The (sometimes) Wireless Officejet 6500

Author's Rating:

Pros: Prints nicely, good scans, great copier, easy to use.

Cons: Wireless never worked for us, warranty issues with HP.

The Bottom Line: 
I recommend with one reservation--it works wirelessly for most, but it doesn't for us.  Otherwise, it's terrific, but if you need wireless, you may wind up sending it back.

Author's Review
Let me start by saying that I loved my old HP Photosmart printer.  It was big, bulky, scanned like a dream, copied smoothly, faxed like nobody’s business, and printed like a workhorse.  I thought it was the best printer I’d ever had, and you know what?  I think I was right.  It was the best.  And then, one sad day, it stopped talking to my computer.  Or my computer stopped talking to it.  Or both.  Sometimes we could fool it, sometimes we could cajole and reset and all that fun stuff, but really?  It was tired of being a part of our home network.  So we sent it along to live at a new home and replaced it with an HP Officejet 6500 Wireless.

Like the Photosmart, the Officejet 6500 is big.  Unlike the Photosmart, it’s also mostly black, and lacks the cool adjustable color LCD screen with interactive menus.  Instead, it has a small (two line) backlit monochrome LCD display that delivers such simplistic messages as “paper jam,” and “please wait,” in addition to showing ink levels and scan commands/destinations.  This display gives what should be a new and better printer a decidedly old-fashioned, clunky feel. 

Clunky display aside, the Officejet 6500 Wireless looks a lot like many other printers, including the Photosmart.  Being an all-in-one, it offers Fax, Copy, Scan, and Printer.  Being wireless, it’s supposed to offer a life without that jumble of cables.

Wireless
 
Might as well get it out of the way right from the start—this printer has never operated wirelessly for us.  Our computer is wireless, our wifi merrily keeps our cell phones and tablets going throughout the house, but this printer has never worked wirelessly.  Call after call to HPs overseas customer service reps have resulted in nothing but frustration and failure.  Ultimately, it was pinned on us—something about OUR wireless, something about OUR set-up must be the problem.  While I’m certain that’s not the case (the printer is 15 feet from our wireless router, and has been set up as close as four feet just to test), the fact is, that’s HP’s position.  So, for us, this isn’t a wireless printer at all.  However, that doesn’t keep the pretty, bright blue “wireless” light from glowing malevolently every time we power up.
 
Fax
 
On the fax front, I confess I’ve only used it twice.  Because of where our printer/computer set-up is, we have to drag a phone line halfway across the house to reach the machine.  Sadly, the landlord won’t allow us to sink a new extension in the wall behind the computer desk.  We asked.  Considering my limited experience, I can say that the two faxes we did send went off without a hitch.  The Officejet 6500 has memory or a “buffer,” if you will, that holds onto up to 100 pages of faxes in case of power failure or other disaster.  Up to 100 speed fax numbers can be stored, and the fax is capable of full color as well as monochrome.  I can’t comment on speed of faxing because my experience is limited.

Copy
 
The HP Officejet 6500 Wireless copying function is a breeze to use and produces excellent copies in batches of up to 35 pages at a time with the automatic document feeder.   Print quality of copies is good, though not scanner-bed good.  Copying is accomplished by loading the paper/documents into the copy feed, then pushing the copy button.  Select quality (draft, good, and best), then hit the appropriate start copy button (black or color).  The copy prints while the original is spat back out the top.  One caveat—copy is slow.  Also, using the scanner bed rather than the copier feed when hitting the “copy” button results in an automatic “scan and print.”  In addition to straight across copying, copies can also be resized—from 25% to 400% of original size.

