HP Officejet Pro K850 Printer Review

Upon first glance, the HP Officejet Pro K850 is a high dollar printer that isn't going to be filling in the massive consumer demand for printers with a variety of different functions. Unlike other printers in this price range, the HP Officejet Pro K850 isn't a combination printer and people aren't going to buying it for it's scanning or photo printing capabilities. That being said, it's focus is more on being a decently affordable, heavy duty economical printing machine. That's what it's made for. Let's see if this new printer from HP delivers on these claims.

The HP Officejet Pro k850 is larger than it's HP brothers and sisters, and for good reason. If you're in the world of graphic design, web design, billboard design or basically any art field and you're needing a printer that can handle different page formats, paper sizes and a fully customizable layout the HP Officejet Pro k850 delivers on this claim. That's why I said this was a specialty printer. If you don't need these functions, you don't need this printer.

One of the interesting choices HP made when designing this printer was to give it a more traditional 4 ink tank design instead of the classic 6 ink tank design. They say this is to make the printer more economical in terms of printing costs, but it seems to me that if you're going to pay the $400 price tag for this printer, you want the vibrancy that the 6 ink tank design brings. Upon testing print quality the results were very good, crisp and clear but I'm left stuck with the "what if" question in the back of my mind about the six ink tank design. If they would have included six tanks, I bet the quality would be unparalleled. For me, this feature belongs more on budget models than on a high grade, high dollar highly specialized printing machine.

Printing speed suffers due to the high demand on these 4 ink tanks. If you're dealing with graphics that only need to be printed once it's not going to be a problem. However, if you're in the field of graphic design and you need to print flyers, post cards, posters or any other sort of media in bulk, you're going to be waiting around for a while for the task to get done. This is another shocking lack in this printer that just makes me beg the question: "why?".

Connectivity is something that's not an issue. HP has done a great job in giving consumers a variety of different options in which to connect your printer to your computer, connect the printer to the internet or a connect to a network but this fails to make up for lacking features such as print speed and the 4 ink tank design (which holds incredibly expensive cartridges).

All in all, this printer might be okay if you're needing it for simple tasks like printing samples of your work or photos, but even now I'm failing to understand how this printer is going to compete in the world of fully functional, fast printing and less pricey printers with better print quality. HP, you have failed me this time.

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