HP Envy Inspire 7900e Review: A Versatile Office Printer

The HP Envy Inspire 7900e has robust photo printing capabilities.

"The HP Envy Inspire is an excellent home office printer for the hybrid working world."

advantages

  • Strong photo printing performance

  • New sleep mode for almost silent printing

  • Companion app with many functions

  • Versatile workhorse for home office or home use

  • Affordable price

disadvantage

  • Box shape is boring at home

  • No USB port for printing from flash drives

A few years ago it would have been inconceivable that we would still be as dependent on the printed document as we are today. But the reality of working remotely has changed that.

HP's new Envy Inspire series stands out for being the first printer developed by quarantined engineers for anyone who needs to live, study and work from home during the pandemic. Printers have seen a new renaissance in our workflows, and the $ 249 HP Envy Inspire 7900e is a printer that feels like it was made with that reality in mind.

It has some helpful features to keep us productive as the world looks forward to the transition to a hybrid work environment when things return to normal.

draft

Unlike HP's Tango range that blends into your home, the new Envy Inspire doesn't hide the fact that it's a printer with a scanner attached. The Envy Inspire is available in two models: The Envy Inspire 7200e is the more compact version with a flatbed scanner on top, while the higher quality Envy Inspire 7900e, the model we received for review and which comes first on the market, has an automatic document is equipped with a feeder (ADF) with duplex function. The price range starts at $ 179. However, if you have more robust copy or scan needs, we recommend spending an additional $ 70 to upgrade to the Envy Inspire 7900e for $ 249.

Each printer model is available in a range of colors including Everglades in shades of green, Thistle in shades of purple, Cyan Surf Blue, and neutral Portobello. Whichever you choose, the Envy Inspire looks like a printer – no doubt about it.

The HP Envy Inspire 7900e is available in one of four colors.

The hues are applied as accents to add a pop of color to an otherwise bland cream colored box, and on our 7900e we found the Portobello highlights on the ADF and on the paper tray.

With dimensions of 18.11 x 20.5 x 9.17 inches, the 7900e is a practical workhorse for the home office with an ADF on top and a paper compartment with a front loader. The more compact 7200e could pass as the modern and box-shaped version of the HP Envy 6055, while the 7900e series takes inspiration from HP's OfficeJet Pro series.

Like most modern printers, both new Envy Inspire models have a built-in 2.7-inch color touchscreen for accessing printer settings and shortcuts.

Since the Envy Inspire is primarily aimed at home users – families and students – and small home workers, the paper tray is a bit small for the capabilities of this printer. There is a 125-sheet paper tray at the front and bottom of the printer. That's more than double the 50-sheet input tray on the Tango X, but the paper tray leaves something to be desired for small office environments. Most home office printers start at around 200 sheets for the paper input tray, and the HP OfficeJet Pro 9025e comes with a 500-sheet tray. This means that every time you replace the paper when you attempt to input on the Office Jet Pro, you will have to do so four times on the Envy Inspire. Since the Envy Inspire isn't a compact printer at first, we would have liked HP to have increased the overall height of the device slightly to accommodate a larger input tray.

The new sleep mode reduces printing noise by 40%.

A new and much appreciated innovation is that the photo printer tray is a modular add-on that fits right into the paper tray that you load standard 8.5 x 11-inch sheets into. The photo tray can hold borderless prints in standard 4 x 6, square 5 x 5, or panoramic 4 x 12 inches.

Traditionally, most printers have the photo tray on top of the paper tray, but on the outside. Moving the photo tray inward helps prevent dust build-up, especially if you don't print pictures regularly.

HP Envy Inspire Photo Tray.

The biggest design change – and one you can't visually see – with the new Envy Inspire is a new print mode. A new quiet mode reduces noise by 40% by using intelligent algorithms to slow down the printing process for a quieter experience. The mode was developed during quarantine by HP engineers who were disturbed by loud printer noise during conference calls – a disadvantage of having to share the office space with children who had to print homework.

HP claims to have combined the best features of its Tango, OfficeJet, and Envy lines to create the Envy Inspire.

"We built what we believe to be the best printer so families can work, learn, and get creative – to get things done no matter what life has in store," Jeff Walter, HP director of strategy and product marketing, told Digital Trends. "Whatever you need to create, we can help families with it."

Walter added that the Envy Inspire is a product that combines the best writing systems from HP's OfficeJet Pros, the best photo capabilities, and the best app capabilities from the HP Smart app.

power

An app is required to set up the HP Envy Inspire.

