Hewlett Packard Retail Box Officejet Pro 8000 InkJet Printer
- Black Print Speed: 35 ppm
- Color Print Speed: 34 ppm
- Output Type: Color Printer
- Technology (Detailed): Inkjet
- Printer Type: Workgroup Printer
- All-in-One Functions: Scanner
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I just need a printer please - Enter HP Officejet 8000
Pros
Economical, inexpensive ink, individual colors, 15,000 page/month duty cycle, networking, web administration, duplexer
Cons
No manual tray. No display. First printer was DOA.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
This is a longterm economical option for a printer with a higher duty cycle and networking that includes management. This printer is all business and little fuss.
Inkjets scare me. You have the low cost entry point, with hardware that often reflects it, and an endless high expense of ink and specialty paper. For those reasons, printing in color has always been more novelty than necessity for us. When my wife was in school, cost per page was paramount, but with those years nearly a decade in the past, and with a laser printer 12 years long in the tooth, it was time to give in. We've traded miles of school work in for potty charts and meal plans.
The Journey to the Store
As is common with purchases, there comes the weighing of options; the pros and cons. Nearly as important as knowing your needs is knowing what you want. In other words, you should know what features you can live without.
No Multi-Function: No scanner, no fax, no card reader
One of the very first things nixed was multi-function printers. I cannot remember the last time I needed to scan anything at home. We most definitely did not need faxing. And I have a perfectly good media card reader, which fits in my camera bag by the way, and I don't care about printing directly from media nor a camera. More over, how does a $150 multi-function compare to a single purpose printer? Consider this: The Officejet Pro 8000 advertises for $149. The Officejet Pro 8500 is basically the same printer with the multi-function added. That printer goes for $300. So I ask again: what does $150 get you if you get a printer that can sing and dance? Whenever possible, I rather not pay for something I don't need and will simply make the device more complicated and thus more likely to fail.
Photo Printer
While a printer that is optimized for photo printing may have been nice, it too was a tradeoff of something we don't particularly need. Important photos can, and will likely always be, printed professionally. They do just as good or better for less cost. It also seems that, unless you shop on the internet, the options for printers optimized for photo printing are mostly limited to multifunction printers and purpose built compact photo printers (i.e. personal photo lab.)
That said, the Officejet 8000 does more than an acceptable job with photos. I purchased 50 sheets of HP Premium Photo paper; a supply that will last us a long time. The first photo I printed appeared somewhat dark and warmer in color than presented on screen. I have not found a way to calibrate the colors to match, but the problems with the photo may greatly be my own fault, since my screen isn't perfectly calibrated either. You know, "Garbage in = Garbage out." The second looked nearly perfect in every way, with some temporary adjustments to the photo itself to compensate. We recently bought a new screen as well, and the one photo I have printed since was a closer match to what I saw on the screen.
Ink and the Long Haul
Only time will tell whether, or how bad, the color will fade. It seems that the trade off for ink that is timeless is ink that smears easily or clogs in the printer more easily, neither of which will necessarily be an issue, but they also cost more. As far as performance goes, this printer has it where we need it. It prints fast and the ink dries instantly for normal tasks, and very quickly for photos. It may turn out that photos might fade faster, but anything we expect to display for long periods would simply be printed professionally.
We most definitely won't see the same kind of mileage out of the ink in this printer as we did with the old faithful laser. Back in the day, toner for the old printer was $70 and lasted approximately 5000 pages. Not surprisingly, it appears that ink for this new printer will cost nearly as much as the printer (more for us, since we got it on sale,) but the good news is that it also appears that the page yield should be pretty good. It's too soon to tell, but the 940 cartridges are lower capacity than the 940XL versions. We've printed a modest number of pages so far, but the printer itself guestimates that we have a good 1000 pages to go.
Cost and Separate Colors (CMYK)
Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (Black). Since each color is separate, you can replace each separately; a fairly common feature. It is advertised that the XL carts are good for approx 2200 pages, and, without bargain shopping, each color cartridge goes for approximately $25 and the black for $35. That's getting into laser territory for cost per page, at least for B&W.
