color without going over budget. For up to 50% lower cost per color page than lasers[1], create custom marketing materials in your own office. Print only what you need, whenever you need it, so you can avoid keeping outdated documents and storing extra copies.

Create custom marketing materials in your own office.

Make your own brochures, flyers and more using HP Brochure Paper and HP Tri-fold Brochure Paper. Find business templates and project ideas at www.hp.com/print Save energy in more ways than one with an HP Officejet Pro Get high-powered business printing without burning up power. HP Officejet Pros use up to 50% less energy than lasers[1], and you'll reduce energy consumption by using one machine instead of four separate products. Plus, this all-in-one is an ENERGY STAR® qualified product. Print wirelessly from any room Reduce the clutter of tangled cables under your desk or in the conference room using built-in wireless networking[2]. You'll also improve productivity by sharing one printer with multiple people.

Save energy in more ways than one with an HP Officejet Pro. Print wirelessly from any room.

Remember compatible ink, paper and accessories Say it best with Original HP. The HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One uses four individual inks: 940 Black, 940 Cyan, 940 Magenta and 940 Yellow. You can save money on ink by choosing optional XL high-capacity cartridges (not included; please purchase separately). Print all your business documents, from brochures and presentations to invoices and emails, using HP paper. To easily connect your PC to this HP all-in-one, you'll need a USB cable. See all the compatible inks and recommended papers here. Get the specifics PRINT SPEED: Maximum speeds of 35 ppm black, 34 ppm color[4] FAX: Up to 125-page fax memory, up to 99 speed dial numbers SCAN: Resolution up to 4800-dpi optical; maximum scan size 8.5" x 14" COPY: Reduce/enlarge 25%-400% PAPER HANDLING: 3" x 5" to 8.5" x 14"; up to 15,000 pages per month

What's in the box? HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One Automatic two-sided printing accessory HP 940 Black/Yellow Printhead HP 940 Cyan/Magenta Printhead HP 940 Black Officejet Ink Cartridge HP 940 Cyan Officejet Ink Cartridge HP 940 Magenta Officejet Ink Cartridge HP 940 Yellow Officejet Ink Cartridge Power supply Power cord Phone cord Setup poster Getting Started Guide CD-ROMs (for software, Windows® and Mac printer drivers, and User's Guide)

 

HP Officejet Pro Business impact for up to 50% less cost[1]. Give your business the best of both worlds Looking for a laser printer? Buy the affordable alternative—HP Officejet Pros. You'll get the best of both: the laser quality your business needs at the low inkjet prices you want. Print professional color for up to 50% lower cost per page and less energy use than lasers[1]. Print impressive documents using new HP Officejet Pro pigment inks What's different about these inks? You can print water-resistant documents[5] with sharp-looking text and bright color, plus highlight your documents without smearing the ink. Four individual ink cartridges mean you replace only the cartridge that runs out, so you have more control over your print costs. Want to get more ink for less money? Buy optional XL high-capacity cartridges[6] for up to two times the number of pages than standard cartridges. Reduce, reuse and recycle Want to help your business go green? Easily save paper with automatic two-sided printing. Plus, use HP Smart Web Printing[7] to select what you want to print from multiple websites—and print it all on a single page. Since HP Officejet Pros are ENERGY STAR® qualified products, you can be sure you're saving power. Did you know HP recycles your print cartridges for free? Visit www.hp.com/recycle for details. In 2006, HP recycled more than 164 million pounds of hardware and print cartridges—the same weight as 600 jumbo jets.

Print impressive documents using new HP Officejet Pro pigment inks. Print multiple websites all on a single page with HP Smart Web Printing[7].

Choose the right product for you. Don't need wireless networking? Buy the HP Officejet Pro 8500 All-in-One. Want more? Get an extra set of color inks, an additional 250-sheet paper tray and marketing software. Buy the HP Officejet Pro 8500 Premier All-in-One.

