The lower-end model in a trio of entry-level consumer-grade all-in-one (AIO) inkjet photo printers that HP released recently, the Envy Photo 6255 All-in-One Printer ($129.99) competes directly with the Editors' Choice Canon Pixma TS9120 Wireless Inkjet Printer, as well as a few others in the Pixma TS-series line. The Envy 6255 is a bit slower, shorter on features, and its photo print quality falls a little behind that of the Canon TS9120; on the other hand, when you pair it with HP's Instant Ink subscription service, you get some of the lowest per-page running costs from a consumer-grade photo printer available, making the Envy 6255 an excellent alternative for homes and families who want to print a few hundred photos inexpensively.
The Basics Plus
The Envy Photo 6255 ($439.89 at Amazon) is positioned at the bottom of HP's line of Envy Photo AIOs, behind the next level up, the HP Envy Photo 7155 All-in-One Printer, and above that, the Envy Photo 7855 ($229.99 at HP) . The differences between the Envy 6255 and the Envy 7155 are minimal; the 7155 model has slightly faster page per minute (ppm) print speed ratings, a somewhat larger touch-screen control panel, and costs $20 more.
As the flagship model in the series, the Envy 7855's speed rating is slightly higher than both of its siblings, and it comes with a few small office features, such as a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) for sending multipage documents to the scanner, and Ethernet, for a higher-speed wired network connection. In any case, the Envy 6255 measures 6.3 by 17.9 by 16 inches (HWD) and weighs 14.3 pounds, which is the same as the Envy 7155 ($179.99 at Best Buy) . The Envy 7855, on the other hand, is 1.3 inches taller and 3.8 inches longer, and is heavier by 3.8 pounds.
Similar Products
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While the Envy 6255 is more than small enough to fit on most home office desktops, it's still a bit larger than some of its competitors. The Canon Pixma TS6120 Wireless Inkjet All-in-One ($329.99 at Amazon) , a lower-end sibling to the Canon TS9120 and closer match to the Envy 6255 in terms of features, weighs the same, but is a few inches larger in all directions. Brother's similarly priced MFC-J775DW, an office-oriented AIO, is closer in size to both the Canon TS6120 and TS9120, but it's a few pounds heavier.
Paper capacity for the Envy 6255 consists of 140 sheets, split between a 125-sheet main drawer, and, inside of that, a 15-sheet photo paper tray, which allows you to zip off a quick photo when you need to, without having to empty and reconfigure that main drawer. Its maximum monthly duty cycle is 1,000 pages, with 300 to 400 pages recommended print volume. These specs, too, are similar to many competing models. Both the Envy 7155 and 7855 have identical duty cycles. The Canon Pixma TS9120 ($784.99 at Amazon) and TS6120 both have a paper input capacity of 200 sheets from two drawers, one up front and one in the back. The Brother MFC-J775DW ($129.99 at Staples) , on the other hand, supports only 100 sheets at a time.
The Envy 6255's connectivity options include dual-band Wi-Fi, connecting to a single PC via USB, and Wireless Direct (HP's Wi-Fi Direct equivalent), a peer-to-peer protocol for connecting the printer to your mobile device. Other mobile connectivity options include HP ePrint for printing emails and attachments, Apple AirPrint, and Mopria.
Making copies, scanning to network drives, and other PC-free tasks, as well as making configuration changes, are handled from the Envy 6255's capacitive monochrome touch screen. To get a color touch screen, you'll have to step up to the HP Envy 7155. I should also mention that of these three new Envy Photo models, only the 6255 does not support SD card flash memory for printing from your digital cameras.
Entry-Level Performance
HP rates the Envy 6255 at 13 monochrome ppm and 8ppm for color pages, which is a 2ppm slower rating than the HP Envy 7855 and 1ppm slower than the Envy 7155. (I tested it over USB from our standard Intel Core i5-equipped PC running Windows 10 Professional.) For the first test, I printed our standard 12-page Microsoft Word text document, on which the Envy 6255 managed 11.2ppm, or nearly 2ppm slower than its rating, 1.5ppm behind the HP Envy 7855, and 0.5ppm slower than the Envy 7155. The Envy 6255 couldn't catch up with either the Canon TS9120's 13.2ppm or the TS6120's 12.9ppm, but it did manage to outdo the Brother MFC-J775DW's 10ppm.
When I combined the results from printing the previous 12-page Word document with those from printing our more complex PowerPoint, Excel, and Acrobat files containing color graphics and photos, print speeds slowed down considerably. Here, the Envy 6255 printed at a rate of 3.4ppm, which is a fraction of a ppm behind the HP Envy 7155 and 7855, and just over a page behind the Canon TS9120, the Canon TS6120, and the Brother MFC-J775DW (they all managed 4.6ppm on this part of our tests).
