HP Envy Inspire 7920e All-in-One Printer

HP has been a staple in my home now for some time, making some great all in one printers, and having a suite of software that enhances the overall experience of their products. The HP Envy continues the tradition of providing reliability, with great print quality, and a better than expected print speed. I will say this printer left a lot to be desired when it comes to the need to access more information than should be needed to print from your smartphone. In the box, you’ll find the Printer, a power cord, a user manual and warranty cards, and two ink cartridges (black and color). If you require the use of a USB connection, you’ll need to supply your own USB cable, which can be plugged into the back after removing a protective sticker. I should note, the printer ... MoreHP has been a staple in my home now for some time, making some great all in one printers, and having a suite of software that enhances the overall experience of their products. The HP Envy continues the tradition of providing reliability, with great print quality, and a better than expected print speed. I will say this printer left a lot to be desired when it comes to the need to access more information than should be needed to print from your smartphone. In the box, you’ll find the Printer, a power cord, a user manual and warranty cards, and two ink cartridges (black and color). If you require the use of a USB connection, you’ll need to supply your own USB cable, which can be plugged into the back after removing a protective sticker. I should note, the printer requires the use of the HP Smart app, which can be downloaded for free from the applicable App Store. When powered on for the first time, you’ll be presented with a QR code for easy download from iOS or the Google App store. The app will also ask you to sign into an HP account, but is NOT required to continue with the setup. I was a bit confused by the apps need to know your location (which I didn’t allow), and asked for permission to track across apps. You’ll be asked if you want to sign up for HP+, which offers a subscription service to automatically order ink. I say all of this, as the connected devices have continued to find ways to monetize after you’ve paid the purchase price. None of these services are required to use the device on your own network, so keep this in mind as you go through setup. There is no way to finish the set up without the app. The printer serves all the functions you’d expect from an all in one. The print quality is great, fast, and thus far hasn’t had any issues with scanning or printing. I’ve been able to use premium thicker paper, and even some cheaper printer paper left over from my last printer without any issue. If you print a lot of documents, you may find that the printer will require more ink. So, I’d recommend purchasing the larger capacity ink cartridges or signing up for the auto ship service offered by HP. Scan quality was surprisingly great, with the printer quickly scanning. I would highly recommend installing HP’s software on your PC for easy printing. Overall, this printer is great for those who only need to print on occasion. The scanning function is top notch. The app experience for setup is a bit longer than needed, and the fact the app needs my location for printing is an odd request for printing. I’m not sure I’d recommend this printer to anyone looking for a simple plug and play experience, especially during setup. The annoying need to sign into my HP account to perform simple tasks in the app, made this a bit more annoying to use than I’d prefer. However, it’s still a good printer in the long run, and you should see the level of quality you’d expect from an HP printer product, sans the app set up experience.

Very easy to install to my Wi-Fi. My iPhone and iPad automatically recognized it when I printed from them. You can even scan from your phone directly to the printer no matter where you are. If you ever printed photos in a printer that doesn’t have a dedicated tray for photo papers, you know that it can be frustrating and it is prone to errors, making you waste time and money. Fortunately, this HP Envy Inspire comes with a tray exclusive for photos that actually works and does so very well. Equally important, the pictures look professional, which is something really important to me because I take a lot of photos and I expect the best ones to look great on paper. Text is excellent like all modern HP printers and the speed is very good for most home offices although it ... MoreVery easy to install to my Wi-Fi. My iPhone and iPad automatically recognized it when I printed from them. You can even scan from your phone directly to the printer no matter where you are. If you ever printed photos in a printer that doesn’t have a dedicated tray for photo papers, you know that it can be frustrating and it is prone to errors, making you waste time and money. Fortunately, this HP Envy Inspire comes with a tray exclusive for photos that actually works and does so very well. Equally important, the pictures look professional, which is something really important to me because I take a lot of photos and I expect the best ones to look great on paper. Text is excellent like all modern HP printers and the speed is very good for most home offices although it could be considered slow if you print a lot of work documents. What I dislike is the fact that it uses a tri-color cartridge, which is a waste of ink in my opinion. You run out of magenta, for instance, and you have to buy another cartridge, wasting the remaining yellow and blue inks. Here are the Pros: • Easy menu on an LCD color screen • Dedicated photo tray with two-sided capabilities • Supports up to Wi-Fi generation 5 • Easy connection to mobile devices such as phones and tablets • Excellent photo and print quality • Great app features such as remote scan and print • Duplex printing, a must for many people and great to save paper. • 6 months of Instant Ink included, which is sent to you automatically when the printer senses your running of ink And the Cons: • Only works with Original HP ink. It guarantees quality but HP ink is not cheap • Instant Ink Subscription is great and started cheap, but they just increased their price depending on your type of subscription. It is convenient but it also optional, so you can decide whether this is a con or pro. • Tri-color ink cartridge. I prefer individual color cartdriges. • Doesn’t support the newest Wi-Fi generations 6 and 6e. Not many homes have that yet, but it is the future of newer Wi-Fi routers. You can’t go wrong with an HP printer, and this one is no exception. Despite my complaints about their tri-color cartridge and Instant Ink subscription, which is somewhat pricey but very convenient, especially if you print a lot, its print quality is unmatched.

