HP ENVY 6455e Printer Review

The HP ENVY 6458e's plastic body feels fairly solid, and it has a removable power cable, which makes it easy to replace if needed. The input tray has adjustable width sliders for different paper sizes, and the output tray has an extender that can tuck into the tray when not in use. However, the input tray isn't removable, and there isn't a dedicated photo tray. The scanner bed's dampening mechanism isn't very good, so the scanner bed can slam down hard if you don't guide it down slowly.

The HP ENVY 6458e requires a fair amount of maintenance. Like most inkjet printers, the printheads can clog if you don't print for a long time. To resolve printhead issues, you can run the built-in printhead alignment and printhead cleaning tasks. You'll also need to replace the cartridges often if you print frequently since they don't last very long. The paper tray has a relatively small 100-sheet capacity, which means you'll have to refill it often, too. Unfortunately, the bottom tray sheet roller is underneath the printer, which can be annoying to reach if a paper jam occurs there.

You can see the user manual here.

The HP ENVY Pro 6458e doesn't have a display. Instead, it has icons that light up to indicate Wi-Fi connection and the number of copies when copying a document. There are touch-sensitive buttons for Monochrome Copy, Color Copy, Information, Cancel, and Resume. On the right side of the panel, there's a status light that tells you when the paper is low, when the paper tray is open, or when the scanner bay is open. There's also an indicator light above the output tray that changes color depending on the printer's status. You can adjust the LED light brightness within the HP Smart app's settings, but you can't turn it off completely, which may be annoying in a dark room. The printer gives audio feedback for different tasks, like when a document finishes printing, the printer turns on or off, or when you open the paper tray.

The HP ENVY 6458e's ink cartridges yield very few black or color prints, so you need to replace them often, especially if you print frequently. Also, since there's just one tri-color cartridge, you need to replace the entire cartridge if one color runs out, which can be wasteful. On the bright side, you can increase the page yield slightly with XL cartridges (HP 67XL). If you're looking for similar models but want one with higher page yields, check out the HP ENVY Inspire 7955e.

The HP ENVY Pro 6458e has decent scanning features. It has an automatic feeder to process multi-page documents; however, it's pretty slow, and the automatic feeder can only hold 35 sheets. That said, it's still more convenient than scanning each page manually. Its optical character recognition feature lets you save scanned documents as searchable PDF files. It works well but makes mistakes occasionally, especially with special characters.

The scan quality is mediocre. The scanner has trouble capturing some finer details and makes colors look washed out, which isn't ideal for digitizing photos.

• Setup Guide
• Power cord
• 1x black setup cartridge
• 1X tri-color setup cartridge

The print quality for black and white documents is mediocre. AIt prints text clearly and reproduces very fine details, but there's visible banding in colored areas, making the text in those places look slightly misaligned. It also has trouble converting the color yellow to grayscale, although that's normal for most printers.

The print quality for color documents is decent. Printed text looks clear, and the colors look punchy. However, some finer details are very faint and hard to see.

The HP 6458e's cost-per-print is high. Although the cartridges are relatively cheap, their low yields mean you need to replace them often. On the bright side, this printer is an HP+ enabled printer that comes with a free six-month subscription to the HP Instant Ink service, which sends you ink whenever your printer detects that the cartridges are running low.

The HP ENVY 6458e doesn't take too long to initialize and get a single page out, but for longer, multi-page documents and photos, it's quite slow. The output tray only holds 25 sheets of paper, so you'll have to keep an eye on larger print jobs to avoid having your prints pushed off the output tray.

The HP ENVY 6458e has a disappointing color gamut. It reproduces bright blues and greens well but struggles with other colors. It also has trouble with darker shades. Its narrow color range causes significant loss of details. For example, you can see in the picture that the parrot's red feathers almost look like a single block of color, with no texture or layers. Finally, the transition between colors isn't smooth at all, as there's visible banding in the blues and greens.

The HP ENVY Pro 6458e has bad color accuracy. Photos don't look bad; they just look overly warm. Naturally, it isn't ideal for professional work that requires perfect accuracy. If you need a printer for color-critical work, check out the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300.

The HP ENVY Pro 6458e is okay at reproducing small details. The use of halftones (dot effect) doesn't cause significant loss of details, but all the edges look a little soft, and distant objects are barely visible.

The HP 6455e supports Bluetooth, but it's only for setup purposes, not for printing.

HP Smart is a superb mobile app. It lets you print, copy, and scan (with smartphone's camera or the printer) directly from the app. You can also check the ink levels, manage your ink subscription, and perform maintenance tasks. The maximum scanning resolution is 300 DPI when using the app, though. Lastly, while the Private Pickup feature is an option in the app, the HP ENVY 6400e series doesn't support it.

You need to install drivers and the HP Smart software on Windows devices to print and scan. You can print without installing any drivers on macOS, but you still need to install the HP Smart app to scan and use all the printer's features. On Chrome OS, you can scan and print without installing any drivers or software. You can also install the HP Smart app from the Google Play Store to use all the printer's features as you would on an Android device.