HP’s Envy Pro 6455 All-in-One ($149.99) is an entry-level multifunction printer designed for family and home-office use. Like the Editors' Choice Canon Pixma TR8520 Wireless Home Office All-in-One, the Envy Pro 6455 prints well, if rather slowly, and it comes with a strong basic feature set, including an automatic document feeder (ADF) for scanning and copying multipage documents. Also like the Pixma, the Envy prints good-looking photos. Where the HP AIO tops the Canon, though, is that—when you opt for HP's Instant Ink monthly ink subscription service—the Envy Pro costs much less to use, especially when printing in color. Good print quality, a decent feature set for the price, and low running costs make the Envy Pro 6455 an excellent alternative to our current favorite among entry-level color AIOs for the home and home-office set.
Small Footprint, Strong Feature Set
Part of a recent two-model release in the new Envy Pro 6000 series (today's 6455, and an Envy Pro 6055 to be reviewed here shortly), the former is the more robust of the two. While there are a few subtle differences between them, it's primarily the 6455's 35-page automatic document feeder that makes it more versatile and a better value. I should note, though, that this is a manual-duplexing ADF, as opposed to the auto-duplexing variety that scans and copies two-sided multipage documents without user intervention.
With manual-duplexing ADFs, of course, you must flip the originals yourself to capture the other side. It's not unusual for AIOs in this price range to lack auto-duplexing. In fact, of several competing models, including the Canon TR8520 mentioned above, Canon's Pixma TS6320 Wireless All-in-One, Brother's MFC-J995DW INKvestment Tank All-in-One, and Epson's Expression Premium XP-7100 (another PCMag favorite), only the Epson's ADF is auto-duplexing. The Pixma TS6320 has no ADF at all, and the Brother's holds only 20 sheets.
Measuring 6.8 by 17 by 14.2 inches (HWD) and weighing 13.6 pounds, the Envy Pro 6455 is about average in both size and girth for its class. In other words, the HP and its competitors have small footprints and take up little desk space for what they do.
Similar Products
Canon Pixma TR8520 Wireless Home Office All-In-One Printer
Epson Expression Premium XP-7100 Small-in-One Printer
Brother MFC-J995DW INKvestment Tank All-in-One Printer
HP Envy 5055 All-in-One Printer
Epson WorkForce ST-3000 EcoTank Color MFP Supertank Printer
While we saw HP moving in this direction with its Tango and Tango X machines in late 2018, the Envy Pro 6455 is the first AIO I know without a control panel to speak of. You do get some feedback—such as when the printer is in various modes such as copying, scanning, and printing—from a status light that illuminates the top of the input and output trays (purple, for example, is Setup mode). But setup is performed entirely from your smartphone by scanning a bar code with the handheld device's camera. After that, all functions, such as printing and copying, are implemented from either your mobile device or a desktop PC with HP Smart App, which we'll look at momentarily.
Nowadays, smart home voice activation has become common on most HP, Canon, and Epson inkjet printers and AIOs. This Envy Pro model supports Amazon Alexa and Google Home Assistant, but, unfortunately, HP’s voice activation support no longer includes standard IFTTT (If This Then That) scripting, which (where supported) allows for reasonably simple voice commands using certain services such as Microsoft's Cortana and Apple's Siri.
Paper handling consists of a single 100-sheet tray that you can also load with up to 10 envelopes or 40 sheets of premium photo paper. The printer's maximum monthly duty cycle is 1,000 pages, with a suggested monthly volume of up to 100 prints.
Of the machines mentioned here so far, a 100-sheet capacity is the smallest, with the Brother MFC-J995DW coming next at 101 (the odd number thanks to a single-sheet override tray). Both the Canon TR8520 and TS6320 hold up to 200 sheets from two sources, and the Epson XP-7100 holds up to 120 sheets (100 sheets of plain paper and 20 sheets of premium photo paper). Of the competing models mentioned here, only the Brother has published volume ratings, with a duty cycle and suggested volume five times that of the Envy Pro.
Connectivity and HP Smart App
Like most of today's entry-level AIOs, HP's provide a series of connectivity options ranging from connecting to a single PC via USB to wireless networking. However, unlike rivals that connect through an array of apps and drivers, the Envy Pro 6455 connects via HP Smart App, which provides several ways to link your computing devices, i.e., laptops, tablets, and smartphones, not only to the printer itself, but also other useful options, such as scanning to or printing from cloud sites, emails, workflow profiles, and more.
