HP Envy Inspire 7255e All-in-One Review

HP’s Envy Inspire 7255e ($229.99, priced at $179.99 when it goes public) is a full-featured inkjet printer that replaces the company’s Envy Photo 6255. The year-old Envy Inspire 7955e — This new all-in-one is nearly identical to that printer, but stripped of the automatic document feeder (ADF), Ethernet, and a few other features. Overall, the Inspire 7255e is a sound machine for home offices and families, or for use as his AIO printer for personal use. However, its print quality can fall short in some situations when compared to Canon and Epson’s photo-centric consumer machines. It comes with it, so it’s good enough for a small amount of use, assuming you don’t copy or scan multi-page documents that often.

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Bye Envy Pictures, Hello Envy Inspirations

The Envy Inspire 7255e (on the right side of the image below) may be the successor to the Envy Photo 6255, but as you can see it’s not very similar.

(Credit: HP)

Another comparison of the 7255e (left side of photo below) shows similarities to last year’s Envy Inspire 7955e.

(Credit: HP)

The latter is equipped with an ADF and, of course, allows you to scan or copy multi-page documents (single-sided or double-sided) while doing other work or resting. one glass at a time. Unless you’re dealing with multi-page documents, especially in the office, the lack of ADF is a problem.

The new HP measures 7.5 x 18.1 x 20.1 inches (HWD) with the tray closed and weighs just over 15 pounds. That makes it a few inches shorter and almost 3 pounds lighter than the Inspire 7955e. Competitors include Canon Pixma TR8620, Epson Expression Premium XP-7100 Small-in-One and Epson Expression Photo XP-8700. Of these three, only the last one lacks an automatic document feeder, making it closer to today’s test unit than the TR8620 and XP-7100.

(Credit: HP)

Like the 7955e, the Envy Inspire 7255e has a 2.7-inch color touchscreen that allows you to set up and run copy and scan jobs from the control panel as well as create shortcut profiles to automate specific tasks such as: and can be edited. Scan documents and send them to one or more cloud sites.

(Credit: HP)

Shortcuts can include all information about your workflow, such as scan resolution (dots per inch or dpi), single- or double-sided scanning or copying, single or multiple destinations, and more. Unlike the Envy Inspire 7955e, the 7255e cannot print legal size sheets. The main input tray supports custom sizes from 3.85″ to 8.5″ wide and 5″ to 12.2″ long. A dedicated photo tray accepts three sizes of media: 4 x 6 inches, 5 x 5 inches, and 5 x 7 inches.

(Credit: William Harrell)

The main paper tray holds 125 sheets of paper and a dedicated insert holds 15 sheets of photo paper. The printer can create panoramic photos in sizes including 4 x 12 inches. The Inspire has a maximum monthly duty cycle of 1,000 pages and a recommended monthly print volume of 300-400, similar to the specs of its brother his 7955e.

In contrast, the Pixma TR8620 has a monthly maximum of 5x and a monthly recommendation of 1,000 pages. You can also store double the amount of paper. Both of the Epson inkjets above hold 120 sheets (100 plain paper and 20 photo stock), but Epson hasn’t released duty cycle ratings for consumer printers for some time. My educated guess is that their capacities are somewhere between the HP and Canon models. Few users reach the maximum capacity of these printers in any given month.

Finally, it’s important to note that Canon and the two Epson’s are consumer photo printers like the Envy, but with significantly different ink cartridges. Most photo printers from other manufacturers use 5 or 6 individual color cartridges, but the 7255e and other Envy Inspire inkjets only use 4 inks from 2 cartridges.

(Credit: William Harrell)

We’ll see how the number of inks affects print quality in a moment, but as I’ve complained over the years, two-cartridge inkjets are inherently wasteful, regardless of the manufacturer. Take out the color cartridge and his two remaining inks.

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Setting Up and Using the Inspire 7255e: Connections and Software

Another difference between the new Envy Inspire and the model 7955e is that the latter supports both wired (Ethernet) and wireless (802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi) networks. The 7255e only offers wireless networking. Both devices can be connected to a single PC using a USB cable (must be purchased separately) and support Bluetooth Low Energy for printer setup from a phone or tablet.