The Envy Inspire wasn't built for speed. Unlike office printers, home users do not stand around the printer to access their documents. Still, the Envy Inspire is a rugged printer that can deliver speeds of up to 15 pages per minute (ppm) in color and black and white, with the first page done in just 18 seconds.

The print resolution is up to 1200 x 1200 dots per inch (dpi) for black and white pages and 4800 x 1200 dpi for color prints and photos. Print speeds here were just under the 24 pages per minute output on the HP OfficeJet Pro 9025e, which is one of the best printers on our list this year. Compared to the color speed of 10 pages per minute of the somewhat older HP OfficeJet Pro 8025, the speed of the Envy Inspire wasn't a problem.

To put speeds in perspective, the Envy Inspire's boxier build includes internals that allow it to print at speeds much faster than cuter, design-conscious home printers. The HP Tango X, another high-quality printer, achieves around 10 ppm. Monochrome and 8 ppm about half the speed of the Envy Inspire for color jobs.

Pages per minute is only half of the print speed equation, while the second half depends on how fast the first page can be finished. In my experience, the first page was finished in a little over 15 seconds, and the HP specifications for print speeds were largely correct, with speeds between 12 and 16 pages per minute. Printed text appeared razor sharp and was legible even in small fonts.

Color prints were similarly sharp. Photos printed on Epson glossy photo paper appeared sharp, and the quality – sharpness, tones, and dynamic range – reproduced by HP's Envy Inspire rivaled prints made by the online photo service Shutterfly. Shutterfly's prints appeared a bit warmer compared to HP's photo print rendering. And like Shutterfly, the HP mobile app gives you access to a variety of different templates for creating posters, greeting cards, invitations, and other printable content.

HP's smart app for printing from mobile devices. I can't tell what HP's photo capabilities will be like on HP photo printing paper as none was supplied for this test. In general, most printer manufacturers recommend that you pair their printer with their branded photo paper for the best results. According to HP, the Envy Inspire's new ink technology offers a 40% wider color space and new ink technologies to render lifelike photos.

HP claimed that when printing on 4×6, 5×5, or 4×12 paper, the printer will be smart enough to select the photo paper tray – instead of the standard letter-size paper tray – to print. I couldn't test this feature because I didn't have photo paper of these sizes to test.

While it's admirable that HP is promoting its cloud-based approach to printing, the Envy Inspire could have been easier to set up. Once out of the box, you must download the HP Smart app and follow the instructions to begin printer setup before you can print or make copies. The app guides you through connecting to the printer's ad hoc WiFi network so that you can then connect to your home or office WiFi network. After the printer connects, it will take a few minutes for the printer to update its firmware.

This means that unlike a traditional printer, not only is the overall process a bit complicated, but you also have to use the process dictated by HP before you can do anything with your printer.

Unlike dedicated photo printers, the Envy Inspire doesn't have separate cartridges for color ink. Instead, the printer is powered by two ink cartridges – a black and a combination cartridge with three ink colors for cyan, magenta and yellow.

Both the cartridges and paper must be installed before you can begin setting up the printer. We therefore recommend doing this immediately after taking the printer out of the box and removing all protective films – and there are plenty of them!

The ADF on top of the Envy Inspire 7900e can scan up to 50 pages at a time and handle up to 8.5 "x 14" paper, while the flatbed can handle 8.5 "x 11.7" sheets. The scan resolution is set to 1200 x 1200 dpi and the scan speed is around 8 pages per minute. In addition to using the hardware for scanning, you can also use your smartphone's camera as a scanner with the companion HP mobile app, available on both Android and iOS smartphones.

Duplex scanning, copying and printing can be performed on this printer, which can save you paper if you need to. If you are concerned about saving ink, you can set the printer to print in draft mode. This mode produces lighter prints, but you use less ink and get faster print speeds.

The nice thing about the Envy Inspire is that it has advanced features to simplify your document workflow, making it feel like a more capable office printer. You can set up custom shortcuts to make the printer's tasks easier. For example, small businesses with more extensive accounting needs can program a shortcut to make a physical copy and upload a digital copy of a document to a cloud service such as Google Drive or QuickBooks when they scan a receipt or invoice. In addition to storing documents in the cloud, you can also configure shortcuts to send you the scans by email.

Other useful features include the ability to create printables, which are photo cards and invitations from templates. These are great for handicrafts or for sending a birthday card if, for example, you forgot to pick one up at the supermarket.

