HP OfficeJet Pro 6978 Wireless All-in-One Photo Printer with XL Ink Bundle

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This is a terrific printer and there are some additional components/aspects that are helpful to know about, too! I have decided to add some information to my review to cover things that would have helped me in choosing a printer. First, I will cover the machine itself, then the Instant Ink service, followed by the HP Printing App. The Printer (Scanner/Fax/Copier) This unit takes the standard OfficeJet design and adds some wonderful features that I didnt realize how much I would appreciate. HP has streamlined their printer setup to a point of incredible efficiency now! Getting this OfficeJet Pro 6978 Wireless printer up and running was the easiest hardware experience I have ever had! I had not quite understood that the printer itself becomes a network, which is pretty awesome when our daughters college friends are visiting and want to print something. We can just give them access to the printers network and they can print from their phones/tablets/laptops/whatever! It is very slick and convenient! While this looks very similar to every other OfficeJet we have owned, the duplex feeder, which scans or copies double sided documents is a great improvement over our previous models. The document feeder itself is heavier than the one on our last OfficeJet, but it lends to a general overall feeling that this machine is more solid, too. The ability to print or scan directly FROM or TO a flash drive is awesome! Our kids often have to save school assignments they are working on to a flash drive, and being able to just plug it in and print or scan new images to it is very helpful. The USB port is right above the power light on the lower front left of the printer, so it is easy to access for printing documents directly from the USB drive...or saving scanned items directly to it! The scan and copy features seem faster than our last machine, but still wont be winning any scanning derbies. The touchscreen menus offer many new features that our last one didnt (printing passport photos, a special setting for copying ID cards, Help videos you can watch right there on the touchscreen and even some pre-made forms you can print!). The user interface feels closer to using a first edition smart phone with the swiping to see options within certain menus, which is a nice change, too. I find the screen to need a bit of an aggressive touch and it is a little clunky feeling compared to tablets and smartphones now (which is why I said a first edition)...but it is user friendly and a nice way to select things instead of trying to figure out which menu you need and how to get back. The paper tray actually holds a little less than our last OfficeJet (this one has a 225 sheet capacity and ours held 250). We arent power printers so this really is inconsequential to us, but might matter to someone else. One thing I really dont like about this printer is the same issue I have never liked about the OfficeJet series in general...the extension tray that holds our printed documents feels very flimsy! In the case of this printer, it especially feels like a stark contrast because the rest of the machine is so solid! We have never broken one of these, but admittedly, it is a fear of mine that we one day will.... Instant Ink We have always liked our HP OfficeJet printers, but without fail, they have all met their untimely fates in the same way. They typically last us several years and then, in an act of complete irony....as soon as we buy a huge mega supply of replacement ink cartridges, they keel over on us. Seriously...EVERY TIME! It was this repeat experience that actually fueled our interest in this OfficeJet Pro 6978 Wireless All-in-One Printer! With its Instant Ink capability, we are not likely to be left with a Fort Knox-worthy supply of ink for a defunct printer! Instant Ink is a program that HP offers whereby your printer notifies HP when your cartridges need replenishing and they automatically send you replacement ink. They have 3 different monthly plans, based on use. As of today, the tiered prices are $3/mo for 50 pages, $5 for 100 and $10/mo for 300 pages. The prices are the same whether you are printing all black and white or full color images. We researched Instant Ink extensively, and we initially had a few reservations about the program. First, it is based upon pages QUEUED for printing...(that is the data that HP collects) and we have had many issues in the past with pages that queue, but fail to print for one reason or another. Second, we had read that when Instant Ink first rolled out, HP made it hard for you to go back to choosing normal store bought cartridges (although you are not supposed to be locked into Instant Ink). Last, we were concerned about accumulating overage charges, if we underestimated our printer use each month. After reading extensively and calling HP to confirm the minutia and alleviate my initials concerns, we were happy to learn that: - HP notifies you about your printer use and where it falls into your plan before you go over so you can adjust if need be - The plans can be adjusted up to a higher level at any time during a billing month. (They can be adjusted to a lower level at the beginning of a billing period) - HP says you can cancel or change your plans at any time and revert to store bought cartridges if you prefer. (The thing that finally helped us trust this claim was reading more recent reviews from Instant Ink customers...the very old reviews had made us nervous, but the newer ones made it sound as though you were not a prisoner to Instant Ink. If our experience proves otherwise, I will definitely update!!) - They have a recycling program and include prepaid postage mailers for you to return your used cartridges! Love this environmental stewardship and convenience! We decided that Instant Ink sounded like a program that we were interested in, so we were excited to receive this printer and get it set up. HP All-in-One Remote App I actually begrudgingly went looking for the AiO HP App to put on my phone when I wanted to print straight from my iPhone one day. I say begrudgingly because I guessed it would be a careless afterthought kind of app that HP decided to add to placate those users who want to feel like they have some portability/flexibility. Well, boy was I ever wrong! This app is AWESOME!! First, it took less than 2 minutes for me to download the app, connect it to our OfficeJet and print exactly what I needed! I was immediately impressed. The app is simple, easy to use, and exactly what every gadget oriented person or family would want! I can print pictures from my phone or even from my Cloud in just a matter of seconds! I can take a picture of a document and save it as .pdf or print it as my heart desires! We are in the middle of trying to adopt a medically fragile child and I have been able to quickly complete a form they sent me, snap a picture of it (it auto-detects borders, but lets you adjust them as you need to), name it and then send it via email..without having to be home or do a thing!! Or, if you prefer, you can print it...or send it to Dropbox, Evernote, GoogleDrive...etc. WOW!! Love this and it works so smoothly!! Via the AiO App you can also change your printer settings...so if you are lounging in the Cook Islands, sipping an adult beverage and suddenly realize you need to send a signed document permitting your neighbor to pick up your dog from the boarding facility before you get home, and you want your 3 page legal document concerning the pickup arrangements to be single sided...you can change the default setting of duplex to single sided printing and get the completed form to print in your home office for your sweet neighbor to grab on their way to the facility when the time is right. Which also brings me to the accessibility aspects of this printer that we absolutely love! It is the easiest printer we have ever had in terms of convenience of use and access. We can print to it from anywhere!! I was at the hospital with our daughter...Ok, so it wasnt the Cook Islands...But, it was 2 hours away and I was able to send a form to our home printer for my husband to complete and email back to the hospital! It has made our lives so much easier! Some of the features that our family has been enjoying the most are: -Being able to print directly from a USB drive -(conversely) Being able to scan directly to a USB drive -The touchscreen is much more intuitive and has a nice interface! -The default of 2 sided printing is saving us paper! Environmentally friendly and we love it! Sometimes I have forgotten to change that setting though (like when I need to fax something and separate pages would be more convenient), but it is a feature I absolutely love! -Duplexing document feeder for double sided copying/scanning has been phenomenal, too!! -The App!!! -Printing pics from our phones This is the most convenient OfficeJet printer we have yet to own. Straight out of the box it practically set itself up and has been an incredible help for our family! I am so excited to not have to worry about ink running out! We have children with medical issues and the convenience of having ink delivered to our door is phenomenal! Anything that makes our lives easier is a blessing we appreciate and this one has gone beyond our expectations!

