I'm considering buying the HP Officejet Pro Wireless e-All-in-One Model 8500A Plus

HP Officejet pro Wireless e-All-In-One Model 8500A Plus

After 10 years of pouring ink into cheap inkjet printers, I am fed up with them! I wanted to upgrade to a laser printer, but this one says it uses LESS ink than a laser! To quote exactly,

"Print professional color documents for up to 50% lower cost per page than lasers, using HP Officejet inks."
What's with that? Is it a scam to lock you into using HP ink? I know you B$'ers are smart, so please give me your input.

I have about $130 in worklife rewards to use, and I am willing to pay some cash as well. The ad for this one lists it as $249.99, regular $399.99. It also offers a $50 trade in instant savings! For real? They can donate mine to a relic or a "Ripley's Believe it or Not" museum!

I need it to function with Windows as well as Linux (Debian specifically). According to the specs, it looks like it is a go. Anyone tried it for yourself?

I'm looking forward to your helpful replies! Hugs, B$ friends!

It it quite possible the per page cost for this model is cheaper than a laser printer.

for comparisions sake, I'm only going to compare black ink to toner.

The 8500 uses the 940xl black ink cart. Amazon sells it for $33.12 (its cheaper if you buy it from another seller)

It has a yield of 2200 pages.



A popular canon laser toner is the canon 104. Its sold on amazon for $64.74 with a yield of 2000 pages.


8500a: $33.12 / 2200 pages = 0.015 / page

canon 104: 64.74 / 2000 pages = 0.0294 page

The estimate yields can be deceiving because not every drop of ink/toner is used for printing. Some of it is used for cleaning and sometimes ink carts can report as empty even though its not.



If you need to print in color, go with the inkjet. If you need to print only in b/w, go with a laser

One thing I absolutely hate about the HP Officejet/Deskjet printers is the installation. HP forces the installation of alot of software. Doesn't matter if it's one of the cheap $39 models or several hundred. However, if you can get past that I have alot of people with HP Officejet/Deskjet printers and they love them. One issue I've seen is the print heads going bad too soon (less than 2 years with moderate use) and they can be very expensive to replace. Not in all cases, but enough.

I recently aquired an Epson Workforce printer from a client (who likes to get new stuff every year) and the thing worked great....but I didn't need it so I sold it. I don't remember the model number, but it sold for around $250 new.

I personally don't print color too often. I tend to like small B&W laser printers, such as the HP P1102 or Brother HL-2240. So if you want just a small B&W laser take a look at those.