HP Officejet 6500A Plus e-All-in-One (CN557A#B1H)

I've been using this printer for a few weeks now, and so far I've been really impressed. If I had to boil my review down to just one word, that word would be "flexible". This thing has great built-in options... there's a whole lot it can do, and do pretty well, considering its modest price point.PROS:Wireless printing is a breeze to set up. HP's ePrint and Google's CloudPrint services take an extra step or two, but are still painless to set up and use and offer even more printing range. I frequently print things from the coffee shop or office to read or file when I get home. For those that have iOS devices, printing from the iPhone and iPad works like a charm right out of the box.Two sided printing and the auto document feeder are huge convenience items for printing and scanning multi-page documents. Scan to your PC over the network, or directly to a memory card in the built-in reader. Likewise, it's easy to print photos and documents from memory cards.Printer apps, which can be installed and used from HP's ePrint Center or the printer's touch screen are a cool new feature - allowing you to print from Google Docs, new sources, and other other online services directly from the printer. Apps, while cool, are kind of a hat trick - at least for my usage patterns, since I find I can often more easily print most of the same content offered by Print Apps from other devices.Printing is fast and quality is good on the normal setting. For quick 1-2 page jobs, it easily beats the workgroup color laser I use at the office, which has a similar 20-35ppm speed rating. I've also printed on a variety of paper types, including laser voucher checks, and all seemed to be handled pretty well by the feeder.Those of you who bought HP printers from a few years ago might remember that the driver and companion software used to be really "heavy". For windows machines, tons of superfluous programs and monitors used to load at start up and stay in memory by default. Updates were frequent and required hundreds of MB of downloads and slow, clunky installs. I'm really happy to say this is no longer the case. The default install for this printer sets you up with light, lithe printer drivers that stay out of your way when you don't need them. Extra software and memory-resident scanning functions are available for you to install only if and when you want them.CONS:I haven't found much to complain about. Compared to the features I've really enjoyed, my criticisms are mostly issues of nuance.The small, resistive-type touch screen is not always the easiest to operate. It hasn't given me too much trouble but I could imagine people with large fingers or poor eyesight getting frustrated.The printer looks great overall, but virtually all of its removable parts and casings are made of shiny, brittle plastic. Some parts feel cheap and breakable, probably because they are. The small duplexer component that is inserted in the back of the printer on assembly seemed so light and fragile that I was actually worried about breaking it while snapping it into place. However, I think this is pretty much to be expected in this price category and, I'm happy to say, that none of these seemingly fragile pieces have yielded to the casual bumps and bangs I've accidentally given them here and there while this printer has seen daily use.Finally, the paper tray has a listed capacity of 250 pages but it seems like it's actually only comfortable with much less, like 100 or 150 pages. If you're printing anywhere near this unit's 7000 page per month duty rating, you can expect to be adding paper to it a whole lot.

This printer is good when it works. For me it does not work 80% of the time. The only way I can fix it is to uninstall and reinstall.I bought the printer about a year ago. Ever since then this device has been non-functional 80% of the time. The problem is that the software cannot find the printer even though both my laptop and the printer are on the same wireless network. The diagnostic software finds the network, the printer test report shows the network but the request to print gives an error.I have to uninstall, reinstall and reconfigure the software, using the online HP patch to fix the error. That will make the printer work for a day or two then it stops working again. Just like that with no reason.I keep getting the response from HP support that the problem is because of the firewall. My question is if it is the firewall then why does it work at all????The last time I reinstalled the software it worked for one day!

I read most of the reviews for this printer before I bought it. I was a little concerned, because of the numerous negative reviews, but, frankly, there are almost no printers these days that have few negative reviews.However, I am pleased to report that this printer has been fantastic! I have had absolutely no problems. Installation was very straight-forward. The wireless setup was quick and without any problems. The printer even upgraded its firmware from the Internet automatically.It copies, scans, and faxes fine. The print and scan quality is excellent. I LOVE the iPhone Airprint support, which allows anyone in our house to print Airprint supported stuff from their iPhones directly to the printer -- quickly and wirelessly. And the HP ePrint support is also really cool and works great. This feature lets you go to a special HP web site and establish a unique email address for your printer, so that any document emailed to that address (from anywhere) will print on the printer. This is HUGE, because when my children come home from college (or when we have guests), they can easily print to the printer without having to install any print drivers -- they simply email the document to be printed to the special email address.The only slightly negative comments are that it takes a few noisy seconds to start any print activities, while it does internal calibration, etc. And the ink does not last as long as I would like. But it seems that NO printer these days has long-lasting ink (because the printer manufacturers are now basically giving away the printers and making their money selling ink).Bottom line: I would highly recommend this printer for any home user. I cannot say if it would be heavy duty enough to last for a business user -- check other reviewers who have used it in a business setting.