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I have owned HP printers forever. Our old HP all in one was still going after 12 years but the scanner bed had gotten dirty and I also decided it was time to upgrade because I needed double sided printing and also the ability to print wirelessly from my iPhone and iPad. A nearby Office Depot was closing its doors and having a big blow out sale to get rid of all its inventory so I decided to go look at printers thinking I could get a screaming deal. I talked to one of the sales associates about my needs and she said this was a very popular model that offered all the features I want and then some. They had it marked down from $180 to about $153 on sale. Before I bought it I do what I always do and checked Amazon and was shocked to find that the exact same printer in the exact same package was only $99 with Prime! I bid farewell to Office Depot (no wonder theyre closing) and went right home and ordered it! I have to say, so far I REALLY LOVE this printer! First of all, it was the easiest printer to set up EVER!! I mean, I truly couldnt believe it! Im a gadget tech nerd (built my own PC) and was prepared to have to spend an hour getting it all unpacked, turned on, calibrated, set up on my network and also connected to my devices for wireless printing. Thats what Im used to. Set up of this printer BLEW MY MIND with how simple it was! Literally, you take it out of the box and remove all foam and plastic etc., plug it into the wall, press power, insert the ink (SO simple) and follow the instructions on screen to align the cartridges. Once it was aligned the touch screen informed me to go to hp.com/setup to download the drivers I would need. My computer/network automatically detected the printer and knew just what drivers I needed. Download and setup was a breeze! You can use the provided disk instead but I didnt even remove it from the sleeve. The one thing I would say about HP and their software is that they tend to over do it. My recommendation is to select the option that enables you to choose which additional programs you want installed instead of letting HP do it for you. I always get way more than I bargain for and end up uninstalling a lot of the "bloatware" programs that I dont use that just take up HD space like HP photo etc. I use photoshop. There is an option for just the basic drivers that you can select. Your printer will work just fine with those and you wont get blogged down with unwanted software. Either way works great though. I tried both. The driver setup took 5 minutes. Then I got on my iPhone and downloaded the HP ePrint app which IMMEDIATELY recognized and connected to my printer all on its own! You can use it to print from your photos, the web, email and the cloud. AWESOME!!! That was it! In about 12 minutes from the box I was completely set up, connect and printing! Here are some other things I love about this printer: - Fastest setup of any printer ever (yes I know I already mentioned this but it deserves repeating). No having to manually enter IP addresses or anything like that! - Design is very sleek and modern. I love the all black with little color screen! Its pretty sexy as printers go! - Small/slim profile. For everything this printer does and how well/quickly it does it, it really is quite small! WAY smaller than my old HP all in one! - Touch screen is really high quality! I often get frustrated with touch screens at check out stands and elsewhere because theyre not very sensitive to your finger or pressing down in one spot causing a neighboring button to be selected. That is NOT the case with this touch screen. I find that its very sensitive and accurate and also the display is crisp and beautiful! - AUTOMATIC DOUBLE SIDED PRINTING AND SCANNING. HALLELUJAH! - Printing is very fast and the print quality is excellent, even and especially with photos! - I LOVE that this printer only needs one cable (unless you want to use the fax feature as well) and works so well wirelessly! - Printing from the app on my mobile devices is my new favorite thing - Unlike my old printer, this guy is whisper quiet when its printing. Its a little thing, but I live with an autistic 4 year old and a husband who sounds like hes calling in air support for a military strike when he talks on the phone so...sometimes the little things make a big difference! - Scan quality is really fabulous! Honestly, I rarely give 5 star reviews to things, but this printer really does deserve it, from price point to set up to functionality and features. I HIGHLY recommend this printer for all your in home office needs! And no, I didnt get it for free or at a discount. I paid full price for it and I would do it again! I hope this helps someone else who is looking for an office upgrade! UPDATE 1/21/17 - After a couple weeks I started having issues with this printer going offline spontaneously and the only way I could seem to get it back online to was by restarting my computer. Around that time we also bought a Roku 4 and started having trouble with streaming. The signal was dropping all the time. I finally realized that it was because of our router, which, while a great work horse for many years, was getting seriously old in "tech years" and needed to be replaced. I bought a dual band Asus router and ever since I installed it we have not only had flawless streaming but the printer now stays "online" all the time! If youre having this issue with it going offline, I would look at your network setup before you blame the printer itself.