First, though, there are the standard connectivity interfaces, which include, as mentioned, USB, Wi-Fi, and Wi-Fi Direct, though the latter is controlled via Smart App, as is the ability to use your handheld device's camera for scanning documents directly to the AIO or to a local drive or your favorite cloud site. Typically, on several other HP machines, Smart App also handles the optical character recognition (OCR) routines that allow you to scan text documents and then convert them to searchable PDF, Microsoft Word, or some other format that allows you to edit scanned text directly, but that feature isn’t available with Envy AIOs.
When Speed Is Not Required
A drawback to many of these entry-level machines is that they're not racehorses. HP rates the Envy Pro 6455 at 10 pages per minute (ppm) for monochrome and 7ppm for color. That's about 5ppm slower than the two Canon Pixmas and the Epson and 2ppm behind the Brother. I tested the HP over a USB connection on our standard Intel Core i5 testbed running Windows 10 Pro. (See how we test printers.)
When printing our standard 12-page Microsoft Word text document, the Envy Pro 6455 managed an average speed of 11.2ppm, or just above its 10ppm rating. That score fell behind all the other AIOs mentioned here except the Brother (10.5ppm), with the Epson XP-7100 leading at 15ppm and the Pixmas each coming in at around 12ppm.
Next, I clocked the Envy as it churned out our collection of complex color Adobe Acrobat PDFs, Excel spreadsheets and charts and graphs, and PowerPoint handouts containing colorful business graphics and typefaces in various shapes and sizes. Then, I combined these results with those from printing the text file to come up with a somewhat uninspiring average speed of 3.8ppm.
Finally, I finished my tests by timing the Envy Pro as it printed our brightly colored and highly detailed 4-by-6-inch test snapshots. Here, the 6645 averaged about 30 seconds per image, about what I'd expect from a family-friendly AIO.
Enviable Output
The print speeds may be humdrum, but I have no complaints about the Envy Pro 6455's output quality. Text came out crisp and highly legible, even at small sizes of 6 to 8 points. The business graphics it printed had a few near-imperceptible instances of banding and other slight ink distribution flaws. I doubt you'd notice them unless you were examining the documents for problems.
Photos, too, as with most Envy-brand printers, were accurately colored with good detail, though not quite the pristine prints I usually see from five- and six-ink photo-centric machines such as the Canon Pixma TR8520 and Epson Expression Premium XP-7100. Even so, for the most part, the Envy Pro 6455 will do your family’s keeper photographs justice.
Instant Ink to the Rescue
When you subscribe to the highest level ($10 per month) of HP's Instant Ink program, the Envy Pro 6455 will cost you about 3.5 cents per monochrome or color page to use. Only the Brother MFC-J995DW, one of that company's INKvestment Tank models, comes close (0.9 cent per page monochrome, 4.7 cents color). The two Canons and the Epson run about 3 to 4 cents per monochrome page, and over 15 cents per color page.
Keep in mind that the HP's 3.5 cents is a flat rate covering all types of printed pages, even photos up to 8.5 by 11 inches—that is, pages with 100 percent ink coverage that could easily cost between 50 cents to a dollar per print on many competing machines. If you plan to print and copy, say, 200 or 300 color pages or photos each month, the 6455 is a good value.
Almost the Envy of Its Peers
The HP Envy Pro 6455 is an excellent home and family AIO, especially when you couple it with Instant Ink, but its sparse controls, relatively small capacity, and the lack of a few other amenities keep it just short of a few slightly more robust entry-level AIOs, including the Canon Pixma TR8520 and Epson Expression Premium XP-7100. Then, too, if you print more than a couple of hundred pages each month, you can always choose one of Epson's or Canon's bulk-ink EcoTank or MegaTank models, respectively, which will print both monochrome and color pages for less than a cent each (but, of course, cost about two and a half times as much to buy for the printer itself). Otherwise, for moderate print and copy needs, the Envy Pro 6455 is a strong choice.
[Editors' Note, June 18, 2020: Changed review to clarify lack of support for IFTTT and Cortana, and for OCR via Smart App; HP noted that the Envy Pro does not support these items, contrary to initial specs.]
The HP Envy Pro 6455 prints well and, if you sign up for HP’s Instant Ink subscription program, inexpensively, making it a good value for families and home offices.
Like What You're Reading?
Sign up for Lab Report to get the latest reviews and top product advice delivered right to your inbox.
This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.
Thanks for signing up!
Your subscription has been confirmed. Keep an eye on your inbox!
Sign up for other newsletters