The HP Photosmart Premium uses 564 cartridges. The 564XL Black costs the same $35, maybe a dollar less, and is estimated to yield 800 pages - Better photos or at least longer lasting - but less pages. The 920XL Black ink for the OfficeJet 6000 is about $6 less and yields about 1200 pages. Ink for the 8000 starts to look like a bargain in comparison.
From the Box to First Use
Setting up this printer is straight forward. In the box is: the printer, 2 print heads, 4 ink cartridges, the duplexer, software and typical paper work, including an illustrated guide.
DOA - Dead on Arrival
Yep. The first printer we brought home was a dud. That doesn't exactly instill confidence in a buyer. No matter what I tried, the printer only ever saw both print heads for a brief minute, and went right back to blinking errors. I tried everything HP suggested, except new print heads, for obvious reasons. The only thing I can think of is, perhaps I didn't shake the print heads enough. Otherwise the print heads or the printer itself may have simply been faulty.
New Printer; Take Two
Things went much better with the second printer. In under 10 minutes, it was running and doing it's calibration. What I found interesting is, the instructions on the HP website suggest a different order of assembly. The insert provided with the printer has you insert the print heads, then the ink, before ever turning on the printer. On the website, they recommend powering on the printer, then inserting the print heads (after a healthy shaking), followed by the ink. Whether the "new" procedure made a difference, I don't know.
Networking
With a notebook computer floating around, this was a key feature for us. Plus it frees you from the ties of a 15 foot USB cord to place it anywhere you have a network connection, although you gain even more freedom with the wireless version of this same printer.
With the lack of a display and menu on the printer, configuration isn't orthodoxed by any means, but if everything works are HP intends, this printer should be a snap for just about anybody to network. It will acquire an address from a DHCP server, then the software will discover the printer and do the leg work for you. Bonjour apparently makes it fairly Mac friendly as well.
I'm not exactly sure what happens if you don't have a DHCP server, such as a common router on your internet connection, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the HP software will go through its discovery process, find the printer and make the necessary changes to the settings.
Web Administration Saves the Day
No Status Display
Without an LCD display, it isn't always easy to know what this printer is thinking. You'll have interpret the status of the various indicator lights to know whether the printer has an issue or is simply hungry for some more paper or ink. Thankfully, you can find everything you need to know through the software HP provides or through the Web Administration.
By entering the printer's IP address in a web browser, you can access everything from settings to the status of consumables, all without installing a single piece of software on your computer. It is something I might take for granted on the behemoth lasers at work, but it is most welcome and appreciated on this little guy.
Software
Caution: Bloat-ware
HP has become well known for their bulky software suite that is included with their smaller printers. Very little of it is completely necessary, being features and services they offer separately. I don't know about you, but I don't need HP to track my supply usage or link me to services like Snapfish. Other applications do things like seek out software updates or offer quick access to support. I did install the full suite on one machine, and found nothing I deemed worth keeping for myself. Uninstalling the software hasn't hindered the printer at all.
Bare Essentials
Fortunately, HP's support site (http://support.hp.com) is fairly simple to navigate. Simply enter "Officejet Pro 8000" for the product to search for, click through until you find Software & Driver Downloads, select your Operating System, and there you should find HP Officejet Basic Driver - IT Professional Use Only. That includes everything necessary to print, and I seriously doubt you'll miss a thing.
Usage
Power Up and Power Savings
It takes a while for this guy to get going from being powered off. I haven't timed it yet, and it won't be a nuisance for us in general, but it could be a source of anxiety when you need it to spit out that map you forgot to print for your trip. We found that it is fairly snappy if you simply leave it to the power saving features to put it to sleep, but that does continously draw a watt or two more.
Size and Duty Cycle
This is also a fairly large printer for what it is. We originally expected we would regain space from the large laser printer, but instead this printer is wider than the laser was long. Hopefully this size is indicative of quality though. It sure is hefy for an ink jet.
Starting with the Photosmart Premium for comparison, it boasts 2,500 pages. The OfficeJet 6000: 7,000 pages. The OfficeJet 8000 is rated for a whopping 15,000 pages per month. That may sound insane, but we have Laserjet 2420dn printers on desks at work, rated for 75,000 pages, and one of our users taxes her machine heavily with far less pages than that. While a printer like the Photosmart Premium may very well churn out 2,500 without problems, how long will it do that? One designed for 15,000 pages, with the same work load, will go longer before issues like worn pickup rollers arise.