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Except for when I had my very first printer in the "dinosaur days" of printers having a ribbon and computer paper was continuous paper which was perforated, I have always had HP printers. I usually purchased the multi-function printers - print, fax, scan, copy. My use of the printer is at home. Im a school teacher, Bible class teacher, the home finance person/documents/taxes, etc., and chief user of the printer. I rarely do photographs, but do enhance my teaching lessons with clipart and appreciate a splash of color. Having said that ... this is the first HP printer that I wish I had gone with the reviews rather than my heart. I am routinely running the "clean the printheads" option to secure a clear imagine. The ink display shows that my black ink is half-full. Im on my second or third cartridge and I purchased this printer at the end of 2016. Ive owned it for a little longer than 2 months and am frustrated with its printing/copy capability. It does scan and it does fax successfully. The problem occurs when you print, which obviously is a hindrance to successful and continual use. I find myself checking the ink levels more frequently, thinking that possibly it is low on ink. (Even though I just changed the ink and I always use HP ink.) I use more ink in cleaning the printheads than I do in actual printing! I read in the reviews that some complained of a delay between pressing PRINT and the start of the printing process. This is true. There is a delayed response time - much longer than one would expect. A few times I pressed PRINT a second time thinking that I didnt do it. Then, I got double copies. Arggh! I am frustrated and wish I had purchased the extended warranty.

