HP Envy Inspire 7255e All

HP's Envy Inspire 7255e ($229.99, on sale when we published this for $179.99) is a multifunction inkjet printer that replaces the company's Envy Photo 6255. Rather than look up that 2018 model, however, you'd do better to check out our review of the Envy Inspire 7955e from a year ago—this new all-in-one is nearly identical to that printer, with an automatic document feeder (ADF), Ethernet, and a few other features taken out. Overall, the Inspire 7255e is a sound machine for home offices or families, or for use as a personal AIO printer. Compared to photo-centric consumer machines from Canon and Epson, though, its print quality leaves a little to be desired in some situations. It does, however, come with six months of free ink via HP's Instant Ink and HP+ services, making it more than adequate for low-volume use, and assuming you don't copy or scan multipage documents all that often.

The Envy Inspire 7255e (on the right in the image below) might be the successor to the Envy Photo 6255, but they don't look much alike, as you can see:

Here's another comparison of the 7255e (at left in the photo below), this time showing its resemblance to last year's Envy Inspire 7955e:

The latter is topped with an ADF, which of course lets you scan or copy multipage documents (either single- or double-sided) while tending to some other task or taking a break, rather than having to stand by and place pages on the scanning glass one at a time. For all but occasional work with multipage documents, especially in an office, the lack of an ADF is a deal-breaker.

The new HP measures 7.5 by 18.1 by 20.1 inches (HWD) with its trays closed and weighs just over 15 pounds. That makes it a couple of inches shorter and almost 3 pounds lighter than the Inspire 7955e. Some close competitors include the Canon Pixma TR8620, the Epson Expression Premium XP-7100 Small-in-One, and the Epson Expression Photo XP-8700. Of those three, only the last lacks an automatic document feeder, making it closer to today's test unit than the TR8620 and XP-7100, which are taller by two or three inches and outweigh it by as many pounds.

Like the 7955e, the Envy Inspire 7255e has a 2.7-inch color touch screen that allows you to set up and execute copy and scan jobs from the control panel, as well as create and edit shortcut profiles for automating specific tasks such as, say, scanning documents and sending them to one or more cloud sites.

Shortcuts can contain all information about workflows, such as scan resolution (dots per inch or dpi), one- or two-sided scanning or copying, single and/or multiple destinations, and more. Unlike the Envy Inspire 7955e, the 7255e can't print legal-size sheets; the main input tray supports custom sizes between 3.85 inches and 8.5 inches in width and between 5 inches and 12.2 inches in length. The dedicated photo tray accepts three sizes of media (4 by 6 inches, 5 by 5 inches, and 5 by 7 inches).

The primary paper tray holds 125 sheets, while the dedicated insert holds 15 sheets of photo paper. The printer can produce panoramic photos in sizes including 4 by 12 inches. The Inspire's maximum monthly duty cycle is 1,000 pages, with a recommended monthly volume of 300 to 400 prints, similar to the specs of its 7955e sibling.

By contrast, the Pixma TR8620's monthly maximum is five times as great, with a suggested monthly volume of 1,000 pages. It also holds twice as much paper. Both of the abovementioned Epson inkjets hold 120 sheets (100 sheets of plain paper and 20 of photo stock), but Epson hasn't published duty-cycle ratings for its consumer-grade printers for some time. My educated guess is that their capacities fall between the HP and Canon models'. Chances are few users will reach any of these printers' maximum capacities in any given month.

Finally, it's important to note that the Canon and the two Epsons are, like the Envy, consumer photo printers, but their ink cartridges are considerably different. Most photo printers from other manufacturers use five or six separate color cartridges, while the 7255e and other Envy Inspire inkjets use only four inks from two cartridges—one large black tank, and one tricolor cartridge that holds cyan, magenta, and yellow inks.

We'll look at how the number of inks affects print quality in a minute, but as we've complained for many years and no matter for which manufacturer, two-cartridge inkjets are inherently wasteful because when one color runs dry, you must throw out the tricolor cartridge and its two remaining inks.

Another difference between the new Envy Inspire and the model 7955e is that the latter supports both wired (Ethernet) and wireless (802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi) networking. The 7255e offers only wireless networking. Both devices can be connected to a single PC with a USB cable, which you'll need to purchase separately, and support Bluetooth Low Energy for printer setup from a phone or tablet.