[1] Majority of color laser all-in-ones under $600, June 2008, OJ Pro with highest-capacity cartridges. Energy use based on HP testing using the ENERGY STAR® program's TEC test method criteria. For details, see www.hp.com/go/officejet
[2] Wireless performance is dependent upon physical environment and distance from access point.
[3] Majority of color laser printers under $300 and color laser all-in-ones under $600, June 2008, OJ Pro with highest-capacity cartridges. Color page volume/coverage estimates for businesses with 5-19 employees from February 2009 InfoTrends Report. For details, see www.hp.com/go/officejet. Based on published yields and continuous printing; see www.hp.com/go/learnaboutsupplies. Results may vary.
[4] After first page; see www.hp.com/go/inkjetprinter for details.
[5] Based on HP internal testing, using papers with the ColorLok logo.
[6] Not included. Please purchase separately.
[7] Requires Microsoft® Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher.

ENERGY STAR and the ENERGY STAR logo are registered U.S. marks.

Product Description

Want a multifunction color printer that offers the convenience of wireless networking? Our Officejet Pro 8500 is right for all your small-office printing, faxing, copying, and scanning. You'll get professional-quality color at up to 50% lower color cost per page and using less energy than laser printers. Plus you can scan photos and documents (up to legal size) directly to folders¿without a PC¿using our Direct Digital Filing feature.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

186 of 196 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well-suited for the home or the home office, March 2, 2009

By	A. Dent "Aragorn" (Minas Anor, GD) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

(What's this?)

I thought I would make what is normally the conclusion the beginning section because not everyone may have the time or the disposition to go through all these paragraphs unless actually interested in making a purchase. I am providing more detail that should support my conclusions AFTER the evaluation section.


Evaluation
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The reviewed unit meets the claim of it being a all-in-one solution. While it is not likely that any individual user would take advantage of all its features on a regular basis, it is reassuring to know that the features are there. The supplied software and the printer's own console interface allow for a tremenduous amount of flexibility and customization. Some of the more advanced features will require an above-average level of computer expertise but, even without a lot of customization, this will be a useful, worthy printing/faxing/copying/scanning appliance.

While the superior quality of output would make this printer a good 'small office' candidate, its speed would probably disqualify it if the small office was doing any significant amount printing. I provided some personal benchmarks so that any prospective small business buyer could decide. As a 'home' printer, this comes as close to perfect as they come. I will be using it as a home printer so please do interpret my rating within that context.

A minor observation regarding 'design'. I found it interesting that some of the functions available on the touch screen are duplicated on physical buttons on the printer's console. This was striking because I actually saw this model for sale at New York's Fifth Ave. Apple store. It immediately occured to me that an Apple designer would have none of those buttons if allowed to redesign the product. This is not criticism, it's only an observation, also prompted by the fact that, for example, when specifying the number of copies to be printed, I could NOT use the physical number pad but had to punch the number on the virtual keypad displayed on the touch screen.

The strong, almost violent shaking the printer brings itself to when not on a perfectly steady surface was a little disturbing to me. I have little doubt that, if improperly placed, the printer would quickly lose its printheads alignment and it might even experience other technical trouble.

Finally, I am happy that the HP Tech support solved my Vista-related problem but it would have been better if a printer that was manufatured only a few days before I received it had an updated CD or, at least, a flyer advising Vista users how to obtain the updated driver.

Considering all of the above, the this printer gets a strong, very positive 4 stars.

_______________________________________________________________________________


First impressions
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The HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-In-One Printer integrates print, copy, fax, scan document and photo-processing functions. HP supplies the printer itself, 'starter' ink cartridges, print heads and a phone wire. Ethernet or USB cables are not included. Thin manuals are provided for wireless and FAX setup. A quick installation poster is provided as well. The full 300+ manual can be downloaded from the HP site. The CD has drivers for the several supported Operating Systems and a number of additional applications such as OCR (optical character recognition).

Besides the Ethernet and USB ports, other physical IO include 2 telephone jacks in the back and slots for several types of memory cards in the front. The printer can be controlled from a PC or directly through a touch-screen color display and several buttons that generally duplicate options on the menus available through the touch-screen interface. To satisfy energy saving concerns, the printer goes to sleep if not used for a while but it can be reactivated by either touching the screen or one of the buttons or remotely from a networked workstation.


