Review: HP OfficeJet Pro 6830 e-All-in-One

Introduction

Introduction

On the face of it the OfficeJet Pro 6830 appears to offer just about everything the small business could want when it comes printing, scanning, copying and, should the need still arise, even faxing documents, and all for less than £100 inc taxes (around $156, AUS$190). It can also print and scan in colour, plus it's the first business inkjet that can be used with HP's pay-per-page Instant Ink service. But, and it's a fairly big but, the Officejet Pro 6830 does have its limitations and may not be the business bargain it appears to be.

Well put together

A very sturdy and compact device, the OfficeJet Pro 6830 is based around an HP thermal inkjet engine capable of printing up to 18ppm in black and white and 10ppm in colour, with an impressive duty cycle rating of 15,000 pages per month. Four separate ink cartridges are employed and maximum resolution is 600x1200dpi for both monochrome and colour output. An automatic duplexer is also built-in enabling documents to be printed double-sided, with a single 225-sheet A4 input tray incorporating a 60-sheet output tray in its cover.

The 1200dpi scanner sits just above the print engine with an automatic document feeder (ADF) on top which can be lifted up to allow originals to be scanned manually although on this model scanning is single-side only.

A 2.66-inch (6.75cm) colour touchscreen allows for walk-up scan/copy/fax operation and there's a front-mounted USB port for printing and scanning to and from a memory stick as well as options to scan remotely from a browser.

Specification and Performance

OfficeJet Pro in Action

Unpacking and putting the OfficeJet Pro to work was a very quick and easy task, all done from the built-in touchscreen over a WiFi connection and taking around 10 minutes. Drivers and software for Windows and Mac clients comes on a DVD but we opted to download from the HP website to get the latest implementations.

In terms of speed we got around 4-5 pages per minute for mixed text and graphics documents and up to 10ppm for pure text with the first page typically appearing in around 15 seconds. Quality was good enough for most business needs, but we did see striations when printing photos and other images, and the finished documents came out a little wet, turning wrinkled when dry. Another irritation was the single paper tray which soon ran out and was far from easy to refill, plus there was a pronounced pause between sides when using the duplexer and our finished documents often overflowed the catch tray onto the floor.

We mostly printed over a WiFi network although you can also print directly using a point-to-point wireless connection or via the HP Connected portal simply by emailing documents to the address assigned. Mobile printing is similarly well catered for on both iOS and Android platforms and hard to fault on a printer in this price bracket.

It's all about the ink

Other than paper handling our main concern was how quickly the ink was used up with the three colours (cyan, yellow and magenta) all but exhausted after just 80 pages. However, that was with low-capacity starter cartridges and we did print a lot of images. High capacity replacement cartridges are available and a big selling point on this OfficeJet Pro is support for HP's Instant Ink service, which can save both time and money as far as ink is concerned.







With Instant Ink you effectively pre-pay for ink via a monthly subscription based on the number of pages (colour or black and white) that you expect to produce. HP will remotely monitor usage and post replacement cartridges to you before they are needed as well as arranging for disposal of empty consumables. Plans start at £1.99-per-month for 50 pages ($2.99 in the US, sorry Australia it's not available yet), with automatic rollover of any unused page allowance. Should this not be enough you can buy extra pages at £1 for each 15 pages ($1 in the US) or switch to either the 100-page/£3.49 per month plan ($4,99) or 300-page/£7.99 per month high use service ($9.99 in the US).



Compared to buying cartridges yourself HP reckons Instant Ink can save up to £516 (around $804, AU$983) per year for customers on the high use plan. That's not something we can confirm but we did find a full set of high-yield cartridges (rated to last for up to 825 pages) selling for £68 (around $106, AU$130) whereas a 3-month Instant Ink high use subscription (300 pages/month) is just £24 ($30 in the US) which is clearly a massive saving.

Verdict

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the OfficeJet Pro 6830. Indeed it delivers everything a small business needs to print, scan, copy and fax, does it with some aplomb and for a lot less than laser alternatives. However it has the look and feel of a consumer printer rather than a robust business solution, especially when it comes to paper handling which is a real Achilles heel.

That aside, if the budget is tight it's still worth considering and we'd definitely recommend signing up for Instant Ink. But if you're going to share the printer with lots of users and you can afford a bit extra you're probably better off with something that has more to offer in the paper handling department.

We liked

Despite its low price and lack of size, the OfficeJet Pro 6830 is bristling with connectivity options plus a full complement of mobile printing and scanning tools that we found easy to learn and highly effective. It's also a very easy device to operate, both via the colour front panel and remotely through either a browser or using custom apps.

Inkjets are notoriously expensive to run but HP reckons that the OfficeJet Pro 6830 can produce professional colour documents at up to 50% of the cost of a laser and by signing up to its Instant Ink service this seems more than plausible. In fact, by fixing the cost per page and delivering the necessary ink to your door in advance of it running out, Instant Ink is very much a no-brainer and something we'd strongly recommend to anyone buying this or any other supported HP inkjet.

We disliked

A single paper tray is a real limitation on a business printer, further exacerbated in this case by the lack of a bypass feeder. Not only do you have to keep a close eye on how much paper is available but, in order to print to envelopes, card, pre-printed paper and so on, you have to load the material into the sole paper tray and quickly complete the required print jobs before anyone else tries to use the printer. You then have to remove any unused media and top up with paper to make the printer/copier ready for normal operation.

The catch tray on top of the paper drawer is another annoyance, spilling documents onto the floor rather than keeping them safe. Some of ours also got caught on the plastic stop bar, ending up scrunched and smeared. Moreover, in a busy office the catch tray will nearly always be full of forgotten old documents making it even harder to refill the paper drawer beneath.

And lastly, it must be about time for HP and other vendors to drop the built-in fax modem. Very few businesses use fax these days and we're sure most would rather have better paper handling.

Final verdict

A good little all-in-one for sole traders and micro businesses, the OfficeJet Pro 6830 scores high on both the connectivity front and in its printing capabilities. Plus, if you sign up to the Instant Ink service, it can be very cheap to run. The single paper tray is, however, a real drawback when it comes to high print volumes and sharing, and businesses with more than a handful of users are better off with something a little more flexible in this respect.

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