HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus e-All-in-One Printer

• Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 14 reviews
• My rating: 0 stars

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• 10 stars

  Excellent all-rounder for home office!

  by AArcuri on May 13, 2012

  Pros: 1) Print quality is very good. Black prints are as good as laser prints, amazing
  2) Print speed is quite fast for inkjet technology
  3) Appearance of this printer is very sleek
  4) Touchscreen panel is big and clear
  5) Scanner is very impressive

  Cons: No any complaint for me

  Summary: This story might sound familiar to you: I needed to replace our networked HP Photosmart family inkjet printer; it suddenly gave up despite our light and careful use for less ...

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  Summary: This story might sound familiar to you: I needed to replace our networked HP Photosmart family inkjet printer; it suddenly gave up despite our light and careful use for less than three years. Swearing not to buy another inkjet printer let alone another HP product any more I started browsing through the vast number of tempting colour laser printer options around. I tried hard to make the "colour laser printer option" work for me but I struggled, badly: I simply did not see myself in a few months time paying almost twice the cost of the printer for tonner cartridges' replacements. So I was soon back into the inkjet arena, and took me a short visit to the local shop to reconsider HP as a possible choice: when I came across this Officejet 8600 among the sea of all other inkjet printers it was clear to me that this was the choice that best suited our needs.
  
  The ink cartridges are very economical: you will not even blink when the time comes that you need to replace ALL cartridges at 1/5th of the cost of the printer. The resulting cost per copy is similar to the cost of a laser colour print made with the cheaper Samsungs, for example. Ink cartridges have a very smart snap-in system, with no protective caps or venting seals to be removed before insertion. When opening the lid for changing cartridges, a white LED illuminates the internals of the printer for you to see what you are doing, I thought it was a nice and thoughtful touch.
  
  Print quality is very good. Black prints are as good as laser prints, amazing. Colour prints are also very good for all general purpose prints including photos -when using glossy photo paper. Photo prints are obviously not as good as those obtained from dedicated photo printers, but I do not really mind as in my case I always use Photobox for getting serious photo prints done anyway.
  
  Print speed is quite fast for inkjet technology, although double-sided prints are naturally slower than average. In my case speed is not a determining factor.
  
  The appearance of this printer is very sleek: dark grey/bronze textured colour and curved edges; this printer will not look out of place in your study/office (as opposed to the Epson that look like 10 year older in comparison with their cheap black plastic brick design). You will have to make prevision for its location though: the overall body size is on the big side -certainly bigger than my old Photosmart it replaced- especially when you think you will have to access the machine opening hatches and lids around it. A good thing is that the power supply is internal to the printer: good move from HP dropping the chunky external power supplies that were a nightmare to manage.
  
  Ethernet networking works like a dream. None of our 7 PCs sharing this printer have ever had problems seeing the printer and sending jobs to it; very solid and fast drivers. (We have a mixture of Windows 7 64-bit/32-bit, Vista and XP). HP have simplified their software, for better: it works! (this was one of my worries from my previous experience with a large number of drivers and applications updating all the time, taking over my computer and failing frequently). I have not tried WiFi nor USB connections and do not intend to for the time being.
  
  The touchscreen panel is big and clear, although I feel that "hard" buttons for some functions would be nicer. The "touch" action sometimes lands on the wrong option on screen, possibly because of my chunky fingers.
  
  The 250-page feed tray is a bliss (a feature I was looking for); it gives you plenty of time to check it and replenish before running out of paper; also the automatic double sided print and scan are a bonus. NOTE: you need to check when buying as not all models include these features. When printing your job you can configure your layout format, e.g.: booklet, multi-pages per page, etc.
  
  The scanner is very impressive: you can trigger a scanning session from the printer's touchscreen or from any of your networked computers. You can save your scanned document in different formats (jpg, pdf, doc with OCR, etc) and store it in different locations: memory card or memory stick on the printer, or the Documents folder in any of your networked computers, or in a pre-saved network folder, e.g.: in your NAS file server. Oh! There is a whole FAX function and all which I did not even looked into; I find it hard to beleve that Faxes are still among us these days!
  
  There is no limit for Web/Cloud connectivity and applications, but I must admit I lost interest and stopped exploring them fairly shortly; however, I managed to enable a web service that allows you to remotely printing jobs by email and monitoring progress from the web (how much use one can make out of such feature is still to be seen!)
  
