Why do offices choose all-in-one (AIO) laser printers—that is, models
that can print, copy, scan, and fax—over their inkjet counterparts? The
two main reasons: Laser devices print faster, and they usually cost
less over the long haul to print black-and-white pages in volume. The
trade-off is that most inkjet AIOs print photographs much better than
laser multifunction machines, and, of course, most color-capable laser
devices cost considerably more than inkjets.
The rare device, though, can give you the best of both worlds:
speed, economical consumables, and excellent photograph printing. And we
just found that seldom-seen combination in one moderately priced AIO.
Enter HP's $299 OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus, one of the fastest,
least-expensive-to-use inkjets we've seen in quite some time. Not only
is it fast, but this model is loaded with features, such as a
duplex-capable automatic document feeder (ADF), which allows you to
scan, copy, and fax double-sided pages unassisted. It also has a
great-looking, big 4.3-inch color touch screen.
It's not often that we come across an AIO printer that we can recommend without reservations—that is, unless it's simply too much printer for your needs. (This model will, after all, set you back substantially more than a budget inkjet AIO; good budget models sell for well under $100.) If you need most of what this printer has to offer, though, it's a really good value. Aside from one small snafu during installation (which we'll get to in the "Setup & Paper Handling" section), we found little about this AIO not to like. It's a perfect fit for home and small offices that need the speed and economy of a color laser printer, as well as the ability to print nice-looking photographs that an inkjet printer offers.
The rare device, though, can give you the best of both worlds:
speed, economical consumables, and excellent photograph printing. And we
just found that seldom-seen combination in one moderately priced AIO.
Enter HP's $299 OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus, one of the fastest,
least-expensive-to-use inkjets we've seen in quite some time. Not only
is it fast, but this model is loaded with features, such as a
duplex-capable automatic document feeder (ADF), which allows you to
scan, copy, and fax double-sided pages unassisted. It also has a
great-looking, big 4.3-inch color touch screen.It's not often that we come across an AIO printer that we can recommend without reservations—that is, unless it's simply too much printer for your needs. (This model will, after all, set you back substantially more than a budget inkjet AIO; good budget models sell for well under $100.) If you need most of what this printer has to offer, though, it's a really good value. Aside from one small snafu during installation (which we'll get to in the "Setup & Paper Handling" section), we found little about this AIO not to like. It's a perfect fit for home and small offices that need the speed and economy of a color laser printer, as well as the ability to print nice-looking photographs that an inkjet printer offers.
Design and features
The Officejet Pro 8600 printer strips away the glossy veneer of the past and replaces it with a modern matte paint job that does its best to hide dust and fingerprints. It has a professional look that should easily fit into in any office or home decor, though at 11.8 inches tall, 19.4 inches wide, and 18.1 inches deep, you'll need to clear a sizable amount of space to fit its large chassis. Still, it's slightly smaller than the other two printers in the line, the Officejet Pro 8600 Plus and the beefy Officejet Pro 8600 Premium. All three models have two indented handles on the sides that make them easier to transport, though you won't want to move any of them on a daily basis.
The Officejet Pro 8600 printer strips away the glossy veneer of the past and replaces it with a modern matte paint job that does its best to hide dust and fingerprints. It has a professional look that should easily fit into in any office or home decor, though at 11.8 inches tall, 19.4 inches wide, and 18.1 inches deep, you'll need to clear a sizable amount of space to fit its large chassis. Still, it's slightly smaller than the other two printers in the line, the Officejet Pro 8600 Plus and the beefy Officejet Pro 8600 Premium. All three models have two indented handles on the sides that make them easier to transport, though you won't want to move any of them on a daily basis.
A single 250-sheet input tray protrudes 4 inches out of the front of
the Officejet and a 50-page automatic document feeder (ADF) resides on
top. You won't find a manual feed tray in the center console like you
would on a laser printer, which you might find irritating if you print
on irregular media like heavy cardstock or nonstandard envelope sizes.
If that's important to you, I recommend the HP LaserJet Pro 100 Color MFP, a capable HP laser printer with similar all-in-one scanner, copier, and printer functionality.
