Score: 7/10 (Good)
Pros Nice design, paper tray holds half a ream of paper, good printing quality, decent selection of applications. | Cons No option for duplex printing, lacks any type of SD card slot or USB port. |
Although they may not be the most exciting pieces of technology, printers are still a very important gadget for any office. Between printing spreadsheets, faxing official documents, and more, an office needs a printer to function properly. With the OfficeJet 6600, HP is looking directly at the market of small business, people who work from their home, or anyone working in a small office cubicle. With a relatively compact design, large loading tray, applications, and more, the 6600 has quite a bit going for it. But, with its lack of a couple key features for an office printer, how does the OfficeJet 6600 stack up to the competition? Let's find out in our full review!
Design/Build Quality
The OfficeJet 6600 doesn't revolutionize anything for the design of printers. It is your standard black box-looking printer. On the top, you will find the printer's 35-page ADF (Automatic Document Feeder). Lifting up the ADF tray will reveal the printer's scanner. Below the scanner on the right, lies the 6600's 2.65-inch touchscreen. To the left of that is your area to add/replace your ink cartridges. The paper output tray can be found directly below this, and directly below the output tray you will find the paper input tray. What's especially nice about the paper input tray, is that it can hold a total of 250 pages of paper (half of a ream). This is quite helpful, as it does not require you to constantly reload the OfficeJet 6600 with more paper. Throughout the design of the 6600, there are multiple curved and rounded edges and corners. This, along with the combination of glossy and non-glossy black-colored plastic, do make the OfficeJet 6600 easy on the eyes. What's not so great about the OfficeJet 6600's design, is the fact that there are no card slots or USB ports. This means that you have no option to print or scan from a USB flash drive, SD card, or anything.
Hardware
One of the coolest features of the HP OfficeJet 6600 is its e-print function. E-print allows you to print anything off your printer, no matter where you are. How does it work though? It’s actually quite simple. Once you get your 6600, and
sign onto your account on HP’s website, your printer will be given a random email for itself. By sending emails to the address that is assigned to your printer, your printer will print out whatever you type up in your message. The OfficeJet 6600 also has excellent print quality, while not sucking up too much of your precious ink. Colors are very accurate, pictures are detailed, and after printing numerous text documents and high quality images on photo paper, the ink cartridges were still less than half empty. There is one downside though when it comes to printing on the 6600. There is a very noticeable lack of duplex printing (being able to print on both sides of a piece of paper). This feature is quickly becoming very common on inkjet all-in-one printers, and the savings cost of paper it provides is huge. Not having this on the 6600, especially when it is being marketed towards small business and home offices, is very strange, and also a bit of a letdown.
sign onto your account on HP’s website, your printer will be given a random email for itself. By sending emails to the address that is assigned to your printer, your printer will print out whatever you type up in your message. The OfficeJet 6600 also has excellent print quality, while not sucking up too much of your precious ink. Colors are very accurate, pictures are detailed, and after printing numerous text documents and high quality images on photo paper, the ink cartridges were still less than half empty. There is one downside though when it comes to printing on the 6600. There is a very noticeable lack of duplex printing (being able to print on both sides of a piece of paper). This feature is quickly becoming very common on inkjet all-in-one printers, and the savings cost of paper it provides is huge. Not having this on the 6600, especially when it is being marketed towards small business and home offices, is very strange, and also a bit of a letdown.
Software
As mentioned earlier in the Design/Build Quality part of the review, the OfficeJet 6600 features a 2.65-inch touchscreen. From this touchscreen, you control what you print, scan, fax, copy, etc. All of the printer's functions are accessed through the touchscreen. To left of the touchscreen, there is a home button and a left arrow button. On the right, lies a help button and a right arrow button. From your home screen, you have large icons for Copy, Fax, Apps, Scan, Setup, Auto Answer, and Discover. Above these icons, are four smaller buttons. From these buttons, you can check to see if the 6600 has any available software updates, the status of its Wi-Fi connection, settings for the display's brightness and timeout, and the amount of ink remaining in your ink cartridges.
One feature on the OfficeJet 6600 that I really liked were the apps. The 6600 comes preloaded with the option of being able to print notebook paper, blank music sheets, calendars, checklists, and more. You also have access to a fairly large app store. From here, you can download apps that allow you to print puzzles, crosswords, coloring pages, coupons, menu planners, among other things.
Final Verdict
So, is the HP OfficeJet 6600 a good printer for small businesses and home offices like HP is marketing it to be? Yes and no. The OfficeJet 6600's nice design, large paper holding tray, great print quality, and downloadable applications make it very efficient. However, due to the lack of duplex printing, and the noticeable absence of an SD card slot and USB ports, the 6600 isn't quite as versatile as I would have liked. For $125, the OfficeJet 6600 isn't a bad printer by any means. It has all of the basics you need from a printer, and puts them in a relatively nice looking box. With that said, if you are looking for a printer for business use, you might want too look elsewhere for something that has duplex printing and an SD card slot and USB ports.
Author: Joseph Maring
Author: Joseph Maring
RSS Feed