By May 10, 2010

HP Officejet Pro 8000 review

10641-277hpofficejetpro8000600 As I tend to run the office side of the tracyandmatt operation I’m frequently printing documents, postage label etc. and for the past few years we’ve used an HP Colour Laserjet printer for the day-to-day tasks. The issue with that is it can take quite a while to turn on and warm up and the first page out of the printer can take 5 minutes or more. It’s also a beast of a printer sitting here in the office.

Laserjet printers are great for speed and quality but the print cartridges can work out to be quite pricy so when our required two new colour cartridges the other week it was going to be an expensive purchase. However the folks over at IT247.com have impeccable timing and contacted Matt that very week and offered to send us the HP Officejet Pro 8000 to review.

Having set up the printer and used it now for a few weeks it’s time to tell you what I think of it.

 

What’s in the box?

  • Printer
  • Duplex unit
  • USB Cable
  • Power cable
  • Introductory colour ink x3
  • Standard Black Ink
  • Print heads x2
  • Set up guide
  • Getting started and trouble shooting guide
  • 50 sheets A4 Paper
  • Driver software CD

 

HP Officejet Pro 8000 Specification:

Print speed black (draft, letter)
Up to 35 ppm
Print speed color (draft, letter)
Up to 34 ppm
Print speed, laser comparable, black
Up to 15 ppm
Print speed, laser comparable, color
Up to 11 ppm
Print resolution, black
Up to 1200 x 1200 dpi
Print resolution, color
Up to 4800 x 1200 dpi
Monthly duty cycle
Up to 15,000 pages
Ink cartridges
4 (1 each black, cyan, magenta, yellow)
Compatible cartridges
HP 940 Black Officejet Ink Cartridge (~1000 pages); HP 940 Cyan Officejet Ink Cartridge; HP 940 Magenta Officejet Ink Cartridge; HP 940 Yellow Officejet Ink Cartridge: composite yield (~900 pages); HP 940XL Black Officejet Ink Cartridge (~2200 pages); HP 940XL Cyan Officejet Ink Cartridge; HP 940XL Magenta Officejet Ink Cartridge; HP 940XL Yellow Officejet Ink Cartridge: composite yield (~1400 pages). [Average based on ISO/IEC 24711 or HP testing methodology and continuous printing. Actual yield varies considerably based on content of printed pages and other factors. Some ink from included cartridge is used to start up the printer. For details see http://www.hp.com/go/learnaboutsupplies]
Processor speed
384 MHz
Memory, standard
32 MB
Print languages, standard
HP PCL 3 GUI; HP PCL 3 Enhanced
Printer page yield
View additional yield information
Paper handling
Paper handling standard,input
250-sheet input tray
Paper handling standard,output
150-sheet output tray
Duplex printing (printing on both sides of paper)
Automatic (standard)
Borderless Printing
Yes (up to 8.5 x 11 in, 210 x 297 mm)
Media types
Paper (brochure, inkjet, plain); photo; envelopes; cards (index); transparencies
Media sizes, standard
Letter; legal; statement; executive; 3 x 5 in; 4 x 6 in; 5 x 7 in; 5 x 8 in; 4 x 10 in; 4 x 11 in; 4 x 12 in; 8 x 10 in; envelopes (No. 10, Monarch, DL)
Media sizes, custom
3 x 5 to 8.5 x 14 in
Media weight, recommended
20 to 24 lb
Connectivity
Connectivity, standard
1 USB 2.0; 1 Ethernet
Connectivity, optional
HP Jetdirect Ethernet external Print Server; HP Jetdirect Wireless and Fast Ethernet External Print Server; HP Wireless Print Server
Power and operating requirements
Compatible Operating Systems
Microsoft® Windows® 7 ready. For more information go to http://www.hp.com/go/windows7. Some features may not be available. Windows® XP Professional x64 (SP1), Windows® XP Home (SP1) and Professional (SP1) (32 and 64-bit), Windows® 2000 (SP4), Mac OS X v 10.4.11, Mac OS X v 10.5, Mac OS X v 10.6, Linux (see http://www.hplip.net)
Operating humidity
10 to 80% RH
Power consumption
48 watts
Acoustic power emissions
6.1 B(A) (plain mono Best mode); 6.8 B(A) (plain mono Normal mode); 7.2 B(A) (plain mono Draft mode)
ENERGY STAR® Qualified
Yes

