HP Officejet 4500 Wireless All in-One (CN547A#B1H)

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)...Read more

I traded in a perfectly good HP All-in-One (circa 2001) for the convenience of wireless printing from a laptop. I've had the printer one month; am I sorry I bought the 4500 Wireless. Other than the wireless feature, I can't say anything positive about this device. It has frequent paper jams; the scanner turns white paper backgrounds into an ivory color background (making it difficult to paste scanned images like signatures into other documents with white backgrounds); it's very slow; black text often comes out gray, or worse yet, light green (!). This is about the worst printer I've ever purchased. I was a longtime HP supporter until I purchased this device. HP, you lost my loyalty.

This product is an upgrade from an older OfficeJet all-in-one machine (5610v). It definitely has both pros and cons.

The folks at HP have thought of every detail, right down to the unpacking. The plastic the printer is wrapped in is actually a BAG with handles, so there is no wrestling to get it out of the box. Everything needed to get set up is included in the box, right down to the ink cartridges and telephone cable. Both ink cartridges are the same number (one is then labeled "color" and the other "black-and-white"), making it easier to remember which cartridge you need. The machine is fairly compact, the controls are very intuitive, and it was very easy to install (even with an uncooperative computer which, for reasons completely unrelated to the printer, shut down four times during the brief installation process). I was a bit thrown by the fact that there is only one paper tray, rather than separate trays for input and output. It will, apparently, also print...Read more