Since the Envy 6255 calls itself a "Photo" printer, how well it prints photos should matter, right? Most consumer-grade photo printers like these churn out 4-by-6-inch snapshots at between 15 and 50 seconds, with a few exceptions on either side. Our Envy test unit churned out our two colorful and highly detailed snapshots in 42 seconds, which came in second to last behind the HP Envy 7155, but all of these AIOs came in well below 60 seconds.
Not The Best, But Quite Good
Like its Envy 7155 and 7855 siblings, the Envy 6255 prints great-looking text and better-than-average graphics and photos—about what I'd expect from an entry-level inkjet AIO. Text came out crisp, clean, and highly legible for most point sizes, down to about 8 points or so, and decorative fonts slightly higher, making it acceptable for most types of business, family, and student output.
Business charts and graphs, as well as PowerPoint handouts, also looked good, except that the printer struggled some when reproducing dark gradients and fills. I saw some notable streaking in some places, and a few others where color accuracy wasn't at its best. Overall, graphics output was good, though.
As I've pointed out in other HP Envy Photo AIO reviews, while these four-ink (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) machines churn out good-looking photos (they come out even better if you use HP's premium photo papers that are designed to work with this printer), there's a lot of competition in this section of the printer market, including several five- and six-ink models. These additional colors provide a wider color gamut (range) and greater detail, thereby producing more vibrant and accurately colored images.
A few of Canon's TS-Series Pixma AIOs, such as the TS9120 and TS6120, are five- and six-ink machines (those two are six-ink), as are several of Epson's Expression Premium and Expression Photo lines, such as the five-ink Expression Premium ET-7700 EcoTank All-in-One Supertank Printer ($859.99 at Amazon) .
Impressive Running Costs
A drawback to many of the AIOs mentioned in the previous section is that they cost a lot on a per-page basis to use. In fact, excessive running costs have often been a primary reason that these otherwise fine little printers have neglected to receive our Editors' Choice nod—though not the only reason. With HP's Envy line and most other consumer-grade AIOs and printers, you have two ways to buy ink: the conventional method of purchasing them as needed, when they empty (or get close), which for the Envy 6255 will cost you a whopping 6 cents per monochrome page and 16 cents for color prints.
That's higher than every printer mentioned here so far. Since both the Canon TS9120 and TS6120 (and some of the other TS-Series models) use five and six inks, and there's no way to figure out when the additional inks deploy, or how much ink they dispense when they do, it's difficult to come up with an exact cost per page (CPP). Suffice it to say that based on the ink usage information Canon has provided me, while the CPPs are somewhat high, they are still a few cents lower than those of the Envy 6255.
Brother's MFC-J775DW, one of that company's INKvestment models where you pay more for the printer upfront to get less-expensive ink cartridges—on a per-page basis—delivers CPPs of 1 cent for monochrome pages and just under 5 cents for color. Yet another low-running-costs alternative is Epson's ET-7700. While it costs significantly more than the Envy 6255, it and all other EcoTank models (you know, the ones that you fill from bottles) deliver CPPs of just less than 1 cent for both monochrome and color pages.
Which brings us back to HP's Instant Ink subscription program, where the printer itself keeps track of how many pages you print and orders new cartridges from HP when it's time to replace the existing ones. The program, which really is designed for low-volume users of around 50 to 300 or 400 pages, offers three service levels, with 300 pages per month being at the rate of 3.5 cents per page. The huge advantage here, though, is that's 3.5 cents for any page, be it a monochrome page with very little ink coverage or an 8.5-by-11-inch photograph with 100-percent ink coverage.
Decisions, Decisions
A few years ago, your choices for buying a consumer-grade photo printer were slim, which usually entailed paying ongoing high-premium ink fees and learning to live with it. Nowadays, though, the choices are plentiful, and the breakdown goes something like this: For the best-quality photo, choose the Canon TS9120 or another of Canon's six-ink Pixmas, though its five-ink models, as well as Epson's five- and six-ink models, print photos quite well, too. To print a high volume of high-quality photos and document pages at the best ongoing running costs, the Epson ET-7700 (or the Epson Expression Premium ET-7750 ($1,099.00 at Amazon) if you need wide-format images) are great choices. But if your primary needs include printing a few hundred good-looking photos and document pages at low running costs, the Envy Photo 6255 does that, and does it well.
The Envy Photo 6255 is a small, lightweight, and attractive consumer-grade AIO that prints good-looking photos and does so at highly competitive running costs, though only when you sign up for HP's Instant Ink.
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