Software
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Drivers are available for the most recent flavors of Windows (Vista, XP, 2000) and for the Mac. It can be configured to either a local printer, connected to a PC via a USB cable or as a network printer, wired (Ethernet) or wireless (802.11g). Another option (not tested by me) would be for one PC to connect the printer via USB and then share it over the network. I experienced problems installing the Vista drivers but HP's tech support addressed it by replacing the CD-supplied drivers with a version available at HP's site.

While installing the drivers, HP will also install a number of applications and services. Of these the HP Solutions Center is the most versatile. It monitors the printer's status, including the ink levels and allows for configuring printing, scanning, faxing and other capabilities such as the forwarding of documents to network folders (tested) or to email (not tested yet). In addition, the home page can be used to control fax and scan operations, to convert a graphic image to text and to launch other applications such as the HP Photosmart Essential. I posted images of the Home and Configuration screens.

I did not fully test the Photosmart Essential application yet but I expect it to meet most basic photo management and printing needs and perhaps more.

If staying with the defaults at drivers installation, HP will install other, generally unneeded or unwelcome applications and services. One of them, the HP Customer Participation Program seems to be taking hundreds of megabytes but not doing anything useful from the end-user's point of view. I found Web discussions indicating that the 'program' was guilty of a memory leak. I removed it. Another unwelcome (to me) addition is the 'Yahoo Toolbar' to my Internet Explorer which I don't use anyway. This was done without asking for my permission. I had to use Vista's Control Panel to remove it after the fact.

Finally, one 'glitch' that occured after my initial installation from the supplied HP disk had a pop-up constantly telling me that the "HP product assistant" had to be installed or updated and asking me to provide a path. Providing the path for the requested file which I found burried 3 levels deep inside the supplied CD, was not helping and the cycle kept repeating endlessly. Some Web research revealed that this was a common problem and there were not many known solutions. I was able to find at the HP site a utility that tried to remove all HP drivers software from my PC but, 4 reboots later and after re-installing the drivers, the popup returned. A call to the HP support was answered and a technician was able to address the problem after taking over my computer, performing the 'cleanup' job that I tried myself and then installing an updated version of the drivers, downloaded from the HP site. The file name for Vista 32-bit is OJP8500vA909_Full_12.exe. I will post an image showing how to get to the drivers from the HP Solution Center. The HP suppport remediation completed after about 2 hours. The HP technician stated that 'only Vista' installations experience this problem. XP or Mac users should be safe.

Print
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Ink-jet printing outputs clean documents even on the 'normal' resolution. Printouts can be either color or black and white, one-sided or two-sided. Print quality can be set to anything form 'general everyday printing' to presentation, photo-quality or to ink-saving 'fast/economical printing'. The supplied paper tray can be loaded with up to 250 sheets up to 'legal' size. One-sided print speed is adequate but duplex printing can be quite slow.

The print operation appears to involved a great deal of physical movement inside the printer. If placed on anything but a very steady platform, the printer tends to swing quite violently from left to right and back. This had me concerned enough to move it from its initial location.

Copy
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The copy function allows for anything from one-sided/one-sided to two-sided/two-sided copies. As in the case of printing, two-sided copies are much slower to produce. The copy quality is good enough to make the copy almost indistinguishable from the original.

Fax
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I did not fully test the FAX capabilities but it's worth menioning that a lot of flexibility is provided, including the ability to direct the faxes to a network folder (which I did test with the scan function) rather than having them printed. It is also possible to block 'junk' faxes by maintaining a list of the offending phone numbers.

Scanner
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As a scanner, one can file the output to any of up to 10 preset network folders or if when the scanning process is initiated from a PC, output can be directed to a designated user's local folder. Scanned documents can be translated to text via the integrated OCR function. My experiment with a printed document produced with Microsoft Word returned 100% accuracy for content but, as expected, the formatting (headers, footers, margins) was not properly handled.

