An impressive piece of hardware recently found its way into our eager hands: the HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus multifunction inkjet printer. Unfortunately for HP, we had just finished our review of the Lexmark OfficeEdge Pro5500 when it arrived — the fastest, smoothest, and most expensive inkjet we’d ever tested.
Can the Pro 8600 Plus go toe-to-toe with rival Lexmark’s versatile champ? Not quite, but it comes close, and its significantly lower price point makes it a compelling option for small-business owners with big printing needs.
So Easy a Child Could Do It
Setting up the Pro 8600 Plus is simple as simple can be. The colorful 4- by 3-inch LCD touchscreen walks you through the entire process with the help of animation, and we were up and running on our wireless network in about 10 minutes. The CD containing the printer’s software automatically detected the network settings from our PC, eliminating the hassles that sometimes come with manual setup. Direct USB and Ethernet connections are also available, and the front of the printer features various memory-card slots. (You can also skip the PC-connectivity options and use the Pro 8600 Plus as a standalone copier, scanner, and fax machine.)
We opted to use Wi-Fi vs. USB connectivity so we’d have access to the bevy of features available only when the Pro 8600 Plus is connected to a network. Registering your printer at HP’s ePrintCenter website gives it a unique email address; if you forward a common-format file type (such as Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, or PDFs) to the email address, it’ll spit out the paperwork on your connected printer. It’s an amazing feature that could really come in handy for road warriors.
HP’s AirPrint feature lets you print directly from iOS devices, and a number of web apps are available straight from the touchscreen. Most are trivial — giving users the ability to print out news or Sudoku puzzles — but some could prove very useful, such as printable form templates from HP and the ability to access Box’s cloud-based storage and Google Docs.
Brass Tacks and Printing Speeds
Extras aside, when it comes down to it, most small businesses buy printers for speed and value. The Pro 8600 Plus delivers both in spades.
Using the same test files we used for our Lexmark OfficeEdge Pro5500 evaluation, the Pro 8600 Plus spat out papers at speeds just a hair slower than the Lexmark’s blistering pace. Straight black-and-white text documents printed at about 17 pages per minute, while documents that integrated lots of colorful images, borders, and graphs printed at a brisk 8.5 ppm. That’s extremely fast for an inkjet. Obviously, more intricate pages (with multiple columns and pictures) printed at a slightly slower rate, and printing two-sided duplex pages took about twice as long. In all cases, the output looked great, with text remaining crisp even when we used a miniscule six-point font.
Full-page color images printed and scanned at about 2 ppm. For the most part, printed images looked very good, but we noticed some slight banding in areas with lots of color. Additionally, some graininess could be spotted, especially in busier or finely detailed pictures. Overall, however, the image quality was excellent for standard business uses.
A Scanner Slowly
Scan speeds are a notorious choke point for multifunction printers. Although the Lexmark printer managed to scan pages nearly as fast as it printed them, the HP Pro 8600 Plus didn’t. Papers scanned as PDFs processed at about 3.5 ppm, and papers saved as editable documents processed at about 2.5 ppm. The I.R.I.S. optical character-recognition technology used to create those editable documents was spot on, though; we never saw a single error in scanned text, although formatting issues arose with embedded pictures. That’s the norm with OCR, however, and those scan speeds are fairly average for an inkjet.
Copying hit roughly 10 ppm speeds, depending on the formatting and colors involved. Duplex copying is supported: The feed tray, which holds 50 sheets of paper, can read both sides of a two-sided paper and spit out a two-sided copy. Duplex copying took a good deal longer than straightforward copying, however. The main paper tray holds 250 sheets.
The touchscreen makes navigating the options a breeze, although it was a bit finicky, and we often had to push on it really hard to get the screen to register our inputs.
Strong Performer at a Strong Price
The Lexmark OfficeEdge Pro5500 can now be found online for around $300, but you can find the HP Pro 8600 Plus for as cheap as $200. The ink costs for the printers are about the same.
So, does the HP Pro 8600 Plus unseat the Lexmark OfficeEdge Pro5500 as the best of the best? It depends on your budget and usage needs. Both printers clearly outshine most inkjet competitors and deliver laser printer-esque speeds. In terms of raw performance, the Lexmark printer still holds the crown, but if you don’t mind putting up with slower scan speeds in exchange for cost savings, the HP Pro 8600 Plus is a versatile performer that we think would be a excellent choice for any small business.
Like everybody else: looked long and hard deciding on a replacement all-in-one. It’s really nice to print at home those special shots with trust that a printer company can provide you with the best machine for the price. After choosing OfficeEdge Pro5500 I justified by spending the extra Bucks that I would have a top of the line printer, office grade at HOME. After all 500.00 asking price should be the right one? First off it was a Bastard to setup the wireless on my home network. Then after the printer goes to sleep, to wake up takes about three to five minutes. The cartridges ran out the other day so I do the usual and refill the empty cartridges with fresh new ink. Cost is about $2.75 for all three color cartridges, way better than $135.00 dollars buying whole new cartridges and filling up the land fills with more plastics. All right that was easy we’re ready to go! Except for a secret hidden just like a line of shit in the tail of a shrimp, and guess what, the printer still reports low ink. There is a chip on the cartridge that tells the printer ink is still low. Plus there is no way to reset the chip,,.. It’s a paper counter that counts how many pages have gone thru the printer, therefore it knows nothing about how much ink there really is left and for all practical purpose the cartridges were about half full before I refilled them. So not only was it a Bastard to setup and go wireless now with this new unit after lexmark took a dump calling it the Pro5500 is the next biggest pile of camel dung that has ever been passed to the public platter. How would you Like buying a car and after it runs out of gas the light tells you to return to the dealer to refuel, and while you’re there we will reset the timer for an astronomical fee so you can drive your car home. Otherwise the engine will not start. Ink is not a part that can be patented or be used as a monopoly into a patented that keeps me from using a/my machine I have paid for in full. I did not sign a lease nor purchased a lease agreement for my printer. Lexmark is trying to be the micro controlling freak removing the freedom of people’s choice and rights by trying to monopolize on a ink refill. The idea using ink under a patented product idea is lexmark simply trying to corner ink as their invention. Worst type situation/example of communism. If you did not want me to refill my printer with my own ink you should have at least let me know before the purchase of your product because now that everybody is slowly learning this you may find several others buying more consumer friendly printers from the freedom world, that allows us to refill our cartridges in our own printer..The community feels you lexmark should go back too being professional printer builders and leave the penny annie ink to the other guys. Or be forced to lay off more employees.
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