 

10641-277hpofficejetpro8000top600 HP Officejet Pro 8000 550

 

Highlights

  • Quick
  • Quiet
  • Duplex

Lowlights

  • Size
  • Set up

 

Review

When I opened the box for the HP Officejet Pro 8000 I thought that this was going to be really difficult to set up as I had two A3 printed instruction sheets and two instruction books. On closer inspection though I discovered that not all the instructions were necessary as it would appear that HP feel the need to send instructions in 13 different languages!

As it turned out, getting the printer ready was a simple process. Then it came to setting it up. My laptop runs Windows 7 so I inserted the CD as instructed and waited while it did compatibility check. My laptop then told me it ‘could not continue!’ Off I went to HP’s website and discovered if you are using windows 7 you have to download the software for set up. I find this very annoying as it isn’t like Windows 7 just came out last week and it’s being used on all new machines now. The further annoyance is the sheer size of the drivers for Windows 7, at over 200MB for the full installer it’s a little bloated to say the least!

After I had the correct software the set up was very straight forward. Let the software run and then plug the printer in when instructed. As it is wireless I was wondering how you would set up the network connection. It turns out it just pulls the setting from the computer you are using to set it up. Clever!

The initial cycle that the printer runs through when you first install the print heads and cartridges takes quite a long time to do, it was over 20 minutes before the first of the calibration page was produced by the printer, the process is also quite noisy, much noisier than the regular printer operation.

Having spent some time doing test prints I was very surprised at just how quiet it was. You can hardly hear it when it is actually printing. It is also very quick for single sided print as it doesn’t have to warm up. The print starts immediately unlike our laser printer so I’ve now found that I tend to use the HP Office Jet Pro 8000 for the quick and simple printing that I need but user the laser printer when I have more copies to print of where I need high quality text that even now inkjet cant quite meet that of laser.

This printer comes with a duplex unit as standard, which is good. Its speed when printing double sided paper is fairly slow because of the way it has to feed the paper back in. I printed a three page document double sided and it took under ten minutes to print ten copies.

Print quality was good having compared it to our HP laser. There is not a lot of difference. However, it’s not as sharp and you can tell it is an inkjet. I did print an A4 size photo on glossy paper and that was very good in terms of sharpness and quality but as this isn’t a photo printer as such the colours were not a bright or vibrant as you would expect from a dedicated photo printer, but then this is not what this printer is designed for.

I put in the ‘lowlights’ the size of the printer. The HP Officejet Pro 8000 is by no means small. In fact upon initial inspection you might think that this is an all-in-one copier/scanner/printer as there is certainly enough room on the top to hold a flatbed A4 scanner but there isn’t one included in this model. Also, because of the way the paper tray is oriented and they duple unit on the back, the whole printer footprint is pretty large. Think in terms of between an A3 and an A2 piece of paper sitting on your desk and you’ll get an idea of how much room this needs.

Introductory inks for the colour cartridges are supplied as well as a standard black cartridge. The ‘introductory’ colour inks they say will do around 900 pages and the inks you can buy will print around 1400 pages. Having checked prices they will set you back around £10. The black ink is said to print around 1000 pages and their replacements are around £15. The also sell a XL ink that will print around 2200 pages. On Amazon this is only a £1 more than the standard cartridge!

 

Conclusion

For the cost (under £100) the HP Officejet Pro 8000 is very good value if you are looking to use it for a home office. The quality is good enough to be used by small businesses and it is quick and quiet. For me the only downside of it is its size. It is a large machine and there are smaller inkjets out there if you want something to perch on the edge of your desk. That said the speed and quality of the HP Officejet Pro 8000 more than make up for the size and add to that the convenience of wireless printing then it’s a real winner!

If you are looking for an Officejet Printer like this one then head over to IT247.com which is where we got ours.

 

Review by: Tracy

Posted in: Printers, Reviews

About the Author:

More than 20 years in the IT industry. Blogging with a passion and thirst for new technology since 2005.
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