  In all, I am greatly delighted with this product. For being more reliable and cost-effective than our previous printer, family are using it quite regularly, with no compains raised to the "IT department" so far.
  
  Note: for best price of the HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus, I suggest you have to compare prices before you buy it at: ComparePricess.info/HPOfficejetPro8600Plus
  
  I am very pleased that I gave HP and its inkjet technology a second chance!

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  6 out of 6 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 4 stars

  Very dissappointed.

  by JacksonDillard on April 25, 2012

  Pros: Easy install, quick, HP name etc

  Cons: software debacle. Scanner quality very dissapointing, sheet feeder not always good

  Summary: I hate to dog this printer, I have always been an HP fan and usually satisfied for the most part. This printer however may have changed that. Went to store ...

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  Summary: I hate to dog this printer, I have always been an HP fan and usually satisfied for the most part. This printer however may have changed that. Went to store and bought this printer without comparison to anything. Installed nicely, air print is very coold. Was first skeptical about the loud noisy clunky sounds coming out of it during scan phase, but tolerated it. Bulk of need for this printer is archiving business records, scanning to pdf. File sizes were tremendous for a one page scan. I tinkered with scan quality, dpi, resolution- everything even to a point where quality of scan was unacceptable and file size was still over 250k for one page pdf file. I played with another scanner and software, the same page at much higher quality and resolution was nearly a thrid that size. very dissappointed. My issue is mostly scanner and software debacle with this printer. Bought a direct competitor to this unit and it is 10 times the machine, not to mention FASTER and MUCH MUCH quieter than this noisy clunky machine. HP, you better try again, and fast.

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  1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 9 stars

  Huge improvement over 8500

  by photobug56 on April 3, 2012

  Pros: It looks like HP gutted the 8500 and re-engineered for the 8600. Much faster to install, it's SETUP ran much faster, and it is quieter. Scanning is much faster. No power brick. Should be much more reliable.

  Cons: Have had a wired network disconnect issue, don't know yet if resolved.

  Summary: Huge improvement in many ways over the 8600 line. Much more refined, easier to handle from the moment you open up the box. All new cartridges.

  Summary: Huge improvement in many ways over the 8600 line. Much more refined, easier to handle from the moment you open up the box. All new cartridges.

  1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 8 stars

  The first printer I've ever bought that I'm happy about

  by blueOrbit on March 21, 2012

  Pros: Fast, affordable, feature-rich, intuitive.

  Cons: Large, color print quality.

  Summary: HISTORY
  I finally got frustrated enough with my gigantic Brother MFC6490CW that I decided to replace it. I'd originally abandoned my loyalty to HP printers, and switched to Brother, ...

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  Summary: HISTORY
  I finally got frustrated enough with my gigantic Brother MFC6490CW that I decided to replace it. I'd originally abandoned my loyalty to HP printers, and switched to Brother, due to the bloated and intrusive software I had to use with my old OfficeJet 6110. Unfortunately, the Brother had unreliable communications. So it's back to HP.
  
  DEMOGRAPHICS
  My wife and I both work from home so we really do need a fast, reliable, affordable, all-in-one type of printer that can work with multiple platforms such as Windows 7, Windows XP, OS X, and iOS. We don't do a lot of photo or color printing so while it's something that's nice to have, it doesn't have to be top notch. If we really need to print a photo we just take the file to Target or Walgreens, and if we need to create pretty, color brochures, we go to Kinko's. This is a productivity oriented printer so if you need perfect color prints, you won't be happy with the results here.
  
  SETUP & INSTALL
  The touchscreen interface is really quite nice; I'm not sure why everyone complains about it. It's not a capacitive touchscreen like your smartphone (I'm guessing it's a resistive touchscreen) so it requires a little more force to activate than your smartphone. This is hardly a big deal. I'm not typing an essay on the thing, I just need it to respond to a few inputs now and then. Because it's a touchscreen, it's able to dynamically change during setup to make setup intuitive. No more guessing which button you need to press to do something. It also has neat little videos that play on the screen during setup to show you how to do something, like install the ink cartridges, or any accessories.
  Following the recommendations of online reviews I read, I downloaded the software online rather than use the provided CD. The software installed without a hitch on the Windows machines, found the printer, and was ready to go. The software the Mac almost went in without a hitch, but for some reason the "scan to computer" function wasn't available. I re-ran the setup wizard and it magically appeared.
  So once that's all done, you are ready to go. There's a lot of tweaking that you can still do though so if things aren't perfect, don't be disappointed.
  