If the Pro 8600's paper input capacity is insufficient, the Premium
model includes an extra 250-sheet paper tray, an additional set of ink
cartridges worth $60, and a 50-sheet pack of HP Premium Glossy Brochure
paper, priced for $14 in Hewlett-Packard's online retail store. By
upgrading to the step-up Premium package, you'll save about $50 on your
overall cost of consumables, and I recommend taking advantage of these
savings up front if you plan to print lots of photos or graphic
documents.
If you're shopping on a budget and don't need a 4.3-inch display, the
Officejet Pro 8600 costs $100 less than the Premium model thanks to its
smaller 2.65-inch screen. The onscreen interface is the same, however,
and you'll still get access to light photo edits, ePrint, and the
standard print, copy, scan, and fax functions. Typing characters on the
QWERTY keyboard resulted in more goofs on the smaller screen, but I
couldn't tell the difference after some practice and precision tapping.
This updated screen also has less mushy play between the
outward-facing screen and the hard registration pad below it, so you're
less likely to mistakenly press a button. The screen still isn't
perfect--some of the onscreen features required me to repeatedly push
the corresponding virtual icon until the action finally registered. With
no way to recalibrate the screen in the settings page, you're in for a
frustrating experience until the printer gets what you're trying to do.
In addition to using a direct USB connection (like most vendors, HP
does not include a USB cable with the printer), you can set up the
Officejet Pro 8600 on your network via Ethernet or Wi-Fi. I tested the
Wi-Fi connection and found the process was easy: using the printer's
touch screen, I navigated through a few setup screens to find our
network, quickly entered its password using the virtual QWERTY keyboard,
and established a connection within a minute. Macs and PCs alike on our
network were able to see the printer without any additional software
being installed.
Once you connect the printer to a wireless network, you can use HP's
AirPrint feature to print from any iOS device without an additional
application. Using AirPrint, you can print out a photo from your iPhoto
library by simply choosing the connected printer and hitting Print. You
can't adjust any print properties, however; and our
Hipstamatic
test photo printed with a portion missing on both letter-size paper and 4x6-inch photo paper.
In addition to AirPrint, the Officejet Pro 8500A features HP's ePrint
technology, which enables you to send jobs from any connected device to
the printer using a uniquely assigned e-mail address. You can find this
address using the control panel (Wireless > Web Services >
Display Email). It's a convenient feature, to be sure, but it comes with
a few restrictions. For one, the printer must be on and also connected
to your network. Also, it can't print Web pages, although you can simply
copy and paste the text into a document as a workaround.
Along with the standard Copy, Fax, and Scan options listed on the
home screen of the Officejet Pro's control panel, you get a fourth icon
labeled Apps. Our test unit came preloaded with 21 apps that let you
print new pages from outlets like the Financial Times, Yahoo, Reuters,
and USA Today. Others from DreamWorks, Nickelodeon, and Disney let you
print coloring pages, paper airplane templates, and other craft
materials. You can install additional free apps, but you must do so from
HP's ePrint Center Web site after creating an account.
The standard flat-bed scanner/copier measures 8.5x14 inches, meaning
it can scan or copy letter- and legal-size documents. With its 4,800-dpi
resolution, scanned and copied documents look crisp and sharp, and you
can send scans to a PC, a memory card, a network folder, or an e-mail
program. Another downgrade from the Pro model, however, is that the base
version can't flip over double-sided originals since the ADF is
incapable of duplexing. Granted this is a minor irritation unless your
business requires large-volume scanning.
The 8600 is a tad slower than the 8600 Plus, but it's no less impressive given the lower price. On our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing), I clocked it at 5.7 effective pages per minute (ppm), making it nearly tied with the 8600 Plus at 5.9 ppm.
In reviewing the 8600 Plus, I noted that any number of lasers cost
more yet are slower than it; that statement applies even more to the
less expensive 8600. The Editors' Choice Dell 1355cnw Multifunction Color Printer
($419.99 direct, 4 stars), for example, managed only 4.5 ppm. Note too
that the 8600 also did well on photo speed, averaging 54 seconds for a 4
by 6.