With this printer, my expectation was not that it could produce perfect, professional quality photo prints at its price point. I was looking at this as something my family could use to make a quick print from a phone or tablet on the go. That's pretty much exactly how this printer is being marketed. I have had a similar printer for several years, and lately it has started to deteriorate, but I had a baseline for comparison from when it was new. In Terms of design, I personally like the simple, streamline, utilitarian build that doesn’t take up excess space and doesn’t have excessive “styling”. The design of the paper trays and the out-feed are well thought out. Selecting the correct place to put various stock sizes is very easy. The out-feed support is a very simple ... MoreWith this printer, my expectation was not that it could produce perfect, professional quality photo prints at its price point. I was looking at this as something my family could use to make a quick print from a phone or tablet on the go. That's pretty much exactly how this printer is being marketed. I have had a similar printer for several years, and lately it has started to deteriorate, but I had a baseline for comparison from when it was new. In Terms of design, I personally like the simple, streamline, utilitarian build that doesn’t take up excess space and doesn’t have excessive “styling”. The design of the paper trays and the out-feed are well thought out. Selecting the correct place to put various stock sizes is very easy. The out-feed support is a very simple piece that slides out easily, not at all like the complicated, clunky, noisy and now broken mechanical out-feed that was on my old printer. Overall, though made of plastics, the printer feels solid, and there don’t appear to be unnecessary bits and pieces that can break off, dislodge or otherwise become problems. When setting up the printer I was prompted to install a mobile app, and a QR code was provided that linked my phone to the app. After installing the app, basic setup of the printer was extremely simple, and I ran the printer through some calibration and test prints. While not silent this printer is much quieter, and also much quicker to start prints than my previous printer. The machine doesn’t shake rattle and roll, just a couple of noises as the paper is picked up then there is just a nice smooth finish. The app on the phone seems to be pretty handy, especially considering the limited number of options that the mobile device has natively for printing. There was a bit of learning curve to navigating some of the options to get exactly what I wanted, in particular I found changing sizes to be difficult. After running through several prints on my phone, I decided to try out printing from my windows laptop. Normally, when I print from the laptop I simply use the built-in print utility and everything works fine. I have done this with a variety of printers. The laptop saw the printer on my network and I figured I was all good to go. This is the first printer that I have had that forced me to download the brand specific print application so that I could change certain preferences, and unlike the phone, I found the printing process very convoluted on the laptop. For example, when I tried to print a photo from the laptop at the highest output resolution, it would continually throw back to a lower quality when I selected the exact photo stock paper that was recommended. This was a bit frustrating and I had to play a bit of guessing game to find which combination of paper would work for the output I wanted. In terms of print quality, I cannot complain about the sharpness of the prints as all of the high-resolution images that I printed from both my phone and laptop looked nice and crisp. I was however disappointed with the color reproduction. This printer just seems to struggle with skin tones. Everything seems too red and over-saturated. I ran the calibration utility, and then I scanned an older photo that I had using the printer’s built in scanner. The scan to laptop utility worked very well and the image that I saw on the laptop was a very accurate, very true to color and tone copy of the photo. When I printed it out, the skin tones were simply too red. This seems like a very big flaw for a printed that will primarily be used to produce pictures of family and most likely people more than anything else. The printer came with a free 6-month subscription to the HP ink delivery service. I have not had the printer long enough to say whether this service will be worth paying for later. I will say that the ink tanks on this printer are combined 3 color in one cartridge tanks, meaning that when you are out of cyan, you have to swap the whole tank. This is something that I cam not fond of. Considering the small size of the tanks I feel like I will be blowing through ink cartridges quite quickly, though the documentation for the ink delivery program states that the tanks you will received through that service have more prints in them than the XL tanks you can purchase at retail stores. Overall, I feel like this printer is just ok. It has some solid design and some nice capabilities (the wireless scanning is my favorite feature so far!). On the downside, it’s difficulty printing skin tones and some of the difficulty I had in the Windows environment are pretty big issues, especially considering the price point is higher than some similar printers I have owned or encountered.