  PERFORMANCE
  The print quality is acceptable. If you want to print photos for framing, don't buy this printer. If you want to print fancy brochures, don't buy this printer. This is an office printer. It's actually in the name, "OfficeJet". If you want a photo printer, HP has a solution for that and they call it "PhotoSmart". Marketing people are so clever aren't they? Anyway, the print quality is good enough for an office environment where you plan on printing document to share with colleagues, clients, or collaborators. Also, this printer is fast, or at least faster than any other printer we've had in the office. The only downside to fast is that you have to keep the output tray extended or your documents will be strewn all over the floor.
  
  FEATURES
  The whole HP ePrint thing is new to me so you'll have to forgive me for getting excited about something that might be old hat. My work PC (Windows XP) uses a VPN to connect to HQ and some underlying IT settings mean that once I hook up to the VPN, I can no longer print to my network connected printer, including this one. With HP ePrint, however, I now have a clever workaround now! For one thing, if I'm using Google Chrome as a browser and want to print something from there, I can use Google Cloud Print to send the document to my printer. Setup of the HP ePrint feature is easy and free. Unfortunately if I want to print something like a Word Document, I have to e-mail that document to my printer's e-mail address. This isn't especially difficult, but it means I now have a bunch of large documents cluttering up my SENT folder. The printer can handle most common documents types such as Word, PDF, text, etc... The advantage here is that I can print to the device from any device with e-mail anywhere in the world. Just send the file as an attachment to YOUR_ADDRESS@hpeprint.com and you're done.
  We don't send or receive many faxes so we don't have a dedicated fax line, but when we do need to send or receive a document, it's really nice if it just works. Having to unplug and swap phone cables isn't a lot of fun and we don't have a lot of time to stand next to the printer waiting to see if an incoming call is a fax so we can press the RECEIVE button. Many of the printers we've used before claim to have the ability to intercept incoming fax calls, but we've never had one work right. This is the first exception. Simply tell the printer what your phone/fax configuration and it adjusts its behavior to work. In our case we have an answering machine. The printer listens in on the call after the answering machine answers. If it hears the beep beep beep of an incoming fax, it intercepts the call and receives the fax. We have it setup to just store incoming faxes as a PDF document on our server rather than print them, but you can also have it send the faxes to you as an e-mail.
  Scanning is where we had the most pain with our old Brother. The software would work maybe 75% of the time and no amount of troubleshooting could ever change that; it just depended on luck. With the HP, those days seem to be over. Scans, whether initiated from the printer or our workstations, go through without a hitch. The nice part about scanning on this thing is that you have many options about how to handle your scan. When operating the scan from the printer you can send it to your computer, a mapped network drive, an e-mail recipient, or an SD card. You can also specify whether to save the file as a PDF, JPG, or TIFF. You can have an address book stored on the printer for the purposes of e-mail documents, but alas you have to manually enter it; I've not found a way to import an address book.
  
  BOTTOM LINE
  I'm happy with the printer. The price, features, and quality of print are exactly what we were looking for. The quality of construction and the quality of the software are what I would expect from something in this price range. The printer is a bit large, but again, it's an office printer. Don't buy this for someone living in a dorm room; they will hate you. This printer has restored my faith in HP printers and I'm seriously considering buying a PhotoSmart printer so we can avoid those very occasional trips to Target or Kinko's.

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  1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 9 stars

  Great but I'm a PC with windows not some exotic OS

  by kmoore4318@aol.com on February 2, 2012

  Pros: Setup was a snap, so easy, that I got board while loading software, so I pulled out the quick setup, so to make sure I had done it correctly. I got the premium not the pro (same printer just adds another paper tray, OCR software, and $60 in ink

  Cons: Large footprint

  Summary: The price was $399; but staples had an instant $100 off, making it the same price as the Pro,from HP online. then they had a $50 trade in allowance ...

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  Summary: The price was $399; but staples had an instant $100 off, making it the same price as the Pro,from HP online. then they had a $50 trade in allowance so $249.99, Could have got the pro for $229.99, But for $60 worth of ink and another paper tray, I splurged, checked the price of cartriges < $20 each color, $36 for the extended capacity, Had to check I've been burned in the past, when I found out what it cost to operate my Artisan.