Photo processing
----------------
Photo processing can be controlled either at the console and the interactive touch screen interface does allow for some flexibility. Input is provided by inserting one of the supported memory devices containing pictures (MMC SD, CF, XD, MS/DUO or USB). Some crude cropping and sizing is available as well as color processing - sepia or gray scale prints can be produced and the colors can be manipulated to be darker or lighter. The more flexible solution and the one more likely to be used is via the provided HP Photosmart Essential application. Either through the touch screen interface or via HP Photosmart the printer can be configured to use photo paper from either HP or 'other'... Read more ›

46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Opinion, August 2, 2009

By	Punctilious (California) - See all my reviews

Recent reviews of the HP OfficeJet Pro 8500 Wireless were critical of noise, vibration, and ink usage. Here are what I have discovered since installing this printer.
1. On most surfaces the noise from the printer is minimal. Movement of the plastic gears on HP, Canon, and Epson are not silent. Perhaps newer versions of the 8500 by HP will address this minor concern.
2. The printer vibrates slightly compared to a laser printer, but not to the extent that it is objectionable. Perhaps HP can reduce or eliminate this in future models but probably by increasing the weight of the printer. Most users, I suggest, would not want a heavier printer.
3. Ink usage is part of the printer expense "game" but with HP you can continue to print in B&W even if any or all of the color cartridges are empty [Verified by HP Support] That may not be the case with some recent offerings from Epson or Canon, although I personally prefer Espon and Canon printers for color prints.
4. The ink cartridges are dated, but they will continue to function even after the "expiration" date. HP prints a date on the ink package, but it does not prevent the cartridge from working. As a matter of fact, ink will remain usable in a SEALED packet for an extended period without concern. This date code is not a rip-off by HP anymore than other companies who print a freshness date.
5. It is certainly less expensive to order color prints online than to purchase OEM ink and paper. For those with a digital camera who need a quick print now and then the quality of the HP is excellent.
6. Setup is easy. I would only add a note to the directions for Step 7 to input your choice of language and then follow the touch screen directions as the printer processes alignment. The directions are not clear on that one point, and you could wait for 30 minutes wondering why it hasn't competed alignment of the print heads. Check this out if you purchase this printer.
7. I am punctilious concerning most purchases and, at least in this case, I feel that this printer is an outstanding VALUE even when other offerings from Canon, Brother, and Epson may be less expensive. I have seen printers on sale for less than $50, but the thin plastic housing and the print quality reflect the price. We wanted Print / Copy / Scan / Fax, although we will seldom use the FAX function. (I will only connect the FAX as needed).
8. Follow the directions CAREFULLY and install precisely and you will enjoy owning this printer.

62 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jack of all Trades, Master of Most, March 11, 2009

By	G. Ware Cornell Jr. "anotherlawyer" (Weston FL) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

(What's this?)

The Bible cautions against serving two masters, a lesson of truth the product designers of HP have tried to avoid with some but not complete success.

First the good news, the printing function is outstanding. Copies in black and white or color are crisp and clear. HP claims that this printer's cost per copy for color copies is less than those of a color laser printer. Absent a cost/benefit study few working lawyers are prepared to do, I cannot confirm this, but it seems possible.

On the copy side, two-sided color copying is a great feature. Again the results are superb, but the scanning/printing time is slow.

The scan quality is very good, but scanning times are totally unacceptable. When you have a fifty page document feeder, the expectation is that the scan will be fairly quick. It is not. It is somewhat less than a page per minute but that means nearly 45 minutes to scan a document into a pdf. Scanning for OCR is faster, and the resulting test is quite accurate, but whether that is a function of the scanner or sophistication of the user's OCR software cannot stated with any certainty by this reviewer.

The Printer has fax functions, but they have not been reviewed since it has not been connected to a telephone line.

It has been tested as a wireless device, however, using the built-in 802.11g communicator. Wireless printing has many practical advantages, not the least of which is the elimination of ugly wiring. One other obvious advantage is that multiple computers can use the device as a network printer.

While it is not a perfect device, it represents great value for the money. It performs near the top of the class on most functions. That makes it a clear best buy in my book.