Aimed squarely at micro and small offices, the HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus e-All-in-One ($299.99 direct) is more directly competitive with low-end color laser MFPs like the HP LaserJet Pro 100 Color MFP M175nw ($349.99 direct, 3 stars) than with inkjets. Because it's an inkjet, however, it can also offer high-quality photos, a trick that makes it appropriate for the dual role of home and home office MFP too. More important, it performs well enough to make it a good fit in any of these roles, and even serve as a heavy-duty personal MFP, if you have the room for it.

If there's an important feature you might want in an office color multi-function printer (MFP) that you won't find in the 8600 Plus , I don't know what it could be.

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Basic MFP functions include printing, scanning, and faxing, including over a network, as well as working as a standalone copier, fax machine, and email sender, and letting you scan to a USB key or memory card. The printer connects by WiFi or Ethernet (as well as USB of course), it supports Apple AirPrint for printing from iThings over Wi-Fi, and it can print through the cloud using HP's ePrint, which lets you assign the printer an email address and then send documents as attachments for printing.

For the home side of the dual role of home and home office MFP, the 8600 Plus also offers such photocentric features as the ability to print from a memory card or USB key and the ability to show images before printing on its 4.3-inch color LCD.

Also worth mention is the legal-size flatbed, which can come in handy in any office, and the touch-screen interface with well-designed menus for the printer control panel. You can also use the touch screen with HP's Web Apps, including for example Biztree Forms App (Free), and Financial Times News App (Free, 3 stars) that I recently reviewed.

Paper Handling and Size

The 8600 Plus also goes well beyond the basics with a built-in print duplexer for printing on both sides of a page and a 50-page automatic document feeder (ADF) that also duplexes, so you can copy from single- or double sided originals to your choice of single- or double-sided copies. You can also scan, fax, or email both simplex and duplex documents.

The 8600 offers reasonably high paper capacity as well, with a 250-sheet input tray, which should be enough for most home, micro, and small offices. If you need more, however, you can add a second 250-sheet tray ($79.99 direct) for a total 500-sheet capacity.

Note too that HP has also announced the HP Officejet Pro 8600 Premium e-All-in-One ($399.99 direct) which HP says is the identical printer with the second tray added plus a set of standard color ink cartridges that normally costs $59.97 and 50 sheets of HP Glossy Brochure paper that normally costs $13.99. Add it all up, and you save about $54 compared with buying the 8600 Plus and then buying the tray, ink, and paper separately.  

As you might expect, the legal-size flatbed by itself is enough to make the 8600 Plus bigger and heavier than most inkjet MFPs. At 12.4 by 19.4 by 18.9 inches (HWD), and 27.8 pounds, it's also a little bigger than you might want to share a desk with. Aside from any issues about finding room for it, however, setup is absolutely typical.

Speed and Output Quality

The 8600 Plus turned in impressive numbers for speed. I timed it on our business applications suite at 5.9 effective pages per minute (ppm). That's not only a notably fast speed for an inkjet, it's well into color laser MFP territory. In fact, the 8600 Plus is significantly faster than the M175nw , which managed only 3.3 ppm, and faster even than the more expensive Editors' Choice Dell 1355cnw Multifunction Color Printer SEE IT (4 stars), at 4.5 ppm. It also did reasonably well for photo speed, averaging 55 seconds for a 4 by 6.

Output quality is another strong point. Text at small sizes doesn't have quite the crisp edges of laser-printed text, but unless you have an unusual need for small fonts you shouldn't have any complaints. Also worth mention is that although the text isn't quite smudge proof, it smudged very little when I rubbed it with a wet tissue.

Graphics quality is easily good enough for any business need up to and including PowerPoint handouts. I saw some slight banding in some of our test images in default mode, but no other issues. Photos were easily a match for drugstore prints.

One last plus that demands mention is a notably low claimed running cost, at 1.6 cents per black and white page and 7.2 cents per color page. That's actually cheaper than the 2.8 cents for black and white and 8.2 cents for color that Kodak boasts about for its line of MFPs as a key selling point. Print enough pages, and the running cost can make the 8600 Plus cheaper to own over its lifetime than a less expensive MFP with a higher cost per page.

With all these strong points, and no weaknesses that turned up in my testing, the 8600 Plus is one of the most impressive printers to ever come through PC Labs. Its speed is a match for low-cost lasers; its text and graphics quality is suitable for most business needs; its photos are suitable for most home use; it has almost every MFP feature you can think of; it's cheaper to buy than competitive color laser MFPs; and it's even cheap to run.

If you're considering a low-end color laser MFP, and you don't check out the HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus e-All-in-One too, you're making a big mistake. It's one of the most compelling picks for Editors' Choice we've ever seen.

More Multi-function Printer Reviews:

•   HP OfficeJet Pro 8730 All-in-One Printer
•   HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M180nw
•   Canon imageClass MF424dw
•   HP OfficeJet 3830 All-in-One Printer
•   Canon imageClass MF236n
•  more