More than a new design: HP Officejet Pro 8720 Review

The HP is breaking new ground with the Officejet Pro 8720 multifunctional ink printer: in design, in the paper path, in the inks. That calls for a thorough test. Well this HP Officejet Pro 8720 Full Review & Technical Data.

 

HP Officejet Pro 8720 Review & Full Technical Data

HP has completely revised and further developed the Officejet Pro models of the 8000 series. As the first candidate, Yes E7E brought the HP Officejet Pro 8720 into the laboratory. It replaces the HP Officejet 8620 multifunction printer that we tested at the time. Even from the outside, the newcomer has nothing to do with its predecessor. The housing is kept in white and dark gray. A large touch display measuring 4.3 inches (10.9 centimeters) is emblazoned in the center of the front.

TEST RESULT	HP Officejet Pro 8720
Quality (40%)	1.86
Speed ​​(20%)	2.15
Handling (15%)	3.21
Equipment (15%)	2.85
Service (10%)	3.29
Appreciation / depreciation	-0.35 (HP ePrint, Apple Airprint, Gooogle Cloudprint, NFC, Mopria, Wi-Fi Direct, Dual-Scan)
Test grade	good (2.05)
Price judgment	Cheap

 

With the HP Officejet Pro 8720, the manufacturer has succeeded in doing more than just refreshing the model range. The revised paper path speeds up the duplex printing mode in particular. The touch display is large, easy to use and has a modern design. In general, the multifunction printer is designed for throughput. It is definitely a competition for the classic color laser printers and combination devices. The predecessor HP Officejet Pro 8620 has already achieved this. This is now being replaced, but is still recommended, as the follow-up costs are below the current model. However, if the design of the previous model is too old-fashioned for you, you won’t make a mistake with the current device either.

 

HP Officejet Pro 8620 Pros:

• + New design
• + Duplex printing, duplex scanning
• + Good, large touch display
• + Low follow-up costs

 

HP Officejet Pro 8620 Cons:

• – Not a real switch

New paper management on the HP Officejet Pro 8720

HP has fundamentally redesigned the paper path of the Officejet Pro 8720. It is turned in the printer and lands with the printed side down in the paper catcher. The mechanism is reminiscent of laser printers and has the advantage that the device loses less speed with automatic two-sided printing (duplex), because the otherwise usual pulling back of the sheet after printing on the front is no longer necessary.

In the test, the HP Officejet Pro 8720 confirmed the gain in speed: it achieved 10 pages of text in simplex printing for 30 seconds and achieved a remarkable 42 seconds in the same task in duplex mode. And that although it only outputs the last page printed on the front and back after a short pause.

 

New inks in the HP Officejet Pro 8720

The multifunction printer uses a new generation of inks that are consistently pigmented. It has the identification number HP 953 and offers several ranges: The standard cartridges should be sufficient for 1000 black and white and 700 color pages. In the XL versions, the cartridges offer a range of 2000 pages in black and white and 1600 pages in color. There is also an XXL black cartridge with the identification HP 957XL, which increases the range to 3000 pages.

This is new and has so far only been offered by Canon, for example with the Pixma MX925 multifunction printer. The consumption calculations result in 1.7 cents for the black and white side based on the highest filling quantity – that is very cheap. A colored side can also be seen on the basis of an XL cartridge with 5.6 cents. In both cases, however, the page prices are above the results for the previous model, the HP Officejet Pro 8620. Here we came to 1.2 cents for the black and white and 4.2 cents for the colored sheet.

 

HP Officejet Pro 8620 Quality slight differences, thanks to new inks

The new inks do not bring the big leaps in quality, but change the print quality in details. In text printing and normal mode, the HP Officejet Pro 8720 puts a lot of black ink on the paper. The letters remain neatly sharp, however, making them easy to read. We can only see from fine lines that the coverage is too strong. The colors are usually very bright at HP. The manufacturer has taken this back with the new inks.

Nevertheless, there is little to criticize about the mixed documents with text, graphics and photos. We didn’t notice much difference to the HP Officejet 8620 on photo paper. Here, the paper also contributes to the luminosity of the colors. Skin tones are still warm. In copy mode, we see more details in the color copy than in the predecessor. But this can also be due to the quality of the scanner. It delivers very sharp scans that exaggerate a bit with blue and green. Overall, however, the scan results are convincing.

 

Speed: Very similar to its predecessor

Except for the already mentioned fast duplex printing mode, there was little gain in speed compared to the predecessor. At the same time, this means that the HP Officejet Pro 8720 processes its tasks quickly, regardless of whether it is printing, scanning or copying. This shows 5 black and white copies in 26 seconds as well as a preview scan in 10 seconds, which HP calls “Viewer” by the way.

 

All-round equipment for the office

The touch display is the control center for the stand-alone operation of the HP Officejet Pro 8720. It is based very much on a smartphone display. A bar can be swiped down from above for quick access, which makes functions such as settings, WLAN, NFC, cloud services and ink information directly accessible. The lower bar of the display is intended for the basic talents of printing, scanning and copying. In the middle are the icons for additional applications such as scanning to a USB stick or copying an ID card. The latter is somewhat peculiar. The touch screen reacts very quickly to finger pressure and offers enough space for finger commands in every menu level.

The paper tray of the multifunction printer holds a maximum of 250 sheets. The tray is designed for up to 150 sheets. It is very commendable that the HP Officejet Pro 8720 not only prints on both sides, but also scans. The connections include USB, WLAN and LAN. At the same time, the device can be addressed via NFC and Wi-Fi Direct and offers a USB host interface. In addition to the in-house HP ePrint service, mobile printing works via Apple Airprint, Google Cloudprint and the “HP AiO Remote” app. In addition, direct access to cloud services such as Google Drive can be established via HP Connected.