Great Home Office Wireless Upgrade

Author's Rating:

Pros: Wireless, quality of print, quick button features, cost, speed, all-in-one

Cons: Noise, some hidden menus, slightly bulky duplex attachment

The Bottom Line: 
This printer is cost-effective, good quality, and will work well for medium load daily printing.

Author's Review
The main reason I upgraded from my other HP All-in-one printer was simply because I needed a wireless printer to fit in the shelves/cabinet in my office.  I researched for one that was an affordable price and had the features I wanted.

The "long" set-up time?
First of all, I'd like to say my set up time with this printer was about 45 minutes but I may have been more meticulous with the set up as I read from other reviews what a pain it has been.  I found the set up no more difficult than setting up some of the Adobe software suites on my computer.  I would just advise people to be patient and at least look at the instructions once.  My only hold up was during the cartridge alignment, I didn't realize the cartridges had to be pressed down slightly which caused the most horrendous noise since I didn't do so (no harm done thankfully).

Good - Easy to Use Control Panel
The control panel is not perfect but I am glad it's on the front side instead of the top, like some other printers.  I have mine hidden away in a cabinet and had a hard time reading the controls of my previous one. Additionally, the lit up control screen allows me to read it without a direct light above it. The grouping of the buttons is also quite easy to understand however, the cycling of some menus on the panel can be a bit confusing where some options are hidden.

Fax
I particularly appreciate a few quick buttons, such as the fax answer on/off, the redial and the multi-page feed.  My husband had the worst time turning off our previous printer when it was in fax mode because the option was buried under one of the menus and you had to press four buttons to turn it off.

Scanner
I really like that this scanner has an option that automatically scans into a PDF.  I constantly need to do that for work and it has saved me a ton of time for conversion.  I still need to merge all the PDFs into one document but I can live with that.

Printer
Most documents that I print are less than 10 pages long so I never need super speed printing but I have noticed that a couple times I thought something was wrong because all I hear is the printer spitting out a page of paper.  To my surprise, the printing was already completed.  The quality of the print out is also very good and clear.  It's still not like a laserprinter but I can hardly complain.

Copier
My husband had to copy a few color documents on the machine and I think that the quality is comparable to a real color copier but a lot cheaper.  It picked up details such as line work and photographs without a problem.

Noise
Ok, this printer is a bit noisy, especially "after" a print job (it's quiet during the print).  I'm not sure if it's cleaning the cartridges or aligning them but there's a few seconds of the machine settling down.  As I said, I put it in a cabinet so the noise almost echo's in it's hollow shelving area.

Duplex Printing
Unfortunately I have not tested this feature; the review here is based on my living experiences with the machine and I simply never needed this feature in my line of work.  The duplex attachment was a bit bigger than I expected and the machine will not work without it (the paper will just shoot out the back without the attachment and cause printer errors even if you're printing one side.) I was momentarily worried that I would have to return the printer because I didn't account for the space needed in the back for the duplex attachment.

Wireless
I LOVE the wireless feature.  I can print anywhere in the house and actually use my laptop to work without being tied down because of printing.  As a mother of a young child this has also been a life saver since my boy occasionally panics when I'm not in eye sight.

Overall, I'm very happy with the HP Officejet 6500 Wireless.  It's been very helpful for daily use in my home office.