HP K8600 Office Jet Pro Color Printer

Product Description

HP K8600 Office Jet Pro Color Printer

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 16.5 x 24 x 8.8 inches ; 27.1 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 35 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0010Z1UVW
• Item model number: K8600
  

Technical Details

• HP K8600 Office Jet Pro Color Printer

Costumer Reviews

If any graphic design artists need to print in CMYK and wide format, this is probably the best printer you can get in terms of cost and quality. The 88 ink is super cheap and it pumps out a LOT of pages. If you plan on doing a lot of printing but don't wanna pay as much as a laser jet printer, you should use a printer that uses the 88 ink. For 20.99 this cartridge can give you 1200 pages. What other cartridge on the market can do that for so cheap? What's even better is how 34 bucks you can get the XL and the XL can do 2400 pages. Again, what cartridge do you know of can give you 2400 pages for 34 bucks? It's a great printer at a great price when you can find it on sale.

I gave this a low rating, not because it is a poor printer, but because it can't do everything I expected it to from it's description and specifications without a lot of messing around. And maybe not even then. Not as near as good as the older HP 1220 that it is to replace.

I use it to print model aircraft plans and the included instruction booklets. I develop the plans in both raster graphic and CAD programs. Some pages are up to 24 inches long. The vast majority fit on 11 by 17 inch paper.

This printer is great for printing the photos and instructions I include, and was hoping I could do everything with this one that I could do with my old 1220.

However, under some conditions, this printer seems to want to ignore the margins assigned to the printout, and create either wider or narrower ones on its own. After three weeks of daily printing with this printer, I have yet to figure out how to get around this.

The margins are important for these plans, as the drawings MUST be reproduced full size, with no enlarging or shrinking of the images so that the parts constructed from them fit together.

I have noticed that it will print full size, IF a paper is used that is significantly larger than the drawing. For example, a 10 by 16 inch drawing will be enlarged somewhat (about 1/16 of an inch)if I try to print it on 11 by 17 inch paper, but prints exactly right by just changing to 13 by 19 inch paper. The problem is that the 13 by 19 inch paper is much more expensive, and I have to trim off a lot of it to fit the folders. It also doesn't look very professional to have wide, blank margins.

One more example is when printing a drawing that used to fit on legal paper (8.5 by 14) I now have to print on 11 by 17 for it to print full size without being enlarged! Adjusting the margins on HPs printer setup, and/or the programs' print setup, does not help, but usually makes it worse. Selecting the "Print At Actual Size" option does not help.

Also, in booklet mode, it wants to print much smaller than the 1220 printer did and the word processor defines. The old 1220 would print the actual size as defined in the Wordperfect program. But the K8600 increases the margins and shrinks the print about 20% making some of the print almost unreadable. It does format the pages correctly though.

However, in duplex mode, or single page print of the same text, it prints normally on the same paper! It's just when trying to print text in booklet mode that it shrinks the page. Or when trying to print full size drawings as I used to with the 1220.

Unlike the 1220 (which could print up to an unadvertised 50 inches long) the K8600 won't print anything longer than 19 inches. So, for a few of my drawings, I will still have to use the 1220 until I redraw them to fit on 19 inch paper, if I can. And use the 1220 to print the booklets until (or if) I ever figure out how to prevent the shrinking of images despite the settings.

So, for the time being, I am still using the 1220 for many drawings and the booklets.

But, the duplexer is great! No more turning the paper over to complete the booklet print or print on both sides of a sheet...it does it automatically! I can just walk away and come back when it is completely finished.

In favor of the K8600, the ink cartridges are MUCH cheaper, and with 4 of them , I don't have to toss out an entire cartridge when just one color is out, as I did with the 1220. The print is super fast, and very high quality, even in draft mode...and the photos and drawings are superb...when they are the correct size.