(Credit: HP)

Drivers and other connectivity software range from Mopria Print Service (Android) and Apple AirPrint to ChromeOS support and HP Smart App. Smart apps are the most important. It’s more than just a printer driver and interface for the four operating systems it supports (Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android). Use this software to create and modify workflow profiles or shortcuts for specific tasks such as scanning to email, PDF, or optical character recognition (OCR) programs, scanning to or printing from your favorite cloud sites can. You can also use your phone’s camera as a scanner and send a snapshot of the page to a smart app for processing as a scanned document.

(Credit: HP)

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Testing the Envy Inspire 7255e: How Slow Can It Go?

Like most entry-level all-in-ones, this printer is on the slow side: HP rates it at 10 pages per minute (ppm) for color pages and 15 ppm for black and white pages. To test it, I connected an Envy Inspire 7255e to the testbed via USB, an Intel Core i5 PC running Windows 10 Pro and the HP Smart app. First, we printed several 12-page single-sided and 12-page double-sided (24-sided) documents and timed HP to average the results. Single-sided (single-sided) documents matched the advertised 15ppm exactly, and double-sided documents managed 6.7ipm. This matched the speed of the HP 7955e. The Canon TR8620 matched the HP’s duplex performance, but lagged 1.2ppm in single-sided printing speed, and the Epson XP-7100 also scored 15ppm on simplex, and about half that on duplex. The XP-8700 was rated at a sluggish 9.5ppm and lifted the rear.

Next, I clocked the 7255e and printed a compilation of colorful and intricate business documents, including Adobe Acrobat PDFs with intricate artwork and text in a variety of fonts and colors. A Microsoft Excel spreadsheet containing charts and graphs. and Microsoft PowerPoint handouts. Averaging these results and adding them to the Word score yielded an overall rating of 7.1 ppm for the entire set of test documents. This may seem low, but it’s actually not bad among entry-level consumer photo printers. The Epson and Canon inkjets were close, but the HP 7955e was only 0.1ppm faster.

Finally, I timed HP to print out a colorful and highly detailed 4 x 6 inch snapshot. At an average of 49 seconds per photo, which is about average for its class, both Epson were noticeably faster.

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Attractive print quality and running costs

Like other entry-level HP All-in-Ones, the Envy Inspire 7255e produced enough text documents and business graphics for home businesses and student homework. The text was very readable, most of the handouts and other business graphics looked great, without ugly banding or other ink placement defects, and the fills and gradients flowed evenly from shade to shade. rice field.

For the most part, the Inspire photos turned out just as well, but with my trained eye, I noticed inaccurate color variations in some of the photos and handouts across the page. We found that dual-cartridge designs like HP’s don’t match the color accuracy and detail of competitive printers that use five or six inks, but these weren’t subtle or unsightly flaws. To be fair, those machines cost more to use.

In that regard, where some HP printers stand out from the competition is that their HP+ and Instant Ink subscription programs offer relatively cheap consumables for the life of the printer. When you sign up and create an account, ink is free for the first 6 months with no obligation to continue beyond the first 180 days. After that, your running costs will depend on which of the 5 monthly subscriptions you choose. Prices range from 99 cents for 15 pages per month to 24.99 cents for 700 pages per month.

With Instant Ink, you pay a flat fee per page. Just under 3.6 cents for the 700-page plan, or 1 nickel if you’re paying $4.99 per month for a 100-page package. Its price remains constant regardless of the amount of ink contained on each individual page. A page of double-spaced black text would cost as much as an 8.5 x 11 inch borderless color photo and 100% ink. If you print lots of graphics-heavy pages or borderless photos, HP Instant Ink can save you a bundle.

Another way to reduce operating costs is bulk ink that uses refillable tanks instead of cartridges, such as the Canon Pixma G620 Wireless MegaTank All-in-One and the Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8500 Wireless Color All-in-One Supertank. It’s a printer. These machines can cost you less than a penny per page for both black and white and color pages. It’s great value for high volume printing (at least a few hundred pages per month), but costs a few hundred dollars more to purchase.

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Verdict: Who Needs ADF?

The answer to that question is, “Anyone who copies or scans a page or two more than a few times a month,” and that determines how you feel about the HP Envy Inspire 7255e. If you don’t need a scanner that can feed automatically and don’t mind signing up for Instant Ink to save a bundle, you’ll find that this Envy is good enough for most home, hybrid work, and lightweight printing. I understand. Photo-centric environment. On the other hand, if you need an ADF and aren’t too concerned with saving running costs, his Editors’ Choice winning Epson Expression Premium XP-7100 is a much better option.