Another app function is the ability to send a mobile fax with the app. HP is offering a trial version of its mobile fax service and you can configure it to send a digital fax through the app. The Envy Inspire does not have native fax functionality, and this could be a useful feature when you need to generate a fax.

I really appreciated the new Quiet Mode from HP, which reduces the noise level by about 40% by slowing the printing speed by about 50%.

"When we developed it, it was really interesting … because we developed (Quiet Mode) at a time that we also experienced personally," said Walter. “So if you work from home and there are several people in the house using the printer, for example, you can schedule sleep mode from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. when you might be making Zoom calls and have the printer print 40% quieter during those times . "

HP's new Quiet Mode

Since I don't need a printer to be a speed champion at home, I've generally always kept sleep mode on and not intended for the work day as the system's noise level is noticeable.

"What we're doing is we're essentially slowing a lot of things down and trying to tweak that adjustment to roughly cut the noise in half," Walter explained. “And so we end up slowing it down by about 50%. There are things like, do you know how fast the paper spins? How fast does the cartridge go back and forth? And all of these things produce different decibel levels. And so some things slow down more than others, some adapt more than others, and so we just optimized everything. "

The Envy Inspire's double-sided photo printing is a great addition.

The company stated that sleep mode will not affect print quality, which I think is correct.

For home users who want to print photos or work on scrapbooking projects while locked, the Envy Inspire's double-sided photo printing is a great addition. In addition to printing beautiful photos, the Envy can also extract the removable image file format data from your smartphone's camera to print the geotagged location, date and time on the back of the photo. This makes it easy for you to remember when the store was created. You can also add your own personal note – like "Grandma's 80th Birthday" – as a caption.

For now, the duplex photo printing feature with date, location, and timestamp is limited to the mobile app, but the company is working on bringing it to its desktop software in the future. The reason we rolled out the feature on mobile first is because most of our photos are already on our smartphones, HP said.

The Envy Inspire is designed for PCs and Macs as well as Android and iOS devices. In addition, HP has also worked with Google to make the Envy Inspire the first Chromebook certified printer.

“We have also thought of all the devices that will be in the household,” says Walter. “With more kids doing schoolwork or technology becoming more important to students, we partnered with Google, which has a certification program for Chromebooks. And we made sure that the HP Envy Inspire is the first HP printer to be certified to work with Chromebooks. "

Our opinion

The HP Envy Inspire complements HP's printing universe as a powerful printer for all your home, craft and work projects. With the Envy Inspire, HP not only delivered on its promise to bring the best of inkjet technologies into a single printer, but also created a tool with features that can come in handy as more people, including, work from home during the pandemic a quiet mode and powerful photo functions.

Is there a better alternative?

HP's Envy Inspire uses inkjet printing technology, and the company claims it combines the best of features from the Tango, Envy, and OfficeJet Pro lines. Suitable inkjet alternatives include the HP Tango series. Make sure to check out our recommendations for the best inkjet printers.

If you need a faster printer to process documents, the OfficeJet Pro 9025e from HP is a great alternative. At $ 249, the Envy Inspire 7900e is $ 100 cheaper than the dedicated office range from HP in the test. The hybrid work / home market that the Envy was designed for makes it a more versatile solution as it is designed for printing documents and photos. Moving to the flatbed version of the Envy Inspire – the Envy Inspire 7200e is coming early next year – will make the price even more competitive, as this model is expected to cost $ 179 when it launches.

Budget conscious buyers who are concerned about the price of inkjet printers, printers with refillable ink tanks, like Epson's EcoTank ET3830, will lower your long-term running costs with cheaper, refillable ink tanks.

How long it will take?

The HP printer has a one-year limited hardware warranty that can be extended to two years. The printer benefits from regular software updates to keep it secure and may even add new features over time through the HP Smart Printing app.

Printers are not designed for annual or biennial upgrades like smartphones, and the HP Envy Inspire should last for many years provided you keep getting fresh ink and paper. The company offers a subscription ink service that makes it easy to refill ink, but not paper. A combo subscription to refill ink and photo paper would make this an excellent printer for the craft room, home historian, and budding photographer.

Should you buy it?

Yes sir. If you are looking for a home printer that can print, scan and copy, the HP Envy Inspire is an excellent choice. Unlike Envy printers, the Envy Inspire doesn't reinvent printer design. Instead, HP plays up the utilitarian aesthetic of this printer to deliver a solid all-round workhorse that will blend in well with your home or home office workflow.

