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I’ve been a user of HP printers for many years now, most recently a Photosmart C7250 All-In-One. The new HP Officejet 4500 Wireless has many of the capabilities of the C7250 for a much lower price. Both are inkjet printers, of course, both are color fax machines, both can copy in black-and-white or color, both have a high-resolution scanner with document feeder and both have wireless connectivity.

Of course you do give up some things for the lower (by about half) price: the 4500 has only a black and a tricolor ink cartridge with integrated print heads (the C7250 has six independent ink tanks), the 4500 lacks automatic two-side printing, lacks “photo printing” (though it does a decent job at printing images), and doesn’t have a built-in card reader. The 4500 is also considerably smaller, which can be an advantage in a small or home office.

Setting up the 4500 is easy. Even if you are going to use it wirelessly, you must connect it by USB to a PC (or Mac) for the initial installation. After it is set up, you can disconnect the USB and run wireless-only. A 3-foot USB cable is provided, which I consider too short, but at least it’s there, unlike with many other printers. The software installed smoothly for me, which was a novelty – I’ve had a lot of trouble with the latest HP software for my C7250. In addition to the standard printer software, HP includes a basic I.R.I.S. OCR capability. I tried the OCR and it did a good job of capturing the text, but it lost all formatting. OmniPage it ain’t.

I was pleased to find that the network setup was handled through the PC (or Mac) software during the initial install – I was not looking forward to having to enter network keys on the printer’s keypad. I use WPA2-AES wireless and the HP 4500 had no problem with it.

When you install the ink cartridges the printer spits out an alignment sheet which you then scan in so it can see how the print heads line up. Clear prompts appeared on the lighted LCD panel on the printer and this was easy.

I tried a variety of printing tasks and the 4500 handled them all well. Text was clear and colored backgrounds showed no banding. Although this is not a photo printer, it did a passable job printing a photograph on plain paper. The scanner worked well too, both using the glass and the document feeder. Printing is quiet and fast.

Faxing I thought a bit awkward – you use the left-right arrow buttons to select color or b+w fax, enter the number (or use the address book), then press the green start button. It then asks you to press 1 if you’re scanning from the glass or 2 from the feeder, which I found annoying. However, the faxing worked well, and when the number was busy, it automatically retried after one minute and then five minutes. HP includes a special phone cord which you are supposed to use for the fax connection. I don’t know what is special about it, but if you use a regular cord you must use a small adapter that HP also provides.

HP claims that the 4500 meets EnergyStar requirements, so I tested power consumption. When the 4500 was turned off, my meter read zero (the meter does not register tenths.) When on and idle, 2 watts; when actively printing, 10-15 watts and when in standby mode, 1 watt. I thought this exemplary.

The only real gripe I have is a minor one – the paper feed tray (which doubles as the output tray) sticks out from the front quite a bit. It does have a retractable output catcher, so it’s not as bad as it could be. However, I understand this is a trade-off for the box being so small.

The “901″ ink cartridges are not insanely expensive, but I don’t know how long they last. HP claims that cost-per-page is lower with the HP Officejet 6500. If your usage is modest, the HP Officejet 4500 may be just what you need at a very reasonable price. If you print a lot, you may want a model with a higher-capacity paper tray, and of course if you print photos, there are better choices. All in all, a very competent and modestly priced all-in-one device. Recommended.
Rating: 5 / 5

We’ve owned a number of HP printers over the years, starting with the Laserjet II, so we’ve come to expect superior quality from HP printers. Before getting this printer, we bought an earlier incarnation of the HP Officejet 8500 that does not have the wireless capability. Clearly, the 8500 is a better printer for those needing two-sided printing and large-capacity trays (which we did when we were printing small press books before going to on-demand publishing); but for a networked home, you can’t beat a wireless printer. Once installed, you can put it pretty much anywhere.

Now that we don’t need the larger, heavier, more heavy-duty printer, the Officejet 4500 is going to work just fine for us. It was a breeze to set up, and with the exception of the aforementioned features that are absent on the 4500, it pretty much does everything the higher-end printer did. If we had to do a lot of printing, the lower-capacity tray would be an irritation, but we don’t. Pricing on the ink cartridges looks good, but for lots of printing, HP’s high-end model would probably be cheaper to run because of the ability to swap out individual color cartridges as they run out.

We haven’t tested the output of the 4500 on photo paper yet, but the images on plain paper look sharp and beautiful, and I’d rather have an inkjet than a laser because the ink doesn’t run if it gets wet.
Rating: 5 / 5

I like my new wireless HP 4500 printer. It was very easy to install and is very simple to use. I print alot of color photos and this is a great printer for that. It prints very clearly and crisp on regular or high gloss papers. The speed of printing is an added bonus. As far as the other features go I haven’t used all of them, but the instructions are fairly cut and dry and I think it will be easy to learn and operate the additional features. I guess the only thing I would change would be the size (note the measurements in the description), and it is a bit heavy, but I’ve found most quality printers are like this.
Rating: 5 / 5