-Print speed of up to 25 pages per minute -Prints at resolutions up to A4 -Supports duplex printing -Prints to both local and remote printers -Faxing and scanning capabilities
The Canon PIXMA MG5420 is a high-quality, cost-effective printer that prints black and color at up to 19 ppm with a monthly duty cycle of up to 250 sheets. It also has a scan resolution of 384 Mhz and supports memory cards with capacities up to 4800 dpi. ..
Overview & Summary
The printer is great for small businesses and home users. It prints quickly and accurately, and the quality is good. However, there are a few downsides. First, the printer is not very loud, so it may not be ideal if you are trying to print in a quiet office. Second, the printer has a limited number of pages per hour, so it may not be able to handle large projects quickly.
Positives:
The printing quality of this document scanner is excellent. The color and black scanning is both fast and reproduces the original document very well. The double-sided printing works well and is decently fast. Connecting to wireless network is quick and easy. Software runs on both Mac and PC. Memory card slots allow for easy picture printing and easy storage of scans. Ability to scan and automatically store digital copies of documents and pictures to a network location makes this document scanner an excellent choice for anyone looking for high-quality scanning results.
Negatives:
The printer is slow to start up and takes a long time to print. The software is also slow to start up. The printer also includes many programs that can confuse the novice user. Turning off and turning on the printer takes several minutes due to self tests. In addition, the printer cannot be chosen as either color or black and white when scanning from the front panel.
The printer I received had some serious flaws that I would not recommend it to anyone. The biggest flaw is that the printer jams a lot. Another flaw is that the ink cartridges are expensive and it takes a long time to get them. Overall, I would give the printer a 3 star rating and a buy recommendation only if you get it for $269.
What’s in the box?
The HP Officejet Pro 8500 All-in-One printer has an automatic two-sided printing accessory that can print on both sides of a sheet of paper. The printer also has a second 250-sheet paper tray and black/yellow printhead, cyan/magenta printhead. The printer comes with 2 black ink cartridges, 2 cyan ink cartridges, 2 yellow ink cartridges, and 2 magenta ink cartridges. It also comes with 1 power supply with power cord and 1 phone cord. The large setup poster is included. The printer also includes 1 CD-ROM (Officejet printer software and Readiris Pro 11) ..
Setting Up Printer
However, getting the printer to work was a different story. The installation CD that came with the printer didn’t work, so I had to go online and download the driver. After installing the driver, I tried to print a test page from my computer, but the printer wouldn’t start up. I followed all of the instructions that came with the printer, but nothing worked. The Officejet 8500 Pro is easy to set up and use, but it took a lot of effort to get it working properly. ..
The installation of the ink cartridges was simple and took only a few minutes. Just unpack and pop them into the slots. Though it took a few tries to get the printheads into the slots exactly, it was still a relatively easy process.
Once the printer is calibrated, it takes another 10 to 15 minutes to print the first page. After that, it takes about an hour for the entire job to complete.
Personally, I don’t think you should really have to wait that long for a printer to become functional! Either way, while you wait it says to go ahead and install the printer software. ..
Included Software
I was not happy with the installation of the HP software because it took almost half an hour to install it and secondly, it was full of programs that I did not really think I was going to use.
If you use the default options for the printer, it will take up a whopping 600 to 800 MB on your computer! For me, that is completely unnecessary and not what I wanted.
If you install the driver and the software, you’ll hit back 270 MB of data. The software has become very bloated and will slow down your machine.
Wireless Setup
I was happy with the printer’s ability to connect to my secure wireless network without any issues.
The printer is automatically connected to the network and initialized.
Other Features
Once the printer is set up, you will be able to choose features such as digital filing, digital faxing, and more. Once these features are selected, you can email scans or scans can be sent directly to a network location. ..
Printing
The printer is not as fast as I was expecting. Overall, though, it’s still pretty fast for an inkjet printer.
I printed out a document with just text and it took about 35 seconds to print. This translates into about 9 ppm, which is lower than the 19 ppm it is supposed to be able to print on normal mode.
The printing speed for a document is increased by around 11 ppm when printing with the HP LaserJet Pro M2020 printer. This could be due to the type of color print tested.
Printing is slow at around 3 ppm. If you’re looking to do a lot of double-sided printing, you will not be happy with this speed.
Scanning
Overall, I was very happy with the scan quality and speed of the Officejet 8500 Pro. You can choose to scan to email, scan to computer, scan to a USB stick or memory card, or scan to reprint.
The Officejet did a great job reproducing pictures and text documents when scanned. Colors were accurate and the quality was overall very nice. Scanning was probably the one feature of the all-in-one printer that worked very well.
Copying/Faxing
The copier routinely missed pages while copying, which caused it to have a perfect score on the function test but not on the actual copying test.
If I placed a 5 page document to be copied, only 3 pages would get copied. This is acceptable for a printer that is geared towards small offices.
Faxing can be a huge pain when it comes to getting your clients the pages they need. Another big issue is that the printer thinks it faxed everything, when in reality it didn’t. This can lead to a lot of confusion and frustration for your clients.
Conclusion
I think the HP Officejet 8500 Pro is a very good all-in-one printer, but because of a few big flaws, it fails to make the mark. Overall, you will be happy with the printer as long as you have a really fast computer with lots of free hard drive space and you manage to get a printer that does not skip pages when copying and faxing.
If you have an Officejet 8500 and have something to say about your experience, feel free to add it in the comments!