Scan
 
Scanning with the Officejet 6500 is pretty straightforward.  Simply place the paper/photo/flat thing on the standard-sized flat-bed scanner and hit the “scan” button.  This brings up the options of scanning to DOC or PDF, Email DOC or PDF, Save as PIC-JPEG, Email PIC-JPEG, or Save as Text.  By using the arrow buttons to select and then pushing OK to start the scan, you’re in business.   I have my images set to scan directly to Adobe Photoshop, which is most convenient for me.  Scan quality is quite good—as good as anything I’ve had before, including my old Photosmart set up.  While the scanner is a bit slow, it’s also not appreciably slower than any other scanner I’ve had, and quicker than the old fashioned flat bed Lexmarks I used to truck in.  According to HP, scan resolution is up to 2400-dpi optical, with a maximum scan size of 8.5" x 11.7"

Printer
 
Before I say anything else, I’m going to say this:  duplex printing.  First time in my life I’ve had automatic double-sided printing, and oh, my goodness.  I am so happy.  Yes, it’s slow, but it saves on hassle and saves on paper, and it’s just so cool.  The duplex gadget does make the printer bulkier, but it’s worth it to me. 

Okay, now to printing.  I want to start by saying that I’ve had this printer since June of 2010, and I’ve used it frequently, though not in any sense heavily.  In other words, it spits out a few photos now and then, and I use it to print perhaps 30-40 sheets per week for home schooling assignments.  Sometimes I’ll use it to print receipts from online transactions and the occasional recipe for our goodies drawer.  In the almost nine months I’ve had this printer, it has hung me up with a paper jam exactly once.  While we had problems with paper loading (the old “no paper in tray” when the tray is full gag), we’ve had no such issues for months now, since we stopped loading the tray as heavily as specs say we can (up to 250 sheets).  The printer does a lovely job of printing envelopes (but only nice envelopes—the really cheap, 3 bucks-for-30 Christmas card envelopes do not load or print), and text is crisp and clean.  Photos print wonderfully, though the ink is not as vivid as the old Photosmart’s Vivera inks.   This printer can handle paper sizes from 3”x4” to 8.5”x30”. 

Speed-wise, HP promises “up to” 32 pages per minute black and white, and 31 pages per minute color.  Perhaps that’s possible when the color is merely a bit of text, but heavy color?   Photos?  Color intensive graphs?  The operative words are “up to,” because no way this printer spits out 31 pages of highly colorful prints per minute.  No way. 

A last note on printing--this machine is really quite loud.  While not as noisy as our old "launch broken shards of plastic out the front while printing" printer, it's certainly markedly louder than our old Photosmart. 

Memory Storage Devices
 
Scans can be sent directly to memory sticks or SD cards, the slots for which are on the front of the machine.  Storage devices from digital cameras can be inserted and prints can be made directly from them. 

Problems
 
The lack of wireless functioning aside (and that’s a BIG one—what if we’d wanted to print from another room?  We didn’t, but what if we had?  This printer would be worthless to us), I’ve only had two major complaints, only one of which has anything to do with the printer’s functionality:

1) A few weeks back, the printer tried to go the same route as our old Photosmart—it stopped communicating with our printer.  The front panel went dead (no lights, buttons unresponsive), and the only way to “fix” it was to unplug it and allow it to reset.  This happened a half-dozen times in the space of two weeks.  Not good.  A search online found others with the same complaint, and they recommended resetting to factory settings by holding down two buttons (pound and 6) on the number pad simultaneously while powering up.  That was over three weeks ago, and we’ve had no such problems since.

2) During our recent problems, I thought to seek advice from HP under our warranty coverage.  Except HP told me that my warranty had expired months ago.  Luckily, Amazon keeps a record of when purchases are made, and I was able to email a copy of the purchase order to HP.  They reset our warranty, but I’m left wondering how many people don’t still have their proof of purchase hanging around?  Seems trying to knock six months off a one year warranty is a bit outrageous.

In all, I’m happy enough with my HP Officejet 6500 Wireless.  Well, except for the wireless part.  From what I’ve seen, many people are merrily using this printer wirelessly.  We’re not.  Otherwise, I’ve found this a good, reliable, capable printer/copier/scanner/fax.  Perhaps not as good as the old, mythic Photosmart, but it’s solid, and the included duplexer certainly takes the sting off the lack of wireless capability.  Knock the wireless and warranty issues off the table, and I’d rate this baby a five star.  As it is, I’ll give it four, wishing for a three-and-a-half option.