In my experience, printers have always been the most annoying tech product to deal with. The moving parts, managing the ink levels, loading paper, connecting computers, installing software drivers, getting the settings right. It’s always been a complicated affair.
Does the HP Envy 6500 series make things easier? Maybe a little. Read on to see how the HP Envy 6500 series printer holds up.
What’s in the Box
The packaging includes the printer, quick start guide, reference guide, 3-month ink supply subscription, power cable, and one spare ink cartridge.
The guide only shows information about plugging the printer into the wall and turning it on. There’s nothing about loading paper or changing ink cartridges or connecting to the network really. Only a bit about installing an app on your phone. Luckily the separate Reference Guide does include a couple pages about how to do those other things.
Setup
After plugging in the printer, it comes on by itself and tells you to go to a website by scanning the QR code or typing in the URL.
The website then has further instructions such as opening the paper tray, adding A4 or Letter sized paper, installing the 2 ink cartridges the printer comes with, and printing/scanning an alignment test sheet.
Installing the ink is pretty easy. It took me a while to figure out the proper edge to pull to lift the top and access the ink installation area though. It’s an indentation on the right side of the printer, by the way.
The ink cartridges seem to be pretty small. Don’t forget to pull that little piece of tape off before installing it.
Printer setup is kind of awful. First of all, you have to install the HP Smart app. This will then try to find the nearby printers, connect to it directly, and then allow you to connect the printer to your local WiFi network which will then make it available to all of the devices on your network as well as let the printer access the internet. The software also asks multiple times if you want to create an account and sign up for a subscription service. I was also asked to enter a PIN number a few times. The PIN number can be found on a sticker on the back of the printer. I suppose this is for tracking purchases to make sure you own one of the authorized printers for use with this software.
Calibration involves printing the above sheet and then putting it into the scanner bed on top and letting the printer scan it to make sure everything is in place.
After setup completed, I went straight to opening a PDF in Acrobat to print it because that’s the only thing I would use a printer for. However, pressing the print button in the print dialogue just made the whole thing go away. Nothing went into a print queue. Nothing came out of the printer. Nothing happened at all. It turns out I had to delete the printer from Windows 11 and then add it back in order for printing to work at all.
I really miss the brief moment in time during Windows 10 where printers were literally plug and play for the entire network. I loved it when all I had to do was plug a printer into an ethernet port and power plug, and during the few seconds it took to turn on and walk back to my desk, the printer had already been set up on all Windows PCs connected to the network. Those were the days!
That being said, as soon as I turned another Windows computer on and looked at the printers list while the HP Envy Printer was also on, the printer appeared as being available and completely set up and in working order with no effort at all from me. So at least other devices will have a much easier setup routine when it comes to this printer at least after the first initial network connection and setup is completed.
Hardware
The printer’s dimensions are: 17.05 x 14.21 x 6.73 in (433 x 361 x 171 mm), its weight is: 13.5lb (6.1kg), and its exterior is all white plastic.
The printer’s design is very asymmetric, but this is a utilitarian device not a decoration. The HP logo is nicely centered on the front with the model name to the right. I thought I’d leave the big sticker on the top with its printer marketing information.
On the back of the printer there’s a power button and a port for the power plug. Nothing else! Well, there’s a sticker that may cover something else but the icons seem to indicate that it is not allowed to be plugged into computers via USB; only WiFi.
The side view of the HP Envy 6500 series again shows its asymmetry. The latch you can see there is to open the top of the printer in order to change the ink cartridges.
Also in the top part of the printer is a scanner bed that you can use to scan documents and images. This can also be used as a copier to copy scans directly to new prints using the touch screen interface on the bottom left of the printer.
Software
Once you get through the initial setup, the software is fairly unobtrusive. All Windows programs in all Windows computers connected to the same network as the printer will recognize it and allow you to choose the printer in any software program’s print dialogue.
The printer has a smartphone-like touch screen interface with menu items for controlling and configuring different parts of the printer. There’s a top-edge swipe hidden gesture to show notifications and if you dig through the menu you’ll also nicely find little animations that show you how to do certain things like open the top and change the printer cartridges, which is very helpful.
Printing
The print quality is not especially high end and it’s not especially fast either. This is too be expected from a consumer printer in this price range, so if speed or quality are really important, you’re going to want to look for something more expensive.
Scanning
The HP software required for initial setup also has a “scan” button but pressing that launches into requiring some annoying account set up, so I quickly went looking for another way.
Luckily there’s a “Windows Fax and Scan” software program built into Windows that works totally fine for making use of the scanner aspect of the HP Envy 6500 series.
Purchasing
The HP Envy 6500 Series printer can be found for about $140. It includes one set of ink cartridges and a coupon to sign up for 3 months of future ink cartridges for free. It does not include paper. Continuing your ink subscription of course will cost a monthly fee which starts at $1.79/month and goes up to $32/month depending on how often you print. Purchasing ink cartridges individually will cost between $28-$112 depending on what capacity and bundle quantity you choose. HP says the Instant Ink subscription can save people about 50% over buying the cartridges individually.
Conclusion
While I’ve spent decades wrestling with printers as a graphic artist, and I certainly had to wrestle with the HP Envy’s setup software, once it was finally all connected to the network and running, the HP Envy 6500 series printer worked quite well. It’s nice to have a scanner in the house again too as I haven’t used one of those since the days of film processing around the turn of the century. Still it will certainly come in handy for digitizing and copying legal documents without having to go to the library to use their copier.