HP Envy Inspire 7950e
MSRP $220.00
“The HP Envy Inspire 7955e is as full-featured and high-quality as it is painless to set up.”
Pros
- High-quality photos prints
- Fast document printing
- Scanners with multiple scanning modes
- Simple installation
- Value for money
The Cons of Using
- Tri-color cartridges can be wasteful
- Mobile app lacks some features
If you’re shopping for a printer, you’ve likely come across HP’s Envy Inspire 7955e all-in-one printer in your research. This printer offers high-quality printing of photos, rapid document printing, flexible scans, and much more, all at an affordable price.
It’s become a staple of the remote work and small office world, but I wanted to test it out myself to see if it really lived up to the hype, looking through the design details, print performance, special features, and software to find out if it’s a good value at the current price. Spoiler alert: it’s every bit as solid as you may have heard.
Design
HP’s Envy Inspire has an attractive but functional design with a soft, off-white body and light beige accents. This laptop will look great in any home office environment.
Since it’s an all-in-one printer, it stands taller than a print-only model but doesn’t seem overly large or obtrusive. The dimensions of the printer are 18.1-by-15.2-by-9.2-inches, and its weight is 18 pounds.
It has a 2.7 inch color touchscreen which allows you to perform various tasks without the use of a mobile application or computer. One of the most useful is the copy feature. All it takes is one touch to start a copy in color, followed by scanning and printing.
HP has been manufacturing printers since long before the internet was invented. This means that even the smallest of details has been perfected. The device has clear instructions on how to insert ink cartridges.
The printer has notes and marks that show how to load the paper, use the flatbed scanner and feeder and how to adjust guides to fit different sizes of paper.
As an example, you can add paper and see icons that remind you which side of the paper should be facing down. That’s important when using photo paper and other specialty paper.
Printing performance
When using HP high-quality paper, the HP Envy Inspire 7950e prints beautifully. It’s hard to tell in the photo above, but the printed photo matched what I saw onscreen. Detail is crisp even on multipurpose paper.
High-brightness paper offers more contrast, with whites that are brighter and blacks that are more accurate. Photo paper can also produce more vibrant colors. However, less expensive sheets will still provide accurate tones and less vibrancy.
Photo papers of sizes 5-by-5, 4 by-6 and 5-by-7 inches can be placed in a tray dedicated to small prints. The main paper tray is capable of holding up to 8.5 x 14 inch legal paper and standard letter sized paper. It can also hold envelopes in various sizes.
This is good enough unless you plan to print in large quantities or sell your prints.
The ink dries quickly and doesn’t spread even with standard paper. I didn’t need to play with settings to get good results, and everything I printed came out looking great on my first try.
Even when printing gray text, the fonts on documents are crisp and legible. No issues with banding or anything else were encountered. The HP Envy Inspire 7950e can print up to 15 pages per minute in black and white, which is more than sufficient for home offices or casual use. Color speed is 10 PPM.
If you do not plan on printing in high volumes or selling prints, speed and quality are more than enough.
Special Features
HP Envy Inspire is more than just a printer. It’s also a fantastic scanner and copy machine. Scanning an entire flatbed at 300dpi (just a little bigger than a letter sized page) takes approximately 20 seconds.
The mobile app features a multi-item scanning mode which automatically crops and saves multiple photos at once. There’s also a document feeder that accepts up to 35 pages. It is slower to use, but it allows you the option of stepping away from your computer while multiple sheets are being scanned. This saves time.
Optical Character Recognition, or text-extract, as HP calls it, is one problem area. OCR is prone to making small mistakes that can make editing difficult. You’ll want a third-party OCR app if you anticipate an ongoing need to turn scanned documents into editable text.
The HP Smart mobile app also has a fax feature that’s currently free. HP says that the faxing feature is currently free, but it may change in future. HP will inform you of the new terms if it happens.
Software and compatibility
The printer installation and setup was very simple. I was able to connect and use my iPhone, iPad Windows PC, Android Phone, Chromebook, MacBook and Chromebook within minutes. It doesn’t get any simpler than this.
I unpacked and plugged in the HP Envy Inspire 7950e. I was instructed to install the application on the packaging. The app first asked me to sign-in or create an HP Account, and then told me how I could install the inks cartridges, connect to the printer from my phone.
You can use a USB cable (not included) to connect, but Wi-Fi makes more sense and allows you to place the printer wherever it’s most convenient. I chose to place this printer in my second bedroom, as it is very quiet.
Software is excellent and works well. It’s easy to use or automated. When I looked for borderless printing on the iPhone app, I couldn’t find it, but it’s relatively simple to enable on Android or a computer. The edge-to-edge print I wanted was achieved by printing from Windows, macOS or Android.
You can print through the HP Smart mobile app or your operating system’s standard print system. HP guided me quickly and easily through the installation process.
Uncertainty about ink levels is a minor complaint. The app shows a bar for black and color ink, which lowers as the ink is used, but doesn’t quantify that with a percentage or estimate of how many pages you can print. HP+ provides an Instant Ink Subscription that eliminates concerns about running low on ink.
The price is right
HP Envy Inspire 795e is available for only $220. This is a great price for a printer of this caliber. HP and third party sellers offer sales to keep the price down. If you aren’t that particular and just want a printer that is cheap but good, we have a comprehensive list of the best cheap printer deals.
With a printer and especially with a color inkjet, it is important to have enough ink. The black ink lasts for a very long time and the indicator barely changes after printing several pages.
Each color print takes a toll on the starter color cartridge that’s included. I printed four full page color pages and seven 4 by 6 photo prints in the highest quality before the tri-color cartridge was replaced.
When this happens, you can still print but the colors may be off. Pink flowers were printed well, but the green leaves appeared muted because of the empty cartridge. Still, it’s nice to have the option to print even after the warning.
Thankfully, HP Envy Inspire 995e comes with six months of Instant Ink subscription through HP+. After creating my HP account and adding my billing and shipping details, I received a black cartridge and a three-color one.
The idea is that ink ships before you need it so you don’t run out. If you’d like to get six months free ink by signing up, do it now. This will ensure that more ink arrives before the color cartridges run out.
The HP Envy Inspire 795e is an excellent all-in one printer.
After the six-month Instant Ink bonus, you’ll be billed according to your estimated usage. If you want to change your plan, you can.
You can order more cartridges whenever you want. HP is likely to alert you when you need an upgrade in your plan. You can make changes monthly. HP claims that HP cartridges are 50% cheaper than those purchased separately.
What is the best printer for me?
The HP Envy Inspire is a great all-in-one at an affordable cost. Setup is easy and quick, and the printer works with all your devices.
The cartridges come in black and tri-color. If your color prints average out to use roughly the same amount of cyan, magenta, and yellow, you’ll enjoy the best value. HP makes its printers energy-efficient and eco-friendly and that’s worth consideration.
If you have a preference for certain colors, a printer that has individual ink cartridges will be more effective. I’m more likely to print nature photos that feature greens and blues with pops of reddish tones. As expected, cyan and magenta ran out faster than if I had used them. That’s a little thing, but it can add up over time.
The HP Envy Inspire 7955e is a wonderful printer, and it very well may be exactly what you’re looking for.
Editors’ Recommendations