Speed
At 35 pages per minute max, the speed is pretty typical. It's faster than our old laser printer, and that's good enough for us. It of course slows down when printing laser quality, and slows down considerably when printing photos - both things that are typical.
Paper Handling
The Paper Tray
This is one disappointing aspect to this printer. There's one, and only one, paper tray - No manual tray whatsoever. If you want to print a photo on special paper, you have to insert it into that one tray. Depending on your needs, this may be bothersome, but it hasn't been an issue for us. For the few photos we have printed, slipping a single sheet was simple enough. If you keep common 8.5"x11" paper in the tray, that paper will have to be removed to print on anything of a different size, such as envelopes.
There is an optional Tray 2 that may be helpful for this, even if it is only used to house standard paper in order to leave tray 1 available for everything else. If you do this, I recommend setting the paper size and paper type on Tray 1, and make sure to read the instructions carefully. By default, printers will usually pull from Tray 1 if succeeding trays run dry. If you have expensive photo paper in #1, the printer will assume it's plain old 8.5x11 and it's very possible you'll end up accidentally printing goofy epinions reviews on it.
Automatic Duplexer
Having the ability to print on both sides of a page is nice, and a feature that seems to be more and more common these days. It's a good way to save paper, but also sometimes desireable for pamplets, booklets and etc... It's honestly not something I've paid particular attention to, other than printing one two sided page to just verify that it does indeed work. The design employeed here is a fairly simplistic one. It basically prints the first side as usual, before drawing the page back into the printer, where it is fed into the duplexer to flip the page. This of course means you shouldn't grab the page when it first peaks out of the printer, which you might instinctively do since the page stops and rests there for a moment.
Experience tells me that paper often jambs with in duplexers, but HP generally makes these easy to remove. In this case, you simply press a couple buttons and pull the duplexer out. There's also a door on the back to open and investigate within.
Conclusion
Overall, we are quite pleased with this printer. It does precisely what we need it to do, and it appears to be build fairly the well. It also wasn't all that expensive, and appears that it should be economical in the long run. The only indication of possible problems was the original printer that was DOA. This second printer has been problem free, as well as quirk free.
If you need to print on multiple sizes of stock, the paper tray may be an issue. For those like us, who primarly print on standard paper, it's not tough to deal with. It's not optimized for photos, but it is optimized for printing - efficiently that is.
For any HP printer, I do suggest check for "Basic" or "IT" drivers that are more minimalistic than the bulky bloat ware HP provides in the box.
The Journey to the Store
As is common with purchases, there comes the weighing of options; the pros and cons. Nearly as important as knowing your needs is knowing what you want. In other words, you should know what features you can live without.
No Multi-Function: No scanner, no fax, no card reader
One of the very first things nixed was multi-function printers. I cannot remember the last time I needed to scan anything at home. We most definitely did not need faxing. And I have a perfectly good media card reader, which fits in my camera bag by the way, and I don't care about printing directly from media nor a camera. More over, how does a $150 multi-function compare to a single purpose printer? Consider this: The Officejet Pro 8000 advertises for $149. The Officejet Pro 8500 is basically the same printer with the multi-function added. That printer goes for $300. So I ask again: what does $150 get you if you get a printer that can sing and dance? Whenever possible, I rather not pay for something I don't need and will simply make the device more complicated and thus more likely to fail.
Photo Printer
While a printer that is optimized for photo printing may have been nice, it too was a tradeoff of something we don't particularly need. Important photos can, and will likely always be, printed professionally. They do just as good or better for less cost. It also seems that, unless you shop on the internet, the options for printers optimized for photo printing are mostly limited to multifunction printers and purpose built compact photo printers (i.e. personal photo lab.)
That said, the Officejet 8000 does more than an acceptable job with photos. I purchased 50 sheets of HP Premium Photo paper; a supply that will last us a long time. The first photo I printed appeared somewhat dark and warmer in color than presented on screen. I have not found a way to calibrate the colors to match, but the problems with the photo may greatly be my own fault, since my screen isn't perfectly calibrated either. You know, "Garbage in = Garbage out." The second looked nearly perfect in every way, with some temporary adjustments to the photo itself to compensate. We recently bought a new screen as well, and the one photo I have printed since was a closer match to what I saw on the screen.
