HP Officejet Pro 8500A All-in-One Printer

The HP Officejet Pro 8500A is a wireless all-in-one that features a touchscreen, a duplexer, and customizable apps that can be downloaded from HP. It takes a long time to set up, and once it is set up, it's a bit noisy. However, it has good print speeds even across a wireless network, and photo prints look excellent. A built-in (in this case, attachable) duplexer adds convenience; and a second paper tray is available for purchase. If HP's promotion ($100 off) represents the printer's normal price, it's a decent value; for full price (nearly $300), there's a lot of good competition.

Like the earlier version of the HP Officejet Pro 8500A (the HP Officjet Pro 8500 All-in-One Printer, you'll need to set aside some time to get this printer up and running. The print alignment phase took a good 20 minutes or more to complete; installing the software and then customizing the apps took another 20 minutes. Once it gets going, you'll notice it's a bit on the noisy side.

The large (2.36-inch) color display on the touchscreen is one of the great features of this class of Officejet printer. It's not as large as I'd like, given that the printer itself is not small; but that's because some of the touchscreen real estate is dedicated to a number pad that appears only when needed (say, when faxing or during the setup process). If you sign up on the HP Web site, you can use a dedicated e-mail address so you can print from anywhere. You can also customize the apps that come built in (such as Yahoo Daily Digest or HP Quick Forms), removing the ones you don't need and adding new ones (there are only 17 on the site for now). The customization does not seem to include being able to add new one-touch buttons for commonly used functions a you can with the SmartSolutions that come with the new line of Lexmark printers.

Once the printer is going, print speeds are very good, with a four-page Word document taking about 39 seconds to print, including 23 seconds for the first page. The printer has an attachable duplexer; duplex jobs include time for each page to dry out before the reverse side is printed, so times are longer (just over a minute for the same document to print). I couldn't find an easy adjustment for adjusting the ink density, so pages printed on both sides were oversaturated with ink in some cases. A large PDF printed over the wireless network took about seven seconds per page.

Despite some oversaturation, prints come out looking very good. Fonts, even at very small sizes, are sharp and clear; colors are nicely nuanced and true. The paper tray doesn't remove completely, so loading 4x6 photo paper meant having to push the paper to the back of the tray and hoping it wasn't being pushed too far. It wasn't; and since only the side guides needed to be adjusted, it was a simple process. The Officejet Pro 8500A handled photo printing with skill and speed. The 4x6 photos came out in 50 seconds and looked great, with rich colors and sharp detail.

Disclosure: Review samples were provided by the manufacturer. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.