Editor's recommendations



HP Elite Dragonfly Review: The Out of Office Business Laptop

HP Elite Dragonfly Rating 6

"The HP Elite Dragonfly is light and sleek, and almost too sleek to be a pure business laptop."

  • Perfect size for on the go

  • Many security functions

  • Incredible battery life

  • Great port selection

  • Older processors

  • The keyboard feels tight

This review was updated on May 6, 2020 by digital trends author Mark Coppock with the new functions Tile and Sure View Reflect.

You get on your six-hour flight with the ambitious goal of getting some work done. You are prepared. You have a laptop A charger. They are even ready to pay for the expensive in-flight WiFi. It's time to get it. Job. Done.

Six hours later, you barely managed to open your laptop.

It's not easy to mess around with the charger under your seat, fight for freedom of movement with your fellow travelers, and try to stuff a laptop on an airplane shelf. And if you pack a chunky "business laptop" it's almost impossible.

HP finds it new Elite Dragonfly is the solution. The company claims it has the security features business people need without the stereotypical design issues. Is this $ 2,079 business laptop worth a first-class trip?

A suitable travel partner

The dragonfly was developed from the ground up for your work on the go. At 2.2 pounds, it's significantly lighter than laptops like the XPS 13, HP Specter x360, and MacBook Air. HP says it relieves every element of the laptop to make it so light without losing structural integrity. Even a super-light business laptop like the ThinkPad X1 Yoga is 0.8 pounds heavier.

This effort was really worth it. Put it in your backpack or briefcase and you will barely notice the extra weight as you run through the airport trying to find your gate. It is a tiny laptop. However, the strong navy color, the golden decorations and the sharp edges go perfectly with your suit and your wristwatch. It is downright decadent.

Holding with one hand as a tablet is still out of the question due to its size.

If you take a seat and whip the dragonfly out to work, it fits well on your tray table. The total space requirement is quite small, so it may even work in economy class. This is another area that the dragonfly has over its rivals. It corresponds to the size of the XPS 13, but is three quarters of an inch smaller in height and width than the X1 Yoga. When you are in a confined space like an airplane, every millimeter counts.

For a better view, you can flip the keyboard over to record or watch movies. The use of tablets is possible, but uncomfortable like other 2-in-1 devices of this size. It's just a little big and a little too heavy.

The dragonfly's screen is next to the XPS 13 2-in-1 and looks a bit dated. The bezels are not massive, but a little bulky in addition to the larger 16:10 screen of the XPS 13 2-in-1. The new Specter x360 also has smaller bezels, and I wish they had found their way to the dragonfly. The 1080p screen isn't as impressive as the high-contrast, insanely bright XPS 13 2-in-1. A 4K version is available for better image quality, but is currently not available.

We also tested HP's latest privacy screen, Sure View Reflect. It is the 4th generation of the company's technology that makes the screen invisible from a certain angle. This means that no one but you can see your display unless they are right behind you. In release mode, ie when Sure View Reflect is deactivated, the display is very bright and offers a lot of contrast as well as an accurate color width and accuracy. It is a good ad for productivity users. When you're in privacy mode and Sure View Reflect is turned on, brightness, contrast, and colors drop, but it works as intended. The display is provided with a copper coating, which makes it illegible from the sides.

A small laptop means a small keyboard

The size of the frames (and the size of the keyboard deck) enables a sufficiently large touchpad for tracking and gestures. The glass is smooth and the click mechanism is quiet.

However, the small footprint has a compromise on the keyboard width. It's a little tight, especially in the function line, which is about small buttons that can be easily accidentally pressed. HP went one step further and tried to place a pair of upward-facing speakers directly on the keyboard deck.

I would normally welcome such a choice, but in this case I would have preferred a larger keyboard like the X1 Yoga. This is especially true since the speakers still don't sound good here.

Fortunately, typing is fun. The key presses have enough travel (especially compared to the XPS 13 2-in-1 or MacBook Pro) and are quiet enough not to wake up the person sleeping next to you on the plane.

The included pen is a lightweight pen that feels good in your hand and can be charged via USB-C. With 4,096 sensitivity levels, it is perfect for notation and illustration. The only problem is that there is no case or way to attach it to the laptop. You have to rely on your own devices to have the pen with you. When you're on the go, this can be problematic.

Portable, all-day work and integrated tile support

When you arrive at your destination, the dragonfly has many tricks to meet your computer needs. Port selection is a good place to start. Despite its thickness of just 0.63 inches, HP has both a full-size USB-A and HDMI connector. Neither is so common with laptops as thin as laptops like the XPS 13 go all-in on USB-C.