Ink and the Long Haul
Only time will tell whether, or how bad, the color will fade. It seems that the trade off for ink that is timeless is ink that smears easily or clogs in the printer more easily, neither of which will necessarily be an issue, but they also cost more. As far as performance goes, this printer has it where we need it. It prints fast and the ink dries instantly for normal tasks, and very quickly for photos. It may turn out that photos might fade faster, but anything we expect to display for long periods would simply be printed professionally.
We most definitely won't see the same kind of mileage out of the ink in this printer as we did with the old faithful laser. Back in the day, toner for the old printer was $70 and lasted approximately 5000 pages. Not surprisingly, it appears that ink for this new printer will cost nearly as much as the printer (more for us, since we got it on sale,) but the good news is that it also appears that the page yield should be pretty good. It's too soon to tell, but the 940 cartridges are lower capacity than the 940XL versions. We've printed a modest number of pages so far, but the printer itself guestimates that we have a good 1000 pages to go.
Cost and Separate Colors (CMYK)
Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (Black). Since each color is separate, you can replace each separately; a fairly common feature. It is advertised that the XL carts are good for approx 2200 pages, and, without bargain shopping, each color cartridge goes for approximately $25 and the black for $35. That's getting into laser territory for cost per page, at least for B&W.
The HP Photosmart Premium uses 564 cartridges. The 564XL Black costs the same $35, maybe a dollar less, and is estimated to yield 800 pages - Better photos or at least longer lasting - but less pages. The 920XL Black ink for the OfficeJet 6000 is about $6 less and yields about 1200 pages. Ink for the 8000 starts to look like a bargain in comparison.
From the Box to First Use
Setting up this printer is straight forward. In the box is: the printer, 2 print heads, 4 ink cartridges, the duplexer, software and typical paper work, including an illustrated guide.
DOA - Dead on Arrival
Yep. The first printer we brought home was a dud. That doesn't exactly instill confidence in a buyer. No matter what I tried, the printer only ever saw both print heads for a brief minute, and went right back to blinking errors. I tried everything HP suggested, except new print heads, for obvious reasons. The only thing I can think of is, perhaps I didn't shake the print heads enough. Otherwise the print heads or the printer itself may have simply been faulty.
New Printer; Take Two
Things went much better with the second printer. In under 10 minutes, it was running and doing it's calibration. What I found interesting is, the instructions on the HP website suggest a different order of assembly. The insert provided with the printer has you insert the print heads, then the ink, before ever turning on the printer. On the website, they recommend powering on the printer, then inserting the print heads (after a healthy shaking), followed by the ink. Whether the "new" procedure made a difference, I don't know.
Networking
With a notebook computer floating around, this was a key feature for us. Plus it frees you from the ties of a 15 foot USB cord to place it anywhere you have a network connection, although you gain even more freedom with the wireless version of this same printer.
With the lack of a display and menu on the printer, configuration isn't orthodoxed by any means, but if everything works are HP intends, this printer should be a snap for just about anybody to network. It will acquire an address from a DHCP server, then the software will discover the printer and do the leg work for you. Bonjour apparently makes it fairly Mac friendly as well.
I'm not exactly sure what happens if you don't have a DHCP server, such as a common router on your internet connection, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the HP software will go through its discovery process, find the printer and make the necessary changes to the settings.
Web Administration Saves the Day
No Status Display
Without an LCD display, it isn't always easy to know what this printer is thinking. You'll have interpret the status of the various indicator lights to know whether the printer has an issue or is simply hungry for some more paper or ink. Thankfully, you can find everything you need to know through the software HP provides or through the Web Administration.
By entering the printer's IP address in a web browser, you can access everything from settings to the status of consumables, all without installing a single piece of software on your computer. It is something I might take for granted on the behemoth lasers at work, but it is most welcome and appreciated on this little guy.
