HP OfficeJet Pro 9120e: Effortless printing etcetera

The paperless office is one of those overhyped buzzwords that were frequently bandied about in the late 1990s. It never happened. Nearly all home offices and households still have at least one printer, often two, and those large piles of printed documents are unlikely to disappear anytime soon.

This weighed on my mind as I unboxed HP’s latest OfficeJet Pro multifunction inkjet printer/scanner/copier/fax. I was curious to see if the 9120e could help wrangle the never-ending paper chase and, crucially, if it’d demand ink like a vampire invited to a blood bank.

Looks-wise, the 9120e’s sleek white and grey aesthetic gives it a no-nonsense business-like look and feel. It might be elegant, but it’s not petite, so factoring available space in your home office is a key consideration. It features a single paper tray, a user-friendly touchscreen control panel, a top-mounted scanner and an automatic document feeder. The 9120e appears to be a capable printer, scanner, copier and fax machine.

Getting it set up was no great hardship. Plugging in its bundled power cable, the device’s integrated colour touch screen lit up, prompting me to install the HP Smart app on my phone (the getting started instructions also conveniently included a QR code for this purpose). Once installed, the app guided me through the setup process, syncing the printer with HP’s Instant Ink service, which allowed me to replace my older printer with the 9210e.

One trick HP has missed is the ability to give printers a user-friendly name. My wife has an HP OfficeJet printer in her home office, so it’d have been nice to be able to name the 9210e “Pat’s Printer” so I wouldn’t accidentally print documents on her printer, wasting her precious ink and costly paper.

Printing speeds are zippy. I achieved up to 20ppm for black (with less text/graphics-heavy documents, the 9210e is rated at a brisk 22ppm) and a slightly slower 17ppm for colour print jobs. That’s plenty fast for most home office settings.

Nicer still, it also supports Duplex (double-sided) printing automatically. Once you choose and enable the 2-sided print option, you’re freed from the odious chore of flipping pages and feeding them back into the printer. I also appreciated that I could leave a stack of documents to be copied or scanned and inserted into the automatic document feeder, which saved me a significant amount of time. 1200dpi scanning is also quick, as is the copy option. The roomy 250-sheet paper tray should also (in theory) translate into fewer paper-loading sagas.

Text documents came out crisp and clean and looked laser printer-like. Colour prints also looked good, with no noticeable banding or similar issues. Colours printed on standard A4 paper are a tad muted, but using photo paper saw colours really pop. While you won’t get the same quality you’d expect from a photo lab, the prints are still more than fine for presentations, invoices, home albums, and other purposes.

Considering its very reasonable sticker price, I was pleased to find that the available connectivity options were plentiful. The 9210e plays nice with Wi-Fi, Ethernet, USB, AirPrint, and Bluetooth. It also has a phone socket, in case you want to use it as an old-school fax machine. This versatility is further enhanced by the HP Smart app (available for Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS), which enables wireless printing from your Wi-Fi-enabled phone, tablet, or other device from anywhere within range of your home wireless network. It also features several security measures that should reduce the likelihood of being hacked should your network ever be compromised.

If you print a lot of documents its Instant Ink compatibility can save you money. The 9210e will automatically notify HP when an Instant Ink subscriber’s ink levels are low, and they’ll send a new ink cartridge, which is super-convenient. That said, it’s worth looking into the economics of an Instant Ink subscription if you don’t print many documents. If you print only a few pages per month (or less frequently), buying ink cartridges as needed may be a more cost-effective option. That said, Instant Ink offers great flexibility, allowing you to change or cancel your plan should your future printing needs change.

The other potential gotcha is that other money-saving options, such as refilled or cheaper third-party ink cartridges, are no longer viable because the 9120e uses micro-chipped ink cartridges, meaning you’re stuck with HP ink cartridges, as non-chipped and refilled cartridges won’t work.

Either way, HP has bundled all the bells and whistles that most home office users are ever likely to need, and the 9210e can be bought for as little as $95, depending on where you shop. Add to this good print quality and quick scan speeds, along with an auto document feeder and duplexer, and there is plenty to like.

https://www.hp.com/bd-en/products/printers/product-details/2101420735