If you are considering investing in an HP Officejet 6500 All-in-One (printer, fax, copier, scanner) then check out this review to find out whether it is worth buying.
The printer market seems to have undergone a lot of changes in the last few years. The revolution in photography and home photo printing coupled with the rising number of people operating businesses from home has led to greater demands in the functionality stakes. It seems there is no such thing as “just a printer” anymore, and the HP Officejet 6500 is part of this trend.
This is an all-in-one device suitable for a home office. It works as a printer, a fax machine, a photo copier and a scanner. How well does it perform? Well, advertised top speeds for printing are 32 pages per minute for black and 31 pages per minute for color.
How HP reached those figures is tough to work out because in reality the speeds are closer to 11 pages per minute for black and 3 pages per minute for color. That will still be fast enough for most people but it is quite a distance from their claims. The printer is also capable of printing photographs at a decent level of quality.
As a fax machine this device has a 100 page memory and it can store up to 100 speed dial numbers. When it comes to copying you can print between 25% and 400% of the original size. For scanning the maximum resolution is 2400 dpi and the maximum scan size is 8.5 x 11.7 inches. It can handle faxes, copies and scans in color if you so desire.
Additional features include a 250 sheet paper tray, an automatic document feeder and support for automatic double sided printing. It also has support for wireless on the 802.11g standard although there is a wired version as well. It packs 32 MB of internal memory and supports various memory card formats. To round off, there is a text LCD which shows two lines for reviewing print jobs and other bits and pieces.
The HP Officejet 6500 is designed to be easy to use. It works with PC or Mac and there is software provided. Unfortunately the software is surprisingly sizable and has to be installed on every machine that wants access to the printer. With the software installed, print jobs are easy to set up and you’re unlikely to have any problems there. In addition to basic paper it can handle cards, labels, envelopes and of course photo paper. You can print across the network or direct from a memory card.
The other functions aren’t quite as straightforward as the printing. On the plus side there is a 35 page automatic document feeder for queuing up fax, scan or photocopy jobs. The lack of a color LCD to review jobs is a bit of a disappointment but it helps to keep the price down and you can set up jobs without ever going near the actual printer using the software provided. If you have moderate office needs then it should do the trick. For people with a heavy workload who need a real workhorse machine this might not be the best option. The actual operation is noisy and quite slow.