HP Officejet Pro 8000 Wireless review

The Officejet Pro 8000 got off to a shaky start in the Labs, with our sample’s ageing installation CD refusing to acknowledge the existence of Windows 7. After a trip to the website and a lengthy 99MB download (that’s the basic driver; the full bloatware suite is a ridiculous 235MB), we were up and running.

As the name implies, it has a more professional bent than the A-Listed Canon Pixma iP4700, with duplex, Ethernet and 802.11g wireless printing as standard. It also includes that rare thing: a USB cable. Ironically, this is supplied principally for setting up the wireless connection.

Document printing is the HP’s bread and butter, blitzing the home inkjet competition with 11.5ppm in mono and 7.1ppm in colour, and the quality is right up there with anything from the iP4700’s pigmented black. But the Officejet’s colour inks are pigmented too, and image quality is decent: our 6 x 4in prints showed deep blacks and plenty of detail, albeit not as vivid or sharp as the Canon. Proving it isn’t meant as a photo specialist, each print took nearly a minute and a half to fall into the sturdy output tray.

The Officejet comes only with introductory ink tanks, but replacing those when they run dry with HP’s giant XL tanks will give you A4 colour pages for just 3p each, making this a very cheap inkjet to run in the long term. We’d certainly opt for the Canon if you’re likely to print large quantities of photos, but the Officejet Pro 8000 Wireless has a lot in its favour for a home office.