HP Envy Inspire 7955e review: everything you need
HP’s Envy Inspire 955e
MSRP $220.00
“The HP Envy Inspire 7955e is as full-featured and high-quality as it is painless to set up.”
Pros
- Photo prints with high-quality
- Fast document printing
- Scanners with multiple scanning modes
- Simple installation
- Excellent value
You can also find out more about Cons
- Tri-color cartridges can be wasteful
- Mobile app lacks some features
If you’re shopping for a printer, you’ve likely come across HP’s Envy Inspire 7955e all-in-one printer in your research. This printer offers affordable photo printing and scanning. It also has fast document printing.
It’s become a staple of the remote work and small office world, but I wanted to test it out myself to see if it really lived up to the hype, looking through the design details, print performance, special features, and software to find out if it’s a good value at the current price. Spoiler alert: it’s every bit as solid as you may have heard.
Design
HP’s Envy Inspire has an attractive but functional design with a soft, off-white body and light beige accents. It is a great fit for most home offices.
Since it’s an all-in-one printer, it stands taller than a print-only model but doesn’t seem overly large or obtrusive. Dimensions are 18.1-by-15.2-by-9.2-inches and weight is 18 lbs.
It has a 2.7 inch color touchscreen which allows you to perform various tasks without using a mobile application or computer. Most useful of all is the Copy button. It only takes one touch to begin a color copy.
HP was manufacturing printers long before the internet. The smallest details are perfected. The device has clear instructions on how to insert ink cartridges.
The printer has notes and marks that show how to load the paper, use the flatbed scanner and feeder and how to adjust the guides for different paper sizes.
As an example, you can add paper and see icons that remind you which side of the paper should be facing down. That’s important when using photo paper and other specialty paper.
Printing performance
Using HP’s high-quality HP papers, you can get a great print out of the HP Envy Inspire. It’s hard to tell in the photo above, but the printed photo matched what I saw onscreen. Detail is crisp even on multipurpose paper.
High-brightness paper offers more contrast, with whites that are brighter and blacks that are more accurate. Photo paper can also produce more intense colors. However, less expensive sheets will still provide accurate tones and less vibrancy.
Photo papers of sizes 5-by-5, 4 by-6 and 5-by-7 inches can be placed in a tray dedicated to small prints. The main tray can accommodate up to 8.5 by 14-inch legal-sized paper as well as standard letter-sized papers, envelopes and other sizes.
This is good enough unless you plan to print in large quantities or sell your prints.
The ink dries quickly and doesn’t spread even with standard paper. I didn’t need to play with settings to get good results, and everything I printed came out looking great on my first try.
Even when printing gray text, the fonts on documents are crisp and readable. There were no banding issues or any other problems. The HP Envy Inspire 7950e can print up to 15 pages per minute in black and white, which is more than sufficient for home offices or casual use. Color speed is 10 PPM.
Except if you plan on printing in high volumes or selling prints, speed and quality should suffice.
Special Features
The HP Envy Inspire 7950e is not only a printer, but also a scanner and copier. The entire flatbed scan (just a bit larger than a standard letter-sized document) takes around 20 seconds at 300 dpi.
App has a scan mode for multiple items that automatically crops several photos and saves them individually. There’s also a document feeder that accepts up to 35 pages. The scanner is slower, but you can step away and save time while it scans several sheets.
The only area that is problematic is the optical character recognition (OCR), which HP calls “text-extract” mode. OCR is prone to making small mistakes that can make editing difficult. You’ll want a third-party OCR app if you anticipate an ongoing need to turn scanned documents into editable text.
The HP Smart mobile app also has a fax feature that’s currently free. HP warns that this is only a test, and there could be charges in the future for faxing. HP will notify you if this is the case.
Software and compatibility
It was easy to install the software and set up the printer. In just a few minutes I was able to connect and use my iPhone, iPad Windows PC, Android Phone, Chromebook, MacBook, and Chromebook. It doesn’t get any simpler than this.
The packaging instructed me to install the app. I was instructed to install the application on the packaging. I had to create or sign into an HP account before the app told me how to connect the printer and install the cartridges.
You can use a USB cable (not included) to connect, but Wi-Fi makes more sense and allows you to place the printer wherever it’s most convenient. It’s a quiet printer but I placed it in my secondary bedroom as I had some extra space.
Most things are easy to do or automatically. When I looked for borderless printing on the iPhone app, I couldn’t find it, but it’s relatively simple to enable on Android or a computer. The edge-to-edge print I wanted was achieved by printing from Windows, macOS or Android.
You can print through the HP Smart mobile app or your operating system’s standard print system. HP guided me quickly and easily through the installation process.
The software’s ink level is not always clear. The app shows a bar for black and color ink, which lowers as the ink is used, but doesn’t quantify that with a percentage or estimate of how many pages you can print. HP+ has an Instant Ink subscription which eliminates the worry of running out.
Price is right
HP Envy Inspire 795e is available for only $220. This is a great price for a printer of this caliber. HP and other sellers run sales on occasion to lower the cost. If you aren’t that particular and just want a printer that is cheap but good, we have a comprehensive list of the best cheap printer deals.
With a printer and especially with a color inkjet, it’s important to have enough ink. The black ink lasts for a very long time and the indicator barely changes after printing several pages.
Each color print takes a toll on the starter color cartridge that’s included. I printed four full page color pages and seven 4 by 6 photo prints in the highest quality before the tri-color cartridge was replaced.
When this happens, you can still print but the colors may be off. The green leaves were muted by the cartridge that was partially empty. Still, it’s nice to have the option to print even after the warning.
The HP Envy Inspire is equipped with an Instant Ink subscription for six months. Immediately upon creating an HP Account and entering my billing and shipping information, a tricolor and black cartridge was shipped.
The idea is that ink ships before you need it so you don’t run out. Sign up now to get six months free ink.
HP Envy Inspire is a fantastic all-in-one.
After the six-month Instant Ink bonus, you’ll be billed according to your estimated usage. You can change the plan if your ink needs are different.
You can order more cartridges whenever you want. HP is likely to alert you when you need an upgrade in your plan. Monthly changes are possible. HP claims that HP cartridges are 50% cheaper than those purchased separately.
This printer is for you.
The HP Envy Inspire is a great all-in-one at an affordable cost. The HP Envy Inspire 7955e is a superb all-in-one printer at an affordable price.
The cartridges come in black and tri-color. If your color prints average out to use roughly the same amount of cyan, magenta, and yellow, you’ll enjoy the best value. HP makes its printers energy-efficient and eco-friendly and that’s worth consideration.
You will get more out of a printer with separate ink cartridges per primary color if you prefer certain colors. I’m more likely to print nature photos that feature greens and blues with pops of reddish tones. I was expecting to run out of magenta and cyan faster. That’s a little thing, but it can add up over time.
The HP Envy Inspire 7955e is a wonderful printer, and it very well may be exactly what you’re looking for.
Editors’ recommendations