HP OfficeJet Pro 8135e/8139e Printer Review

The HP OfficeJet Pro 8135e feels pretty well-built. It's similar to most other HP printers in this respect, with a body made mostly from thicker plastic; as per the manufacturer, at least 45% of the printer is recycled material. Lifting the scanner bed gives you good access to the maintenance bay, and the dampener that props the scanner bed open is quite robust. This also makes clearing paper jams fairly easy. Unfortunately, the scanner lid hinges feel rather cheap, and the front paper tray takes a lot of effort to pull out. The internal support that allows you to adjust the angle of its screen also feels rather fragile and is easy to pull out of its socket when pivoting the display upwards, producing a disconcerting cracking noise.

The HP OfficeJet Pro 8135e has the typical maintenance requirements you'd expect of an inkjet printer. Like any inkjet model, the printheads can clog if you don't print for a prolonged period. To combat the risk of print quality deterioration over time, you can run a few procedures: printhead cleaning, printhead alignment, and smear cleaning, which removes smudges that can appear on printed pages.

The HP 923 cartridges have a reasonable yield, so you won't need to replace them all that often unless you print at high volumes regularly. You can access the cartridges by opening the printer's front panel and lifting the entire scanner bed. However, the printer needs to be on for you to replace them since the cartridge carriage is locked in place to the left of the maintenance bay when the printer is off, where pulling out the cartridges is effectively impossible. You can easily remove the cover to the sheet rollers, seen here, to clear out any paper jams. The input tray holds 225 plain sheets, so you don't need to refill it very often.

The display is sub-par. The touch-sensitive screen is small and responds sluggishly to inputs. Meanwhile, the touch-capacitive buttons just below the screen are very sensitive, and it's easy to accidentally press one when swiping through the menu. The screen's glossy surface, combined with the white-on-black interface, results in all-around poor viewing angles. The display tilts, but its range of movement is limited. The internal support that allows the screen to tilt vertically also feels fragile; pulling the screen upwards just a little too much produces a disconcerting cracking noise.

The HP OfficeJet Pro 8135e has an okay cartridge system. It uses HP 923 cartridges, which look outwardly identical to the HP 910 cartridges found in the HP OfficeJet Pro 8025 but have a higher page yield. The printer will issue low ink warnings on the display screen, as seen here, but you can only check real-time ink level status through the HP Smart software, as seen here. Thankfully, the printer won't block any print jobs when a cartridge is low on ink or empty.

The printer is compatible with HP 923 XL high-yield cartridges, but there's no evidence of these cartridges actually being available, even directly from the manufacturer. We'll update our review if these cartridges become available.

The HP OfficeJet Pro 8135e has a decent range of scanner features. While the flatbed isn't large enough to scan legal documents or tabloid pages, it's more than enough for scanning typical letter-format items. Its automatic document feeder (ADF) makes scanning multiple pages in a row easy, though it can't perform automatic double-sided scanning. Its scanning speed also isn't all that fast either. Unlike its predecessor, the HP OfficeJet Pro 8025e, there's no built-in software-based OCR, which would allow you to turn your scans into text-searchable PDFs. This is a rather unusual omission for a printer of this type, and you'll be forced to use third-party software for this kind of application instead. If duplex scanning is a must, check out the HP OfficeJet Pro 9135e.

Models in the 8120e series lack fax functionality.

The scan quality is decent. Text looks crisp and legible, but in its default setting, the scan processing algorithm tends to smooth out really fine details. You'll want to use the 'Photo' setting to preserve finer elements in a document, though be aware that it'll pick up on unwanted details like the texture of the paper.

• User manual
• Power cable
• HP 923 Instant Ink setup cartridges:
• 1x cyan
• 1x magenta
• 1x yellow
• 1x black

This is a corded printer without a battery.

The quality of black-and-white documents is great. Text looks crisp and sharp, and the scanner accurately reproduces finer elements. However, there is some evidence of banding when printing in its standard setting. These artifacts disappear when using the 'High Quality' preset, however, as seen here.

The HP OfficeJet Pro 8135e delivers great color document print quality. Text looks clear and legible, and colored areas aren't overly saturated, though they're a tad grainy. Finer elements are also represented accurately. Similar to printing in black-and-white, there's some evidence of banding when printing in its standard setting. These artifacts disappear when using the 'High Quality' preset, as seen here.

The HP OfficeJet Pro 81355's cost-per-print is great, with caveats. Its HP 923 cartridges have a higher yield than the 910 cartridges used in the HP OfficeJet Pro 8025, but they also cost more, resulting in only marginally lower recurring costs. Unfortunately, and more importantly, the 8135e has a considerably higher MSRP than the 8025, offsetting the relatively meager difference in ownership cost if you buy it at full price. It's also worth noting that this printer is only compatible with genuine new or remanufactured HP cartridges, and it won't accept generic third-party cartridges.

This printer comes with a 3-month subscription to HP's Instant Ink service, which automatically ships replacement cartridges to your door when the printer detects that it's running low on ink. Subscribing to this service does come with a few important caveats, however. The printer will have to be constantly connected to the internet to function. Subscribing to the service also means that the printer will only accept HP Instant Ink cartridges instead of conventional HP cartridges. As such, you'll have to estimate how much ink will be required before a printing job since the service will only send you new cartridges when it detects that your printer is running low. Hypothetically, there could be a situation in which a single large print job consumes more than one cartridge, forcing you to wait on a replacement from HP before you can complete the print job.

The HP OfficeJet Pro 8135e prints reasonably fast, though that depends on the source of your printed material. There's noticeable buffering and pausing while printing black-and-white documents over Wi-Fi, resulting in a max speed of 10 PPM, far from the advertised pace of 20 PPM. That said, it prints considerably faster when printing directly over USB, which increases its monochrome print speed to 18 PPM. Unfortunately, color printing speeds are quite slow, regardless of connection type. It's also slow to initialize from an idle state and get a single page out.

This printer supports most standard paper sizes.

This printer has a limited color gamut. Color transitions are grainy, and the printer has a tough time reproducing lighter shades of red, green, and blue, giving printed photos a somewhat flat and dark appearance and smoothing out fine details. You can easily tell the difference when comparing the sample photo from this HP printer versus the same image printed with the professional-grade Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 as well as the source photo.

The HP OfficeJet Pro 8135e has decent color accuracy. It produces images that look relatively natural, if a little dark. All the same, it's suitable for printing the occasional family portrait. Professionals seeking more precise color reproduction will want to look elsewhere.

The HP OfficeJet Pro 8135e does an okay job of reproducing small details. Small details in the background of some shots are very hard to see due to halftones (dot effect). These halftones are very noticeable and make edges and distant objects look less defined.

This printer features an additional USB slot on the right side of the printer, as seen here. Models in the 8120e series don't have RJ-11 modem/phone cable ports for faxing.

Like most other HP printers, the HP OfficeJet Pro 8135e is compatible with the HP Smart app, which offers a broad range of features. From the app, you can print a variety of file types, scan from the printer, mobile fax, and manage your HP Instant Ink subscription.

On Windows, downloading the HP Smart app automatically installs the printer drivers. You don't need to download any drivers on macOS since you can print using AirPrint. You can add the printer to the Chrome OS printer settings without installing additional software.