HP OfficeJet Pro K850

The HP Officejet Pro K850 is an enormous inkjet printer because it can handle medium format media, up to 13 inches wide versus 8.5 inches on a typical, consumer level printer. The black and silver printer measures 24 inches wide, 17 inches deep, and 8 inches tall, and weighs 27.1 pounds. The duplexer on the K850dn adds an inch or two to the depth when attached to the rear of the printer.

The K850's control panel is simple: power, cancel, and paper feed buttons and a set of icons that light up to indicate various problems, including a paper jam, an empty input tray, and low ink levels. The printer's output tray sits atop the input cassette and tilts up so you can access the paper. The output tray features paper guides and two extension leaves that help corral longer prints.

The input cassette also offers adjustable paper guides that let you neatly insert media ranging from 3x5 inches to 13x19 inches.

The four ink tanks reside separately from the print heads and are hidden behind a spring release panel on the top of the printer.

The K850 uses a pigment based black (for better black text prints over dye based black) and dye based cyan, magenta, and yellow inks.

Many photo oriented printers even consumer level ones offer six ink printing (or more) for a better range of colors over four color printing, which means the K850 isn't the ideal printer if you're working mainly with high end graphics. It ships with the standard yield cartridges, which cost $25 apiece, but you can replace those with high yield cartridges: the black costs $34, while the color cartridges cost $38 each.

Using the high yield cartridges, HP estimates a black page can cost as low as 2.2 cents and a color page can cost as low as 8.4 cents both numbers are low for an inkjet printer. Its monthly duty cycle is 6,250 pages, so if your office has high volume printing needs, this isn't the printer for you.