HP OfficeJet Pro 8620 All-in-One Wireless Color Printer with Mobile Printing, HP Instant Ink or Amazon Dash replenishment ready (A7F65A)

This is a great printer for a small, and not so small, office or home/office. Now, to be clear I'm a fan of HP printers. I've owned several over the years, using them in a real estate business for everything from flyers to legal documents. In each case the printers outlasted the other electronics (computers, cameras, etc.) purchased and used at the same time. I had very high hopes for this all-in-one based on stellar reviews. I've had mine now for only a short time but I'm already seeing the limitations of this generally very functional office printer.I usually write long reviews, but here I'll try to be brief and hit the pros and cons of HP's 8620.OVERALL; it's a more than capable printer and I'm happy enough with my purchase to keep it. Part of my decision to keep it, rather than opt for a competing product like the Epson WorkForce 3640, is that I've decided to go with long-term reliability over a more sensational print quality or lower price - the latter two (higher quality printing and lower purchase price) I associate with the Epson. I almost pulled the trigger on the Epson 3640 as it seems to address the weaknesses of the HP 8620, but I opted for the HP due to Epson's know issues with wasting expensive ink cartridges and frequent printer head clogs. The HP was nearly twice the price of the Epson ($225 vs $125) - yet I was worried that long-term cost of Epson ink would quickly offset Epson's lower purchase price.PROS:Functionality is high on this HP printer! The wireless printing has been flawless. Both remote e-printing and wireless printing from my Sony laptop, Asus tablet and Samsung Note 3 smartphone have been excellent. The same applies to scanning and copying. I haven't used it as a fax, but it appears from the 3.5 LCD and printing prompts that printing can be done as an efax... So again, funtionality as an all-in-one could not be better.Cost and reliability of ink and print mechanisms is also very good - maybe even excellent. When comparing ink cartridge pricing with Epson, the cost per page were anecdotally about half the cost! Then given HP's high reviews on ink replacement and general printer reliability, I had to go with HP over Epson. So, low print cost and reliability = win for HP. Clogging and frequent refilling of ink = fail for Epson (even though Epson's overall print quality is superior).Print, scan and copy speeds are also very good. Excluding wireless printing from tablets and smartphones (which both print quite slowly), the standard print, copy, scan functions are fast!Print quality is where the tide starts to turn somewhat. I've had other HP printers in the past that used older technology (I assume) but printed more eye-popping color. The overall quality is good, especially with text. But the quality of photos and graphics is okay, and honestly, I was hoping for better. So, print quality of the HP is a mixed bag of mostly good, but not great.CONS:Print quality is only good. That may seem unfair to list this as a "con." But in fairness, print quality is such a key feature of printer ratings that "good" is just okay. Again, I've decided to trade great (Epson) for good (HP) due to other considerations already mentioned. And while totally acceptable, I was a little disappointed that the quality of the HP 8620 printing wasn't "great" based on many of the reviews I read.Another negative, and frankly a disappointment, is that HP has opted for a type of dedicated paper tray that doesn't allow for manual feeding (at least not easily) of different print stocks. So, if you want to switch to photo paper, cardstock or envelopes, you have to clunkily remove the entire paper tray and paper, then replace them with whatever stock you plan on trying to print on. This is just impractical for an all-in-one that's supposed to cater to small to moderate sized business. The Epson WorkForce by comparison allows you to feed different media/stock through a bypass tray. I almost returned the HP 8620 for this reason alone.A very minor and final negative of the HP 8620 is that it is BIG. It just seems like HP could have either trimmed down the footprint/size, or at least easily added a bypass tray, because of the size of this thing! When you open the front panel there is room to spare - so it just makes this printer seem unnecessarily large. That said, it does fit on the same desk as my laptop with external keyboard, additional monitors and stereo speakers. So while not a deal-breaker by any means, the larger size ends up being just a minor negative.MY CONCLUSION; is that the biggest weakness of this HP is the graphic and photo print quality. The quality is not bad, and you could even say it's good. It's just not great - which I wish it was. But I'm unwilling to deal with Epson's known print head clogging issues and need to constantly be replacing ink cartridges.HP is a very solid choice for overall performance and functionality. I'll be back with an update after a few months of use to see if any of my initial thoughts have changed.

UPDATE#3:Okay the second printer is just under 5 months old and... we got the dreaded "printhead appears to be missing error. Ran through HP's insane trouble shooting routine 3 times as they direct and it still doesn't work. Out of desperation I replace all the print cartridges ($75 worth) and it still doesn't work. Let the fun begin and call HP Support. By this time I have spent at least 6 hours trying to make this hunk of crap work and have had the unit exchanged once. Right from the start the only way I could get this "wireless" printer to work was by connecting an Ethernet cable to it! And even then it would randomly lose connectivity and need to be rebooted. Now the printhead error. By the way there is class action lawsuit going for this issue already. Too late for Amazon to offer support and HP won't give a refund because I bought it from Amazon. HP wants to send me a 3rd unit. Are you kidding me, the first 2 never worked as advertised and now a fatal error on the 3rd before the first ink cartridges have been used up. It's just sad, HP was such a great company. It only took 15 years of bad leadership to kill it. RIP Hewlett Packard.UPDATE #2:We are on our second printer and the wireless communication problems continue. Forget getting any meaningful support from HP. These guys just keep running in the repair loop. I have been reading that more people are having the same problem too. Best guess now is the WiFi on board can't deal with dual band routers. Even if the high frequency channel has a different SSID. We really should return this hunk of crap but one last attempt for a work around; we"ll try to use it connected via Ethernet only. Nothing like paying for non-existent capabilities!UPDATE: We can't take it anymore, this unit is being returned for an exchange. Based on all the good reviews I'm hopeful we just got a lemon, we'll see. I love Amazon, making the exchange is an easy process. New printer should be here is a couple of days.ORIGINAL REVIEW: I can't tell you how disappointing this printer is. I'm a former employee of HP and still work for Keysight Technologies, the original HP test and measurement business. Not to long ago HP made the highest quality products in the world but sadly those days are gone. For whatever reason I still felt some dedication to the HP brand but this printer has cured me of that. Right out of the box this thing was trouble. I followed what little instructions came with it but then couldn't get it to scan from any of our PCs. Even though I could see the printer on my PCs, when trying to scan I would get an error indicating that the printer lost communication with the PC. After an hour of troubleshooting I decided to call HP. That was an adventure in it self. They don't want you to call, it seems as if they are going out of their way to NOT provide a phone number. If you wander around the website long enough you'll finally find a method to get in line to have a Rep call you back. The call back came pretty promptly but of course the service Rep had such a heavy Indian accent I could barely tell what he was saying. The service Rep stayed on the phone with me for over 2 hours, I give him credit for working hard. Unfortunately some of the gibberish that was said made no sense and demonstrated that HP is willing to try and BS their customers into believing things like Windows 7 might be the problem, but NOT their printer. The tech even suggested the problem was the Windows firewall and I should turn it off. Ultimately it seemed as if the biggest but not only problem with this big black brick is that you can't connect it to your network with the USB cable and use the wireless connection at the same time. So after 3 hours of torture I removed the USB cable and we got the printer to work most of the time. Since then the printer bombs out about 25% of the time and we have to either cycle the power or the wifi connection on the printer to get it connected to our PCs. I will say when it is working the print quality is very good but over all STAY AWAY FROM THIS HUNK OF CRAP!!