HP Officejet Pro 8500 All-in-One Printer

Slow set-up time aside, the HP Officejet Pro 8500 is an all-in-one with a host of features such as wireless, one-button scanning options, fax, and copier that will make any home or small office more efficient at a price that's pretty reasonable (especially if you take advantage of HP sales).

Let's start with the (minor) complaints about the HP 8500. If you're in a rush to get it up and running, you're in for some frustration. The print alignment phase took a good 20 minutes or more to complete; installing the software took another 20 minutes. So, including unpacking the printer and tearing off all the tape and then installing two printheads (which was a bit tricky) and then four ink cartridges, you're looking at more than an hour of set-up time. However, setting up the built-in wireless (it's not available on all models) was a snap, thanks in part to the huge color touchscreen.

Set-up slowness aside, the printer is pretty quick. First page of a colorful PowerPoint presentation was out in 30 seconds (across a wireless network), with an average rate of 15 seconds per page. The colorful slides left the plain copy paper a bit limp but not completely soggy. For text-only printing, pages came out at about 8 seconds per page. Does text come out looking comparable to laser quality? Well, pretty close, anyway.

Like the Canon MFC-255CW, the Officejet Pro 8500 is an all-in-one printer that does a great job with photo printing. It printed a colorful 4x6 photo in 1:48, a bit slower than the MFC-255CW. Photo colors are rich, though the ink seemed less smudge-resistant than Canon's.

This version of the 8500 came with an attachable automatic duplexer, a welcome feature for small offices and anyone who's looking to save money on paper. On-board features such as a one-button scan-to-file (or e-mail) as well as a junk-fax blocker will certainly be advantages to those with small businesses.