HP Envy 6155e review: a stylish printer made for Instant Ink

The HP Envy 6155e is a sleek all-in-one printer designed specifically for low-volume home use. The price is right, and HP includes three months of Instant Ink to add more value to the Envy 6155e.

I went hands-on to test the Envy 6155e’s performance, quality, and ease of use. I also delve into the print costs of this cartridge-based printer and compare the long-term value of an HP Instant Ink subscription to help you decide whether this is the best printer for you.

Specs

Design

The HP Envy 6155e boasts an attractive, tiered design with rounded corners and a low profile. The beige and off-white colors blend seamlessly with home decor.

The unique design allows it to have a very low profile. The 5.4-inch height makes it even shorter than Canon’s tiny Pixma TR7020a. With a compact footprint of 17.1 by 14.2 inches and a weight of 11.3 pounds, the Envy 6155e is easy to manage and doesn’t take up too much room.

A 2.4-inch color touchscreen on the lower tier provides easy access to printer functions. The angle isn’t adjustable, but it’s low enough to be visible when seated.

A single 100-sheet paper tray supports standard paper, envelopes, and photo cards. Since there’s no media tray, all paper should be removed when changing size or type. A clever swing-out support arm catches prints when in use.

The flatbed scanner serves for both scans and copies since the Envy 6155e lacks an automatic document feeder (ADF). That means multi-page copies require manual swapping.

Printing performance

The HP Envy 6155e has good print quality and one-page documents are surprisingly quick, rolling out in about 11 seconds. Longer documents feel slow by comparison, printing at a maximum of 10 pages per minute (ppm) for black text and 7 ppm for color.

HP’s OfficeJet Pro 8135e is much faster, managing 20 ppm in monochrome and 10 ppm for color documents. However, you’ll pay more for that extra speed.

Print resolution reaches up to 1200 x 1200 dpi for black text and 4800 x 1200 dpi for color photos with high-quality paper. That means it’s easy to read fine print and photos look crisp.

This isn’t the best choice for a photo printer, but the picture quality is good overall, with accurate colors even on plain paper. However, shadows are a little too dark so some detail is lost. The Envy 6155e can print borderless photos on photo cards and full letter-size sheets.

HP gave the Envy 6155e a feature that helps greatly with a printer with fairly small cartridges — the screen shows estimated ink levels left after each print.

Special features

The Envy 6155e’s flatbed scanner offers high-resolution (1200 dpi) document and photo scans. It’s reasonably fast for a compact home printer. Copy speeds are up to 8 copies per minute (cpm) for black-and-white and 3.5 cpm for color documents.

I had to swap pages manually to copy longer documents. HP’s more expensive Envy 6555e is essentially the same printer with an ADF added that can handle up to 35 pages automatically.

For a busy home office, you might want to check out the best all-in-one printers that make copies faster and offer other important business-oriented features.

Software and compatibility

Installation is quite simple. The color touchscreen showed a QR code for the HP Smart app, which guided me to install the black and tricolor cartridges, insert paper, and start the printhead alignment process.

HP’s alignment system is quick and easy. After printing the test page, I was instructed to place it in the flatbed scanner. Still, the setup was fast and almost effortless. The HP Smart app even connected to Wi-Fi for me without entering my password.

The only interruption in the flow was getting a PIN code from the back of the printer, which would have been easier before I positioned the printer.

There’s a USB-B port to connect directly to a computer but Wi-Fi worked fine for my purposes. The Envy 6155e is compatible with any computer or phone.

Everything worked well from my computer and phone. The only thing lacking was high-resolution mobile scans. The HP Smart app only supports 300 dpi scanning.

Price

Priced at $140, the HP Envy 6155e is an affordable option if you don’t need to print often, but do want the convenience of printing a picture and shipping labels at a moment’s notice or making copies from time to time.

Replacement ink cartridges for the HP Envy 6155e are inexpensive but don’t hold much ink. The standard HP 68 Black Original Ink Cartridge costs $23 for approximately 160 pages (14 cents per page) and the HP 68 Tri-Color Original Ink Cartridge is $23 for about 120 pages (19 cents per page).

However, HP’s Instant Ink subscription service dramatically reduces printing costs. With HP Instant Ink, you pay for the pages you print, not the ink. HP has several tiers.

The $5-per-month plan that supports up t0 50 pages drops ink cost to as low as 10 cents per page. The highest tier is $28 monthly for 700 pages, which might sound expensive, but that equates to 4 cents per page. The pricing of the higher monthly plans is quite competitive with other cartridge-based inkjet printers and even color laser printers.

Is this the printer for you?

The HP Envy 6155e is a solid choice for home use thanks to its sleek design, good quality, and simple operation. It’s an inexpensive, low-volume printer that can save you a trip to the office store, making a hectic day a bit easier. HP recommends printing of up to 400 pages monthly but the Envy 6155e can handle as much as 1,000 pages on a rare busy month.

If you try to use the Envy 6155e for sustained heavy workloads, it will cost more, take longer, and stress the print mechanism. For a big family, a home office, or a small business, there are better printers with better performance and lower long-term value.

While replacement ink cartridges may seem expensive, an HP Instant Ink subscription makes print costs competitive with more expensive cartridge-based printers and laser printers.

You can find plenty of great printer deals, some even cheaper, faster, or with more features. For example, Brother’s MFC-J1205W provides a strong challenge with a similar price and much larger ink tanks.

However, with HP Instant Ink, this printer offers an attractive solution for occasional printing needs. While it isn’t designed for high-volume printing, the HP Envy 6155e is a good option for a sleek and stylish home printer.