The Dragonfly has a USB-C 3.1 and a Thunderbolt 3 port for your modern accessories and ports, but offers you options for the older ports that are still useful. They are the key to those moments when you show up at a meeting, are confused by a day of travel and need to be connected to a TV or monitor via HDMI. It also means that you can leave most of your dongles at home.

However, the HP Elite Dragonfly is slightly behind Lenovo X1 Yoga. This laptop offers two USB-C 3.1 / Thunderbolt 3 and two USB-A 3.1 and HDMI 1.4.

If it's a short trip (or you're feeling brave), dare to leave your charger at home too. The dragonfly's battery life is so good. It took just under 10½ hours to surf the Internet, which means that you do well over an entire working day. Your coast to coast flight is covered whether you are working or catching up with The Mandalorian. The Sure View Reflect display does not affect battery life either.

I was a little annoyed by the power switch, which is right next to the connectors on the left. There are many accidental presses when the laptop is picked up or simply moved. While it makes sense to use the 2-in-1 device as a tablet, as mentioned earlier, the size of the dragonfly means that the use of tablets is not ideal.

In 2020, HP added built-in Tile support so users can now find their laptop using the Tile app. The tile circuit is integrated and is specially slid into the M.2 slot, which is normally used for the optional LTE support. This means that it is Tile or LTE, but not both. Tile works well even when the laptop is turned off. You can at least see where you were last connected to the laptop via Bluetooth. If you're lucky, someone is within range with the Tile app and you can see the location of the laptop in real time. It's a great feature for anyone who is worried about leaving their laptop behind.

When business functions are a problem

HP is proud of the security features built into the level. It features a fingerprint scanner, Windows Hello face recognition, a physical camera cover, suppressed noise cancellation for Skype calls, an extended Wi-Fi range and three microphones (two facing, one "world" face). These are all touches that business users will appreciate.

However, it goes deeper. HP Sure Start is also included for secure boot and BIOS protection. HP even sells a separate model with its darkened Sure View screen for more privacy when traveling.

This is not just software. The HP Endpoint Security Controller is on the board. According to HP, it is isolated and cryptographically secure. There's more to it than just a business-first laptop like the ThinkPad X1.

We all want our computers to be secure, but that's probably more than what the average person needs. In some cases, the security suite feels like bloatware, especially if you want to use third-party software to protect against malware. HP security will make IT managers happy, and that's what the company is counting on.

Performance is … ok. The use of 8th generation Intel processors is unfortunate. It's not HP's fault, of course. Intel does not yet support vPro in its latest processor generations. This is (among other things) an important tool for IT departments and remote management.

It's the same problem you find in other business laptops like the Latitude series from Dell or the ThinkPad T series. Note that the cheaper Intel Core i5 Dragonfly does not have a vPro for $ 1,629, so you will lose the performance boost of newer processors without the benefits.

HP has decided to play it safe with the dragonfly. You probably won't notice a drop in performance compared to the XPS 13 2-in-1 or Specter x360, especially not with Dragonfly's 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD and 32 GB Intel Optane Memory H10. However, it damages the longevity of the laptop and lets you question the high price.

Our opinion

The dragonfly is ideal for business people who value security, portability and build quality. The dragonfly will make this person happy, especially if their employer pays the bill.

If you're someone else, you'll wonder why the laptop is so small, won't turn on quickly, or doesn't have the latest generation processors. Despite trying to impress a wider audience, the level of functionality of the dragonfly means that it is still best for a very specific user.

Are there alternatives?

The closest alternative is the ThinkPad X1 Yoga, which is a few hundred dollars cheaper. The Yoga also includes options for a wider range of configurations, including 4K panels and 10th generation processors. However, it is not as portable as the dragonfly.

The Dell Latitude 7400 2-in-1 is also a great alternative with its ultra-thin bezels and numerous security features. For a similar configuration, the Latitude is $ 100 more expensive and not quite as small as the Dragonfly.

Non-business options like HP Specter x360 or XPS 13 2-in-1 are fantastic, although you lack many of the security features you may need.

How long it will take?

The dragonfly comes with an excellent three-year warranty that will be attractive to businesses. Aside from accidents, the laptop should last as long due to its hardware and excellent build quality. You can even add an additional HP CarePack for advanced repair and replacement services.

Should you buy it

Yes. Those outside the business world shouldn't cross, but for the right person, the dragonfly is the perfect travel companion.

Editor's recommendations