HP® Officejet Pro 8600 Premium e-All-in-One Printer

First Impressions on HP 8600 Premium

First some background. I have had Epson, HP, Cannon and Lexmark printers. My last printer was a Lexmark Prestige Pro 805 and I was very satisfied with it. Unfortunately the top cover hinge...Read complete review

First some background. I have had Epson, HP, Cannon and Lexmark printers. My last printer was a Lexmark Prestige Pro 805 and I was very satisfied with it. Unfortunately the top cover hinge was not designed very well and broke. I made my trip to Staples with Credit Card in hand to buy another Lexmark but none was to be found on display. After talking with the sales clerk I had a wealth of information on printers of every make on display there and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

My requirements were Cheap Cost to Print (of Course), color, FAX, duplex printing and scanning. I didn't buy the FAX option with my Lexmark and I have needed to FAX a few times in the past few years. I decided the next printer would have a FAX too. I may never need to FAX again but I have it if I need it now. The HP Office Jet 8600 Premium met all of my requirements.

I will not go into each brand I looked into and why I picked the HP 8600 Premium over the others. I would rather point out the plus and minus of what I have found out about the 8600 since that is what I had purchased. I will admit that after I had purchased the printer on a good sale price I did come home and hit the reviews on the web looking for the good and bad. You will read some reference to the Lexmark printer in comparison. Please remember that the HP printer is new and I am still learning what it can do and how to get the programs to work with it correctly.

Box: First off the printer was well packaged and things were organized in the box. The quick start guide is good for those like me that only read directions when I have too. I had the printer together and the LAN (not WIFI) set up in around 30 minutes. I ran the internal diagnostics and did the test prints and set up.

Software: I grabbed the printer install disk to install the printer on my Windows 7 Pro system. Compared to other printers there is hardly any software to install. Which is a good thing and a bad thing. The system overhead was not as heavy as other printer setups but the quality of the software is poor. Comparing the software to the Lexmark software it feels like the HP software was set up to work with Windows 2000 not Windows 7. After using the Lexmark where the software had a good graphic GUI and lots of options like automatic this and automatic that I was truly spoiled. The HP software didn't have the feel or the look I had expected. The auto choices are slim and when used I am not impressed. To do scans the software thinks I should know what I want. The Lexmark software said, ok dummy, pick this one to use, and it worked!

Duplex: Doing duplex scans on the 8600 worked well. However scanning pictures I felt it wasn't as good as the Lexmark. This of course is probably user error and I may need to read the manual. The Lexmark software has a great feature to scan multi pictures and it saves each picture as a separate file. I could not find anything like this in the HP software yet.

Scanning Bed: The scanning bed on the 8600 can do legal size. I use legal size at times so this was great. I am a little confused as why there is a scan bulb option for auto turn off. Need to research this more when I have nothing else to do.

2nd Tray: The second tray is one of those good news/bad news. It requires more thought then it should. I select the 2nd tray option and it prints from the second tray most of the time but I had hoped to place envelopes or cardstock in the second tray. It appears however the second tray works with paper only. When I try to print cardstock or envelopes from the 2nd tray I have issues. When I print documents I need to set the printer to default to tray two. If I don't it tries to print my documents and emails on envelopes or cardstock in tray one. Most likely something I am missing in the setup.

Card Stock: Yes, Card stock will print from Tray one but I did have an issue with the printer picking up the cardstock at times. If you pull out the tray and put it back in a few times the printer gets the hint and picks it up.

Envelopes: Having some issues. I use address book software to print envelopes and the Lexmark had no issues working with it. The 8600 does not like where I want the return address and moves it in about an inch from the side. To me this seems unprofessional in appearance. I did have one envelope jam in the printer and had to take off the duplex unit to clear. No big deal, one out of the quantity I did was not much of an issue, but it's worth a mention.

Print Quality: I am not impressed with the smaller font size print clarity. The Lexmark was better at fine print in 4point size. Print quality for the 8600 is good but not great. Black print looks a little light and pictures do not have the overall appearance I expected. If I could find a way to make the print a little darker and more contrast all the time I will do that. This was easy to do in the Lexmark software but the HP software is not as easy to figure out.

Ink usage: Here is one that has impressed me. I have been printing a lot of color printouts and the Ink supply is holding up well, roughly around one quarter of the ink used. I would have ran through half of a cartage or more using the Lexmark doing the same printouts.

Print speed: Startup print speed slightly faster on the Lexmark but the HP can do repeat printouts faster. If you do a lot of printouts this is a big plus.

Printer size: The size of the printer is large and you want to be sure you have the desk space. I don't mind the larger size because I get the impression the 8600 is well built. Time will tell if this is true or not in the future.

Paper tray: I love the larger capacity tray size of the 8600!

Display: I have read things bad about the display in other reviews. It seems sensitive enough to me. The only problem I have was the alignment. Where I thought I was pressing, I was not apparently. After I adjusted where I pressed the screen I was OK in using it.

Apps: Not impressed, HP. Lexmark has you beat on this one for now.

Jams: Both printers are great. I think the HP 8600 has less issues with cardstock jamming then the Lexmark. In fact, the Lexmark would not do an auto duplex because it would jam every time. If I wanted to duplex cardstock it had to be manual.

FAX: I did a few test FAX's just because I could. It was not as user friendly from doing it from the laptop as I had hoped but I think I got it figured out well enough to use.

Lots more to say but enough is enough. I have only had the printer for awhile but so far I do like it. I still have my Lexmark set up to scan pictures and do envelopes until I figure out what I am doing wrong on the HP printer.