HP ENVY 5055 Wireless Photo Printer 2020 Detailed Review.
HP ENVY 5055 Wireless Photo Printer: Choosing a great printer is easier than ever. With how many formerly premium product features have become standard on home printers, it’s actually starting to get difficult to go wrong in your selection.
Overview
Home office printers can still surprise you with ink costs, or frustrate you with inscrutable design decisions. For the most part, these mistakes can be avoided by being cautious.
Examining the most important aspects of any given printer can give you all the insight you need to be confident in your decision.
HP ENVY 5055
At some point in your life, you’ve probably encountered an HP printer. About one-fifth of the entire printer market belongs to HP, and it’s not by coincidence.
People want easy-to-use print devices, and that’s what HP delivers. The ENVY 5055 is the latest in their line of home inkjet printers, and if you’ve ever used an HP printer, then you already have a good idea of what to expect.
Inkjet printers are ideal for rich graphics and crisp text. By spraying tiny droplets of ink onto paper, inkjets can be used for printing in a greater range of paper sizes.
From business envelopes to scrapbooking, inkjets have been the go-to device for decades. And with 5055, you can expect more of that.
Design & Build
Like most home printers, the HP ENVY 5055 is built with a modestly low throughput in mind. It has a recommended monthly volume of about 400 sheets or slightly more than ten pages per day.
That throughput is somewhat reflected in the low-profile build of the 5055. It’s clearly been made to fit subtly on a desk without taking up much space.
Print Quality
The ENVY 5055 operates using ordinary A4 paper, with a maximum sheet size of 8.5 x 11.7 inches. That’s perfect for a variety of envelopes, photo paper, ordinary paper, and smaller legal stationary.
But you should take note of the minimum 3 x 5-inch size necessary to feed through the printer. And whatever size you end up shooting, you can get gorgeous borderless photo prints.
Connectivity
Wi-Fi may only be a minor convenience when you’re only connecting to a single device. But when you’re trying to share a printer between several devices, wireless connectivity can be essential.
Given only that you’ve got good Wi-Fi to provide the printer, it should only take seconds for someone to hop on the 5055. The quick setup speed is ideal for small businesses and homes alike.
Furthermore, the 5055 is ready for Bluetooth connections thanks to the inclusion of a second wireless antenna within the ENVY.
Ink and Toner
Different printers use different kinds of ink cartridges. And those cartridges often have subtly different hues or different ways of creating those hues.
The 5055 uses somewhat standard inkjet cartridges, including 1 black and 1 color cartridge. The color cartridges use a simple design consisting of cyan, magenta, yellow.
The 5055 comes with one pair of ink cartridges, consisting of one black and one color cartridge. Unfortunately, the cartridges which come preinstalled in most printers are rather small.
Those in the ENVY 5055 are good for about 100 prints before needing replacement. The good news is that if you’re someone who does plenty of printing, the ENVY 5055 can be equipped with high-capacity cartridges.
Essential Features
Photo printers like the Envy 5055 tend to be more about printing great photos than churning out text quickly. And to that end, 5055 is quite successful.
It offers photo quality which rivals or exceeds what you’d get from ordering prints online. Another critical feature to note is the automatic duplexing. Duplexing allows you to print on both sides of a page, which saves you time, effort, and money.
Speed usually isn’t something you have to worry too much about with a home printer but becomes an issue once you’ve got large print jobs or several people using the same printer.
Pages per minute PPM measures how fast your printer can go through the paper. The ENVY 5055 offers a print speed of 10ppm for black and white pages, which is high-average for a color printer.
The 7 ppm speed for color prints is only just lagging behind while remaining slightly faster than a handful of competitors.
Ease of Use
Setting up the HP ENVY 5055 takes slightly more than 5 minutes. After years of refining their installation process, HP has made it scarcely more difficult than pressing a few buttons.
And it only gets easier once you’ve got everything set up. From there, you can choose to install the HP Smart App to help manage your printer.
Other Considerations
Some consumers will understandably be frustrated by the print speeds of the ENVY 5055. It may feel like they’ve only marginally improved over the past 20 years, and that’s because they haven’t.
Greatly increasing color print speeds isn’t easy or cheap. Unless you’re willing to pay a high premium, slower speeds are the price you pay for high image quality without having to take out a third mortgage.
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Who Should Choose the HP ENVY 5055?
People who print casually will love the ENVY 5055. And if you do enough printing to justify joining the HP Instant Ink program, which is about 50 pages per month, then you’ll love the ENVY 5055 as well.
The ENVY 5055 is incredibly cheap considering the hardware you’re getting, but HP is hoping to make that money back on ink. Replacement ink costs for the 5055 can be steep unless you’re printing infrequently, or able to take advantage of the better prices through their ink savings program.
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