The HP Envy 4500 may be cheap; however, its specifications are those of an extra-expensive printer. There's assistance for wireless networking and automated duplex printing, for example. Unlike budget entries in HP's Deskjet array, even those with Wi-Fi, the Envy 4500 likewise supports HP's ePrinting standard.
This indicates you can set it up with an e-mail address, and it'll print anything sent to that address. It likewise supports printing from Android and iPhone mobile phones, which is common to many printers and all-in-ones with either cordless or wired networking.
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| HP Envy 4500 - hp.com |
HP Envy 4500 Review
It's worth noting that HP markets the Envy 4500 under a selection of extremely similar design numbers; however, whether you're looking at an HP Envy 4500, Envy 4523, Envy 4524 or Envy 4527, you'll end up with the same printing, scanning and copying functions as the model we're checking here.
Once established, you start to see where HP has actually made financial savings to bring the Envy 4500 to its price point. It uses black and tricolour ink cartridges, as opposed to the individual storage tanks found on extra-pricy printers, which means you'll need to replace your colour cartridge as soon as you've depleted one of its colours, instead of changing colours individually based on your usage.
Its monochrome display screen isn't touch-sensitive either. Neither compromise is unreasonable given the cost, but the paper handling is too fundamental. The input tray is captive in the base, and when loaded with A4 paper the front panel can't be shut. Mono print prices are surprisingly high at 4p per web page, and HP's high-yield XL cartridges are also used.
This is balanced by a reduced colour expense of 5.75 p per page, giving you a reasonable mixed black-and-colour cost of 9.8 p. However, it's worth keeping in mind that tri-colour cartridges can have hidden costs: you need to replace the entire cartridge if you're missing any one colour of ink.
The user interface layout for both the scanner and printer components of HP's MFPs is often confusing. In this case, the user interface of the Envy 4500 print chauffeur is also straightforward for an MFP primarily intended for household customers. It tidies away way too many typical options in the hostile Advanced section.
Exceptionally, this includes paper dimensions, which is a basic setting for anyone who needs to print images, especially as the Envy range offers full support for indeterminate photo printing, unlike HP's Deskjet range.
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The TWAIN scanner user interface is similarly oversimplified and offers only predefined resolution options, none of which include 150 dpi, which is one of our standard examination resolutions.
Luckily, there's a lot to like about the Envy 4500's print quality. It generated fairly good black text on simple paper, while colour graphics were superb. Shades had genuine stamina, with little indication of banding or other inkjet weaknesses.
With only 3 colours, and given that the pigment-based black isn't used for the task, this isn't a remarkable photo printer. Nonetheless, the outcomes were still fairly good on a selection of coated documents. Our one gripe was that the paper transport device's hold wheels left small tracks on the glossy coating of our A4 black-and-white test print.
While black tones at first looked distinctly light and blue, they developed over a couple of days into a much deeper shade, although they never quite matched prints generated by gadgets with a dedicated photo black cartridge.
HP Envy 4500 review: Verdict
Despite some niggles this MFP does well and is about as smart-looking as a printer gets. When we initially evaluated the Envy 4500, it cost ₤ 9; however, prices fell steadily after its release, and despite it currently being end-of-line, you may find it going for low prices online
It remains a reasonable MFP with wireless capabilities, although you do end up making concessions regarding consumables. That said, instead of changing the tri-colour cartridge every time one of the ink storage tanks runs low, we'd rather invest slightly more in a printer with individual colour ink tanks.