The printer's output quality, unfortunately, is a mixed bag. Text is
above par for an inkjet, graphic output is below par, and photos barely
qualify as being up to par. Text is easily good enough for most business
needs. Also very much worth mention is that it's water resistant, at
least on ColorLok paper. In my tests, it smudged only a little when I
rubbed it with a wet tissue.
Graphics quality is good enough for any internal business use.
However most of the graphics in our testing showed obvious banding in
the default mode. I'd hesitate to hand the output to an important client
or customer who I was trying to impress with a sense of my
professionalism.
Photos were also easily good enough for almost any business need, but
photos on photo paper were at the low end of what you might expect from
drugstore prints. The biggest problem I saw was with shadow detail
(details in dark areas), which didn't show very well.
Setup & Paper Handling
The OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus is the first printer we've seen where installing the automatic duplexer was part of the setup process. At first, while taking it out of the box, we thought the duplexer unit might be a misplaced laser-toner cartridge or perhaps a laser developer or drum kit. After a quick glance at the Start Here guide, though, it was apparent what it was and where to put it—in the back of the unit, as shown in the image below.
The automatic duplexer is a separate unit you install during setup.
Aside
from that brief moment of confusion, setup was easy, except that we had
a hard time getting the printer to accept English as the default
language. We kept touching the English entry on the control panel, but
nothing happened. To make matters worse, it worked perfectly when we
chose any other language, such as Japanese or Korean (which didn't help
us much). Finally, though, selecting English worked, and we went on to
complete the setup and installation.
During the setup process,
short movies on the control panel walked us through loading the ink
cartridges, configuring the wireless connection, filling the paper tray,
installing the duplexer. The movies thoroughly and clearly demonstrated
each step of the process. Within just a few minutes, we were printing,
copying, scanning, and faxing, both from a networked PC and straight
from the control panel.
The sturdy 250-sheet input drawer slides in beneath the output bed.
The
OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus's sturdily constructed 250-sheet input drawer,
shown in the image above, pulls out from the bottom of the printer, and
the lid for the drawer serves as the output tray, which is actually a
full-size output bed that supports your printed sheets and keeps them
from curling. Unfortunately, this model doesn't have an "override" or
specialty-media slot—a common feature on printers in this price
range—for printing the occasional envelope, form, or photograph without
having to empty the tray and reconfigure it. However, as shown in the
image below, you can buy an additional ($79.99) 250-sheet input drawer.
This not only lets you print longer without having to replenish the
paper, but you can also load different types of paper in each drawer, so
that you don't have to take the printer out of service each time
somebody on the team needs to print on another type of media.
An optional second paper tray allows you to expand the capacity of the printer by 250 sheets.
Overall, we ran hundreds of document pages, including several double-sided multipage documents through the ADF, and everything worked perfectly. No jams or misfeeds arose during our tests.
The Officejet Pro 8600 dropped away from its linemates in the output
speed tests, most noticeably in the color graphics test where it printed
more than a full page per minute slower than the Pro model. Despite the
improved engine, the
Epson WorkForce 840
was still able to beat both HP printers in the
presentation and plain black-text speed tests, albeit only marginally.
I'm still impressed with the overall speed results of the Officejet Pro
8600 and the drop is small enough that you won't notice the comparison
unless the job is over 20 pages.
Printing Performance
For example, the OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus printed the test document in our 20-page Text-Document Test
in Best mode in 4 minutes and 8 seconds (4:08), and the first page out
in 21.6 seconds. ("First page out" is a subset test we run that measures
the time between when the printer starts receiving data and the first
page lands on the output tray.) By comparison, the Brother model printed
all 20 pages in 4:51 and the first page out in 18.5 seconds. Among all
the inkjet AIOs we've tested over the past year or so—aside from the
$299.99 Epson Artisan 837$289.96 at Amazon,
a photo-centric printer—these two models were the only ones that
printed all 20 pages in under 5 minutes, with most other models taking 8
minutes or, in some cases, substantially longer. In addition, the
OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus printed all 20 pages in Normal mode in 1:07, and
the first page out in 10.3 seconds, versus the MFC-J6710DW's respective
times of 1:50 and 10.1 seconds. That 1:07 print time in Normal mode
from the HP printer was one of the best we've seen on this test.
