HP Photosmart 6520 e-All-in-One

Almost identical in most ways to the HP Photosmart 6510 e-All-in-One that it's in the process of replacing in HP's line, and one step up from the HP Photosmart 5520 e-All-in-One that I recently reviewed, the HP Photosmart 6520 e-All-in-One , adds a few small, but significant, conveniences compared with either of those models, making it a reasonable choice for a home or light-duty home office printer, or both.

Arguably the Photosmart 6520's most significant difference from the HP 6510 is the addition of HP Wireless Direct, which HP says is essentially an enhanced version of Wi-Fi Direct. By either name, the feature makes it easy to connect directly to the printer from a smartphone, tablet, or notebook, eliminating the need to connect either the printer or the other device to a Wi-Fi network.

The differences from the HP 5520 are less significant, but enough to justify the small difference in price. The 6520 gives you a larger touch screen control panel, at 3.45 inches, and adds a 20-sheet photo tray for 5-by-7 photo paper. The photo tray supplements a meager 80-sheet main tray, which is one of the limitations that makes the printer suitable for home and light-duty home office use only.

One other small difference from the HP 5520 is a link to eFax, a Web-based fax service, added to the HP Printer Assistant screen. The choice of eFax plans available with the printer are a little different from the plans you can get by going to www.efax.com and signing up on your own, with the free version that comes with the printer allowing more faxed pages per month than the free version on the Web site, and the monthly paid plan allowing fewer faxed pages than the least expensive website plan, but also costing less.

Basics and More of the e-Same
Aside from these few differences, the Photosmart 6520 is a near twin to the HP 5520. Basic MFP features are limited to printing, scanning, and copying. It lacks an automatic document feeder, which is another important limitation for office use, and also lacks a USB A port, which means it can't print from PictBridge cameras or print from or scan to USB memory keys.

On the plus side, one feature worth mention is automatic duplexing (for printing on both sides of the page), which is a welcome option for saving paper. Beyond that, being an e-All-in-One means it supports HP Web Apps and HP's version of cloud printing as well as other mobile apps, including Apple AirPrint and the HP ePrint Home & Biz print app (for printing from both Android and iOS devices).

As with the HP 5520, the Photosmart 6520 needs to connect to a network by Wi-Fi to use ePrint, AirPrint, or HP's Web apps, with ePrint and Web apps also needing the network connected to the Internet. There's no Ethernet connector to use as an alternative, and if you connect to a single computer by USB cable instead, none of these features will be available. However, the HP ePrint Home & Biz print app can work with an HP Wireless Direct connection to the printer, whether you have a Wi-Fi network or not.

Setup, Speed, and Output Quality
For my tests, I connected the printer by USB cable to a system running Windows Vista. Both the physical setup and the driver and software installation were standard fare.

On our business applications suite, (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing), the 6520 came in at an effective 3.4 pages per minute (ppm). Interestingly, that makes it a tad slower than the less expensive 5520, at 3.7 ppm. It's also noticeably slower than the similarly priced Editors' Choice Brother MFC-J825DW , at 4.0 ppm. On the other hand, it did far better than the Brother printer on photo speed, averaging 1 minute 7 seconds for a 4 by 6, with the Brother coming in at 1:59.

Output quality for the 6520 is best described as more than acceptable, but not impressive, with slightly above-par text, slightly below-par graphics, and dead on-par photos.

Text quality is easily good enough for most business use and virtually any home use, although it's a little short of the crisp, clean look you'd get from a laser, and I wouldn't use it for a resume, for example. Graphics quality is suitable for most home use or internal business needs. Depending on how critical an eye you have, or how good an impression you need to make, you may or may not consider it good enough for PowerPoint handouts or the like.

Color photos are a match for what you can expect from drugstore prints. However, a black and white photo in my tests showed different color tints at different shades of gray.

My only real complaint about this printer is the same one I had with the HP 5520. It doesn't include an Ethernet connector. If you don't have a Wi-Fi access point on your network, and aren't planning to add one, you lose most of the features that make it an e-All-in-One. That said, if you can take advantage of the e-All-in-One features, the HP Photosmart 6520 e-All-in-One can be an attractive choice. Even if you can't take advantage of them, it can be a reasonable choice.

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