Software
Caution: Bloat-ware
HP has become well known for their bulky software suite that is included with their smaller printers. Very little of it is completely necessary, being features and services they offer separately. I don't know about you, but I don't need HP to track my supply usage or link me to services like Snapfish. Other applications do things like seek out software updates or offer quick access to support. I did install the full suite on one machine, and found nothing I deemed worth keeping for myself. Uninstalling the software hasn't hindered the printer at all.
Bare Essentials
Fortunately, HP's support site (http://support.hp.com) is fairly simple to navigate. Simply enter "Officejet Pro 8000" for the product to search for, click through until you find Software & Driver Downloads, select your Operating System, and there you should find HP Officejet Basic Driver - IT Professional Use Only. That includes everything necessary to print, and I seriously doubt you'll miss a thing.
Usage
Power Up and Power Savings
It takes a while for this guy to get going from being powered off. I haven't timed it yet, and it won't be a nuisance for us in general, but it could be a source of anxiety when you need it to spit out that map you forgot to print for your trip. We found that it is fairly snappy if you simply leave it to the power saving features to put it to sleep, but that does continously draw a watt or two more.
Size and Duty Cycle
This is also a fairly large printer for what it is. We originally expected we would regain space from the large laser printer, but instead this printer is wider than the laser was long. Hopefully this size is indicative of quality though. It sure is hefy for an ink jet.
Starting with the Photosmart Premium for comparison, it boasts 2,500 pages. The OfficeJet 6000: 7,000 pages. The OfficeJet 8000 is rated for a whopping 15,000 pages per month. That may sound insane, but we have Laserjet 2420dn printers on desks at work, rated for 75,000 pages, and one of our users taxes her machine heavily with far less pages than that. While a printer like the Photosmart Premium may very well churn out 2,500 without problems, how long will it do that? One designed for 15,000 pages, with the same work load, will go longer before issues like worn pickup rollers arise.
Speed
At 35 pages per minute max, the speed is pretty typical. It's faster than our old laser printer, and that's good enough for us. It of course slows down when printing laser quality, and slows down considerably when printing photos - both things that are typical.
Paper Handling
The Paper Tray
This is one disappointing aspect to this printer. There's one, and only one, paper tray - No manual tray whatsoever. If you want to print a photo on special paper, you have to insert it into that one tray. Depending on your needs, this may be bothersome, but it hasn't been an issue for us. For the few photos we have printed, slipping a single sheet was simple enough. If you keep common 8.5"x11" paper in the tray, that paper will have to be removed to print on anything of a different size, such as envelopes.
There is an optional Tray 2 that may be helpful for this, even if it is only used to house standard paper in order to leave tray 1 available for everything else. If you do this, I recommend setting the paper size and paper type on Tray 1, and make sure to read the instructions carefully. By default, printers will usually pull from Tray 1 if succeeding trays run dry. If you have expensive photo paper in #1, the printer will assume it's plain old 8.5x11 and it's very possible you'll end up accidentally printing goofy epinions reviews on it.
Automatic Duplexer
Having the ability to print on both sides of a page is nice, and a feature that seems to be more and more common these days. It's a good way to save paper, but also sometimes desireable for pamplets, booklets and etc... It's honestly not something I've paid particular attention to, other than printing one two sided page to just verify that it does indeed work. The design employeed here is a fairly simplistic one. It basically prints the first side as usual, before drawing the page back into the printer, where it is fed into the duplexer to flip the page. This of course means you shouldn't grab the page when it first peaks out of the printer, which you might instinctively do since the page stops and rests there for a moment.
Experience tells me that paper often jambs with in duplexers, but HP generally makes these easy to remove. In this case, you simply press a couple buttons and pull the duplexer out. There's also a door on the back to open and investigate within.
Conclusion
Overall, we are quite pleased with this printer. It does precisely what we need it to do, and it appears to be build fairly the well. It also wasn't all that expensive, and appears that it should be economical in the long run. The only indication of possible problems was the original printer that was DOA. This second printer has been problem free, as well as quirk free.
If you need to print on multiple sizes of stock, the paper tray may be an issue. For those like us, who primarly print on standard paper, it's not tough to deal with. It's not optimized for photos, but it is optimized for printing - efficiently that is.
For any HP printer, I do suggest check for "Basic" or "IT" drivers that are more minimalistic than the bulky bloat ware HP provides in the box.