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  1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 10 stars

  Great network friendly AIO - nice upgrade from 8500.

  by tdogdfw on March 20, 2012

  Pros: Nice design and works fantastic

  Cons: All these stupid Mac people complaining. Don't you have an iPad that doesn't do anything new and is heavier and bigger to go waste your $600 on?

  Summary: Runs great on Windows 7 and Windows 8... over Ethernet, Wi-Fi and Internet. I upgraded from an 8500 and was happy to see it was much quieter and easier to ...

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  Summary: Runs great on Windows 7 and Windows 8... over Ethernet, Wi-Fi and Internet. I upgraded from an 8500 and was happy to see it was much quieter and easier to setup on a network across multiple machines.

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  1 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 9 stars

  A superb printer! Great service, so far!

  by ankrklankr1 on March 20, 2012

  Pros: Easy to set up; wireless network frees up a USB port; excellent print quality; more pages per ink cartridge than laser printer toner cartridges and much less expensive; print speed is excellent w/great color quality.

  Cons: Auto document feeder tends to skew docs onto scanner bed. No single sheet or envelope feeder - if using the single tray, must remove all paper to print envelopes from same.

  Summary: Bought this to replace a troublesome laser printer. Got it for a really good price using a sale day and trade-in offer. When I learned of the issue with envelopes, ...

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  Summary: Bought this to replace a troublesome laser printer. Got it for a really good price using a sale day and trade-in offer. When I learned of the issue with envelopes, I purchased the 2nd paper tray for about $59.00, including shipping. Attaching it to the printer was less than a minute of effort. Took a few minutes using the 'help' function to set it up but it works as advertised. The print quality is excellent and I've not had issues with wet ink in any documents or photos. Print speed is not as fast as a laser printer, but is still good for this type. My main thrust, in addition to print quality, is the cost per copy. The laser printer I traded yielded 2,000 copies per high capacity black toner cartridge at a "discounted" cost of $78.00 per cartridge. This HP 8600 yields 2,600 pages per high capacity black ink cartridge at a cost of $38.00 per cartridge. Color ink cartridge yield is also much better/cheaper than toner. And, I see no difference in the quality of print. In addition to other bells and whistles programmed into the printer, I can set power on & off times along with "sleep" time. Since I already have a good scanner connected to my computer and an internal fax modem, I haven't set up these functions in the printer, other than the scan to computer function. I did test the auto document feeder and discovered the skew problem, which did not seem to be corrected fully by the scanning software. It is a bulky machine but not as heavy as it appears and can be rather easily moved, if needed. I'm more than satisfied with the performance it has given me so far and am comfortable that it will not require replacing for a good, long time.

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• 1 stars

  Unusable on OS X Lion

  by asoftwaredeveloper on February 17, 2012

  Pros: Low cost of printing; a good set of hardware features.

  Cons: I can only intermittently scan on OS X Lion; there is no OS X TWAIN driver, so one must use ImageCapture or HP Scan, and not Acrobat Pro; and scanning is limited to 300 ppi when using the document feeder. HP support offers no help.

  Summary: I recently purchased this printer for use with OS X Lion (10.7), and I'm having a terrible experience with it. To be fair, the hardware seems reasonably good, ...

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  Summary: I recently purchased this printer for use with OS X Lion (10.7), and I'm having a terrible experience with it. To be fair, the hardware seems reasonably good, and the HP Scan software's interface looks better than most manufacturer-supplied applications of its sort. But I have encountered three big problems with the device's scanner that render it pretty much useless to me, and HP support seems determined to give no help:
  
  (1) After scanning a few pages, I always get an error that prevents further scanning for some time. I have taken a number of steps to resolve it, but none had any effect. I described the problem in detail at http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Scanning-Faxing-and-Copying/Scanning-with-HP-OfficeJet-Pro-8600-Plus-on-OS-X-10-7/m-p/1278511#M27683. HP support claims that the error comes from Apple's ImageCapture application, which is not true; it comes from HP's own scanning software, which apparently uses the ImageCapture libraries. In the unlikely event that it's an ImageCapture bug, HP should either work with Apple to address it, work around it, or develop a device driver that doesn't rely on ImageCapture. Or at least they could at least acknowledge the problem.
  
  (2) HP offers no TWAIN driver for use on OS X. As a result, you can only scan using HP Scan or Apple's ImageCapture application. You cannot scan with Acrobat Pro, for instance. I would be surprised if this does not change sometime in the future, but at the moment HP support confirms the limitation and gives no indication of plans to release a TWAIN driver. It seems to me that one should have been able to know this before buying the printer, but I don't think HP mentions it anywhere.
  