While not a photo-centric printer, the OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus printed great-looking photographs at highly respectable speeds, especially compared to the MFC-J6710DW. In our Photo-Printing Test, the HP model turned in times of 34.8 in Normal mode and 59.6 in Best mode when printing our 4x6-inch test photo. The Brother model, on the other hand, took 1:15 in Normal mode and 2:29 in Best mode with the same file. With our larger 8.5x11-inch test photo, the MFC-J6710DW's times of 2:26 in Normal mode and 5:28 in Best mode also fell far behind the OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus's scores (1:24 and 2:32, respectively). We should also add that getting optimal photos from Brother's high-volume business printer required some tweaking of the driver settings, while it did not on this OfficeJet.
The 50-page automatic document feeder (ADF) supports
automatic duplexing—it scans both sides of multipage documents without
assistance.
Scanning & Copying Performance
Unlike many AIOs we've tested, the OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus performed well on both our Scanning Performance Test and Copy Performance Test,
even while copying our images of people. (Many AIOs, including the
MFC-J6710DW, just can't get skin tones right.) As for the scan and copy
times, compared to the Brother model, the OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus's
times were quite good. For instance, the HP model's scan time of 15.5
seconds with our monochrome text document beat the MFC-J6710's time of
16.5 seconds by a whopping one second. Its scan time of 13.2 seconds on
our 8.5x11-inch photograph, however, was more than twice as fast as the
Brother model's 30.1 seconds. Compared to inkjet all-in-ones as a whole
in its price range, though, the OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus's scan times
were just about average.
On the flip side, the OfficeJet Pro 8600
Plus was considerably faster than the Brother machine, and its
competition, with our Copy Performance Test documents. It copied our
one-page monochrome text document in 13.2 seconds, our one-page
text-and-image color document in 15.6 seconds, and our 8.5x11-inch photo
in 21.4 seconds. On the first two tests, the MFC-J6710DW copied these
two documents more than twice as slowly. On the color-photograph test,
the Brother machine was 8 seconds behind the OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus.
Overall,
the OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus is a great copier/scanner for the price,
especially when you factor in the 50-page duplexing ADF.
Service and support
HP backs the Officejet Pro 8600 with a standard one-year warranty that includes 24-7 toll-free phone support and live Webchat during weekdays. HP's Web site also contains downloadable drivers, software, and manuals; e-mail tech support; FAQs; and a troubleshooting guide. You can return the product within 21 days of delivery.
Conclusion
It's not often that we get to rave about an inkjet
AIO—after all, the market is flooded with highly competent,
value-packed models. The OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus, though, is special.
It's fast, it prints and reproduces good-looking documents, and it
provides a wealth of convenience and productivity features for the
price. Even the onboard processor displays file lists and large images
faster than most competing machines can.
Unless your home or small
office just doesn't need this much printer, we can't think of any
reason not to recommend it. If your office needs speed, volume, and
no-nonsense performance, not to mention a terrific per-page operational
cost, this workhorse should top your list.
The Good The HP Officejet Pro 8600 e-All-in-One
is ready for high-volume printing needs with an ample 250-sheet paper
input capacity, autoduplexing, cloud printing, and a host of versatile
connectivity options.
The Bad The
autodocument feeder can't duplex double-sided originals for scanning and
the smaller touch screen requires more patience to operate than the
8600 Plus and 8600 Premium.
The Bottom Line The
Officejet Pro 8600 anchors HP's flagship printing line with capable
performance, ample connectivity options, and enough cloud-printing tools
to ensure its long-term usefulness.
ComputerShopper HP OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus Review and Ratings (Editor Rating 4.5/5) - January 24, 2012
PCMag HP Officejet Pro 8600 e-All-in-One
CNET HP Officejet Pro 8600 e-All-in-One (CNET Editor Rating 4.5/5, Average User Rating 2/5) - March 19, 2012
Where to Buy
$223.00 (sale $177.00) Amazon HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus N911G Multifunction Printer (CM750A#B1H) - *free shipping
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