HP ENVY 6065e Printer Review

The HP ENVY 6065e has an all-plastic build that feels relatively sturdy. The power cable is removable, making it easy to replace if needed. The input tray has width sliders that you can adjust to accommodate different paper sizes, and the output tray has an extender that tucks into the tray when not in use. You can access the sheet rollers by lifting the scanner bed and reaching into the maintenance bay, though there's no rear access. You'll need to have the printer plugged in and turned on to access the ink cartridges, which slide slightly to the left after you've lifted the scanner bed. Be careful when lowering the scanner bed, as it's undamped and will slam shut if you don't lower it gently.

The HP ENVY 6065e requires a fair amount of maintenance. Like most inkjet printers, the printheads can clog if you don't print anything for an extended period. Thankfully, there are built-in maintenance routines for printhead cleaning and alignment. In addition, the ink cartridges run out quickly, so you'll have to replace them regularly. The printheads are on the ink cartridges themselves, so if the maintenance routines are ineffective, you can get around this by buying new ones. Changing the ink cartridges is easy; you only need to lift the scanner bed and ensure the printer is on. Lifting the scanner also gives you partial access to the sheet rollers, though you still can't remove the cassette, and there's no rear access for easy clearing of paper jams. The input tray holds 100 sheets of paper, so you may have to refill it often if you regularly print long multi-page documents.

The HP ENVY 6065e doesn't have a display. Instead, it uses LED-lit icons to indicate the Wi-Fi connection status and the number of copies when copying a document. It also has touch-sensitive buttons for Monochrome copy, Color copy, Information, Cancel, and Resume. On the right side of the panel, a status light tells you basic status information, like when paper levels are running low, when the paper tray is open, or when the scanner bay is open. Lastly, an indicator light above the output tray changes color depending on the printer's status. You can see a full rundown of what each indicator light means here.

The HP 6065e printer has a terrible page yield. Like the all-but-identical HP ENVY 6055e, it uses HP 67 black and color ink cartridges, neither of which provide enough ink for frequent printing jobs. Since there's just one color cartridge, you have to replace the entire cartridge if one color runs out, which may feel wasteful if you regularly use one color more than others. The printer is compatible with 67XL high-yield cartridges. However, overall yield still lags far behind other two-cartridge inkjet printers like the Canon PIXMA MG3620.

It's also compatible with at least some third-party cartridges, whether they be new or used, but oddly won't accept used official HP cartridges. When inserting the latter, the HP Smart companion app will issue a warning stating, "Used or counterfeit cartridge detected". It's worth noting that we haven't tested this printer with a wide variety of third-party cartridges, and it's possible that some may not work properly with the printer.

There's only a flatbed scanner, so you need to scan multi-page documents manually, which can be extremely time-consuming, even if the flatbed scanner processes single documents relatively fast. Also, the lid's hinges don't extend, making it hard to close the lid over thicker items like textbooks. It has an optical character recognition (OCR) feature that lets you scan documents into searchable PDFs. If you want something with an ADF, consider the HP DeskJet 4255e/4252e.

The overall scan quality is middling when using the default 'Document' preset. The scanner renders text clearly, but its document processing algorithm does a poor job of distinguishing between things like watermarks or fine lines on a graph versus crinkles, folded lines on a page, or even the texture of the paper being printed on. The result is that the scanner tends to erase these finer details in an attempt to output a 'cleaner' scan. Color accuracy is also rather poor. Using the 'Photo' preset does help bring back some of the lost details, but there's no improvement in the rather faded color reproduction, as seen here. Turning on the 'Auto Enhancement' feature isn't really recommended for scanning documents or photos with a lot of fine elements, as it completely obscures any small details or lightly colored areas from the original document, though it does boost contrast.

• 1x HP 67 Black starter cartridge
• 1X HP 67 Tri-Color starter cartridge
• Power cord
• Reference Guide

This is a corded printer.

The print quality of black-and-white documents is disappointing. There's highly visible banding, colored areas are low in contrast and grainy, and text looks slightly blurry. Thankfully, it will print black-and-white documents even if you run out of color ink.

The print quality of color documents is decent. Text looks sharp, but some finer elements are faint or absent. Colors also look visibly inaccurate due to the printer's poor color accuracy.

The HP ENVY 6065e's cost-per-print is high. Although the cartridges are cheap, they run out quickly, so you must replace them often, making the cost-per-print very high. This printer comes with three months of free ink through HP Instant Ink, an ink replenishment subscription service that sends you ink whenever your printer detects the cartridges are running low. However, know that subscribing to the service will prevent you from using third-party ink cartridges, even if you cancel your subscription.

It's worth noting that while the printer's MSRP is $129.99 USD, you can often find it on sale for $69.99 USD.

The HP ENVY 6065e's printing speed is okay. It warms up quickly, which is handy for single-page prints, but it's pretty slow to print multi-page black and color documents. On the upside, it supports automatic duplex printing, so you don't have to flip the pages manually when printing double-sided.

This printer supports custom sizes ranging from 3" to 8.5" x 5" to 11.7" (76.2mm to 215.9mm x 127mm to 297.2mm).

The HP 6065e printer has a limited color gamut. Color transitions are grainy, resulting in minimal differentiation of most shades and a loss of finer detail. It has difficulty reproducing more highly saturated hues, especially blues and reds, so images look dull and low in contrast.

This printer has bad color accuracy. Most colors are visibly inaccurate, especially blues and skin tones, and some shades look overly dim. This level of accuracy clearly isn't suited for professional use, and even if you only print photos occasionally, you'd be better off with something like the Brother MFC-J1205W/MFC-J1215W.

The HP Envy 6065e is excellent at reproducing small details. Fine elements and small, distant objects are easily identifiable. The edges of objects aren't always well-defined, though.

This printer supports Bluetooth, but it's for setup purposes only.

The HP Smart mobile companion app is outstanding. You can use it to print documents and pictures, use the flatbed or your smartphone camera to scan, and even send mobile faxes, though the latter requires an HP account and an HP+ subscription. You can perform maintenance tasks like printhead cleaning and alignment, update the printer's firmware, and manage your HP Instant Ink subscription. It's worth noting that when opening the 'Print Documents' tab on the Android version of the app, the only options are for outputting PDF and photo files. If you open a Word document on your Android device, the file will print through Mopria Print Service instead, with the correct layout.

You must manually install drivers to use the printer on Windows devices. On macOS devices, you can print without installing any drivers, but you need them if you want to scan, or you can install the HP Smart app, which will allow full functionality. Chrome OS doesn't need any drivers. Though unnecessary, you can use the Android version of the HP Smart app from the Google Play Store.