The OfficeJet Pro 6500 is an intermediate all in one printer from the HP inkjet AIO lineup. It sits comfortably between the 4000 series and the 8000 series. There are many notable advantages of this printer, it is a fast printer, it prints good qualities, it does just about everything, and most importantly, it is cheap. Matter of fact, for about $150 you get a printer, a scanner, a photocopier, and a fax machine that actually works well in one unit.
HP OfficeJet Pro 6500 Review: The Printer
The HP OfficeJet 6500 can print really well; it is definitely one of the best all in one printer mechanism that we have encountered for a while. Many printers on the market today can print fast, but very few can produce the quantity with a good quality. Well, The HP Officejet 6500 certainly can do that, and do that very well actually. First of all it is fast, very fast, 32 ppm black and 32 ppm color. It is capable of producing this print speed with up to 4800x1200 dpi in color and 600 dpi in black. There is not a lot to say about printing black, but the resolution you get from color allows you to do some pretty impressive prints. This printer is capable of doing borderless printing; therefore pictures are of no issues to it.
The 6500 do support duplex printing, but it is a manual mechanism. Not the friendliest thing we encountered, but for the price you are getting, there is really no substitute.
This printer comes with a standard 2 lines LCD display, functionality at its best, neither too fancy that you don't know what it is trying to tell you nor overly simple that it lacks information. In our opinion, the LCD display on this unit is just right.
HP OfficeJet Pro 6500 Review: Photo Printing
As mentioned earlier the HP Office 6500 has an impressive printer that prints fast and well and is photo printing ready. It supports borderless printing of up to 8.3 x 23.4 inches. It supports most memory cards out there with direct printing technology.
HP OfficeJet Pro 6500 Review: The Scanner
The scanner on this printer is perhaps the best we've seen in most AIO machines on the market, with an optical resolution of up to 2400 dpi that can be enhanced to a whopping 19,200 dpi. It scans 48bits and supports 8.5 x 11.7 inches on flatbed and legal size through automated document feeder.
Unfortunately it does not scan transparent materials, so your slides and negatives are out of the question. Most of those functions are supported by dedicated and more powerful scanners anyways.
HP OfficeJet Pro 6500 Review: The Copier and Fax
The OfficeJet 6500 will copy your documents through automated document feeder or the scanner bed at 31 copies per minute color and 32 copies black, it can copy up to 100 copies per document and a scaling of 25 to 400%.
There is nothing special about the fax machine on this printer, the fact that it is there is worth mentioning as many AIO machines on the market today do not have this function anymore. It is understandable that fax is perhaps a practice of the past, matter of fact fax is seldom used anymore. However, there are those occasions where you find yourself in need of a fax, and this is the situation that you truly appreciate the fax machine in your HP OfficeJet Pro 6500.
HP OfficeJet Pro 6500 Review: Connectivity
This printer is network ready through Ethernet cable but not WIFI. It is slightly disappointing that such a good multifunctional printer rated as an office machine by HP lacks the ability to connect wirelessly. We find that the Ethernet connection works great but we realize that this printer isn't really meant to be shared with a lot of people, it is more of a personal office machine.
HP OfficeJet Pro 6500 Review: Price and Upkeep
The OfficeJet Pro 6500 is an inexpensive machine to own and keep. With an MSRP of $150, you can easily find one for under that price. For the purpose of this Review we have found this unit anywhere from $70 to $150.
It uses the new HP 920 series cartridges, the black prints about 420 pages and costs 20 dollars, while the 3 color cartridges are 10 dollars each and prints about 300 pages. Therefore, every cartridge change you are looking at spending about $50. Of course there are XL packages that print 1200 black and 700 colors, the XL package totals about $73. Not bad considering how much more you get per cartridge.
HP OfficeJet Pro 6500 Review: Our Verdict
Without a doubt the HP OfficeJet Pro 6500 is one of the best office class all in one machines out there, it is well price, nicely built, and cheap to maintain. We did not like its bigger brother the 8500, we found it trying too hard to be something that it is not, we find the 6500 is just right at where it belongs. Also, it doesn't give you that cheap plastic feeling the 8500 give you, although they are both mainly made out of plastic, which baffled us as well.
In conclusion, if you are considering a good all in one printer for home or small office, we highly recommend this unit.
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