  (3) Scanning resolution is limited to 300 ppi when using the document feeder. Again, this is not mentioned in any of the device specifications I've seen. Under "scanner resolution," HP's own specs just say, "Optical: Up to 4800 dpi, Enhanced: Up to 4800 dpi." (I'm not sure if this is a hardware limitation. My guess is that it's not.)
  
  My impression so far is that HP really does not support using the device with OS X Lion. I would be glad to be proven wrong! But I see another review here that suggests I'm not the only Mac user having problems with this device's drivers and getting the runaround from HP support.

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• 9 stars

  Great Printer, don't listen to these guys...

  by mobiushky on January 20, 2012

  Pros: Super fast set-up, internet connectivity, Google cloud print, ePrint apps, network either wired or WiFi, fast printing, cheap ink

  Cons: very large footprint, need a lot of space, only prints from one tray so you can't add a secondary media size or insert one sheet without removing the feed tray.

  Summary: Don't listen to the 3 negative reviews on this page. I'm sure they have issues that make them unhappy, but more than likely they have "issues" with HP ...

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  Summary: Don't listen to the 3 negative reviews on this page. I'm sure they have issues that make them unhappy, but more than likely they have "issues" with HP and are trying to sway people away from the printer. I have had no problems with this printer and if you search many other review sites you will find this printer rates in the top 10 at least and often in the top 5.
  
  Set-up was even easier than a breeze. In fact, it set-up so fast I hadn't even finished looking at the quick start guide before the machine was up a running. The longest part of the set-up was installing the software on my PC. I told my wife that the ePrint feature would be great, but would probably take a while to get it working because that's the way technology usually is. Before I even realized what was happening, the ePrint was set and I was e-mailing docs to print. The screen even shows videos about what to do and when during the entire set-up process. I actually struggled to keep up with the process.
  
  Printing is fast. If you're expecting the speed you get at your office, well you're in a dream land. This isn't a $3000 color laser printer. But compared to entry level color laser MFP's, this holds its own and is easily faster than most if not all inkjet MFP's.
  
  The colors and quality of the print is generally what I expected. It's good to great. Again, it's not a $3000 dedicated photo printer, but the picture prints could pass off for your own home picture frames if you want to print your own. The ink does take a bit to dry on full page full color photo prints. You're laying down a LOT of ink, so it will take some time to dry. That's a drawback compared to laser if that matters to you. But when printing standard everyday materials, I haven't seen a wet spot yet.
  
  The only beef I have is that there is only one media tray. There isn't a secondary manual feed option. So if you want to leave your plain paper in the tray and insert a special sheet for one print, you have to open the tray, and if that sheet happens to be a 4X6 photo paper, you have to remove all the paper in the tray. There is an optional second tray you can buy, but it seems excessive to have to have a complete tray dedicated to one format of paper. I liked my old printer that had a manual feed door on the back that allowed me to switch feeders when I wanted to just print one special sheet. It's a minor gripe, but I know it will be irritating at times.
  
  Overall this is an excellent printer. I can't speak to reliability or longevity yet, but it is rated for 25,000 cycles a month and I expect to do less than half a percent of that. Don't be swayed by people have a bone to pick. This is a good printer and worth a look.
  
  (Oh, don't tell HP I said this, but if you want a save a couple bucks, the bottom level OfficJet pro 8600 is exactly the same printer with a smaller doc feed system and a bit slower print time that you probably won't notice. OR, head to BestBuy with a used printer and you'll get $50 off the price making this printer only $179.99. That offer is only good through March 2012.)

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• 1 stars

  Worst printer I've ever used

  by AudiS4DR on May 10, 2012

  Pros: Fast printing

  Cons: Constant errors
  Not scanning properly
  Paper jams every other time
  Double-sided scanning rarely works
  Very slow scanning

  Summary: I didn't think it was possible for this all in one to be worse than the one I had before it (another HP model) but it CONSTANTLY has scanning ...

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  Summary: I didn't think it was possible for this all in one to be worse than the one I had before it (another HP model) but it CONSTANTLY has scanning errors that render it almost unusable. I do not understand where the positive reviews come from. This is a BRAND new unit being used with a BRAND NEW laptop and it just doesn't work.

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  0 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.

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