Drivers and other connectivity software ranges from Mopria Print Service (Android) and Apple AirPrint to ChromeOS support and HP Smart App. Most important is Smart App, which is more than just a printer driver and interface for the four operating systems (Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android) it supports. The software lets you create and modify workflow profiles or shortcuts for specific tasks such as scanning to email, PDF, or an optical character recognition (OCR) program, or scanning to or printing from your favorite cloud sites. It also lets you use your smartphone's camera as a scanner, sending snapshots of pages to Smart App for treatment as scanned documents.

Like most entry-level all-in-ones, this printer is on the slow side. HP rates it at 10 pages per minute (ppm) for color pages and 15ppm for black and white. To test that, I connected the Envy Inspire 7255e to our testbed via USB, an Intel Core i5 PC running Windows 10 Pro and HP Smart App. First, I clocked the HP as it printed our one-sided 12-page and two-sided 12-page (24 sides) documents several times and averaged the results. The simplex (one-sided) document precisely matched the advertised 15ppm, while the duplex document managed 6.7ipm. That matched the speed of the HP 7955e. The Canon TR8620 tied the HP's duplex performance but trailed its simplex speed by 1.2ppm, while the Epson XP-7100 also posted 15ppm in single-sided printing and about half that for double-sided. The XP-8700, rated at a sluggish 9.5ppm, brought up the rear.

Next, I clocked the 7255e as it printed our compilation of colorful and complex business documents, including Adobe Acrobat PDFs with intricate artwork and text in assorted fonts and colors; Microsoft Excel spreadsheets with charts and graphs; and Microsoft PowerPoint handouts. Averaging these results and adding them to the Word score, I came up with an overall rating of 7.1ppm for our entire suite of test documents. That may seem low, but it's actually not bad among entry-level consumer photo printers; the Epson and Canon inkjets were close, while the HP 7955e was a negligible 0.1ppm faster.

Finally, I timed the HP as it printed a few colorful and highly detailed 4-by-6-inch snapshots. It averaged 49 seconds per photo, which is about average for this class, though both Epsons were noticeably faster.

Like other entry-level HP all-in-ones, the Envy Inspire 7255e produced text documents and business graphics plenty good enough for a home business or a student's homework. Text was highly legible, and most of the handouts and other business graphics looked good, with solid fills and gradients that flowed evenly from shade to shade without unattractive banding or other ink-placement flaws.

For the most part, the Inspire's photos looked good, as well, though my trained eye noticed some inaccurate color shifts in a few photos and full-page handouts. These weren't glaring or unsightly flaws, though they confirmed that dual-cartridge designs like HP's can't match the color accuracy and detail of competing printers with five or six inks. To be fair, those machines are more expensive to use.

On that point, an advantage that several HP printers have over their rivals is that the company's HP+ and Instant Ink subscription programs provide relatively inexpensive consumables over the life of the printer. By signing up and creating an account, you get the first six months of ink free, with no obligation to continue beyond the initial 180-day period. After that, your running costs depend on which of five monthly subscriptions you choose, ranging from 99 cents for 15 pages per month to $24.99 for 700 pages per month.

With Instant Ink, you pay a flat rate per page—just under 3.6 cents for the 700-page plan, or a nickel if you pay $4.99 a month for the 100-page package. That price is constant no matter how much ink an individual page contains; a double-spaced page of black text will cost you exactly as much as an 8.5-by-11-inch borderless color photo with 100% ink coverage. If you print a lot of graphics-heavy pages and borderless photos, HP Instant Ink can save you a bundle.

An alternative route to lower operating costs is a bulk-ink printer that uses refillable tanks instead of cartridges, such as the Canon Pixma G620 Wireless MegaTank All-in-One or the Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8500 Wireless Color All-in-One Supertank. These machines can drive your costs down to less than a penny per page for both black and color pages—an exceptional value if you print a lot (at least a few hundred pages monthly)—but their purchase prices are hundreds of dollars higher.

The answer to that question is "Anybody who copies or scans more than a page or two more than a few times a month," and that will determine your feelings about the HP Envy Inspire 7255e. If you don't require a scanner capable of feeding itself, and don't mind signing up for Instant Ink to save a bundle, you'll find this Envy prints plenty well enough for most home, hybrid-work, and light-printing photo-centric environments. On the other hand, if you want an ADF and are not as concerned with saving money on running costs, the Editors' Choice-winning Epson Expression Premium XP-7100 is a much better option.

HP's Envy Inspire 7255e prints well and gives you a free six months of ink if you sign up for HP+, making it a good but not class-leading family or home-office value.

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