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Ergh. I wanted to like this printer. And for the first few months of ownership it worked just fine. It printed faster and with better quality than the Epson WF-3620 that it replaced. But about four months in, after no more than just a few prints a week, the problems started. First I got a cryptic error message on the display that wouldnt go away no matter how many times I restarted the printer. Chatted with HP support for about two hours, and finally they instructed me to use a special series of key presses (a super-reset, I guess) that cleared up the error code. It hasnt recurred since, but I was pretty annoyed that I wasted all that time. Then I discovered that the ADF duplex function didnt work properly on this printer - when trying to scan or copy a two-sided document it would always pull two pages at the same time but slightly offset (single-sided was fine, and trying different documents didnt solve the issue; strangely my parents printer of the exact same model doesnt have this issue). Figured Id live with the problem and just scan/copy single-sided. But today the printer started giving an "out of paper" message even though the cartridge was loaded with paper. No amount of restarting the printer, reloading the paper tray, or trying different paper would get rid of the message. Back to the Epson. HP, youve let me down, and I wont be buying one of your printers again. UPDATE 10/18/2017: The out of paper message on my OfficeJet Pro 6978 went away after the printer was unplugged for a few months. Who knows how long it will work properly before it malfunctions yet again. I also made the mistake a year ago of buying another of the same model for my parents, who also use theirs very lightly. Guess what - a week ago, 9 days after expiration of the warranty, the printer gave the same cryptic error message I had gotten earlier on mine, insisting there was a paper jam when there was not, and then indicating there was a problem with the “printing system.” No amount of restarting or even the hard reset HP support showed me earlier would make it go away. I’ve NEVER seen failures like this with any printer I’ve used, inkjet or laser. Done with HP!

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I purchased this for an 83 year old lady friend. It worked great for the first month. Since then it has started streaking. Even after cleaning the heads--multiple times--it is still streaky. Ive changed out the ink cartridges. And changed out the ink Cartridges again. so its not them. Very frustrated. Ive attached several pictures. These scans were after I had run the clean the printheads 5-6 times. then the next one is after I changed out the cartridge and cleaned the heads another 5 times.

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This printer is great...if you enjoy spending your time replacing ink cartridges and cleaning printheads repeatedly. It was easy to install, and that the last thing easy about using it. It is constantly grabbing my attention for low ink, and when that happens, it will not print correctly...only blobs of certain colors of ink or black text partially prints (with no warning that there is a print problem going on). I am a huge fan of HP printers, but this ink-vampire-masquerading-as-an all in one machine has me jumping ship to something else. To say I am disappointed as a loyal HP customer is a tremendous understatement. I am trashing this printer and going in search of one that functions correctly and dependably.

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I purchased this to replace an older HP printer that had a bad document feeder. While it solved my scanning problem, the printer is not good at all. Now, I dont use the printer often and that is probably contributing to the issue but I have an Epson all in one ink jet in a vacation home that I use every 6 months and works flawlessly. The problem is that the jets continually clog up on this printer. Running a cleaning cycle seems to use about 20% of the ink in the cartridge so in the last few months, I have printed a total of 10 pages and gone through an entire ink cartridge because I need to run multiple cleaning cycles to get the print heads clean just to print a single page. Today, I needed to print something and actually ran out of ink just trying to clean the print heads so I have to run to Office Max to pay to have something printed. By the way, I should note that i have only used original HP cartridges, well that wont be the case anymore. Im going to only buy cheap ink until I replace this with an Epson.

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This is absolutely the worst piece of equipment I have ever purchased. I very rarely review my Amazon purchases, but I had to review this one, because its so frustrating and infuriating. About 75% of the time, when I try to print something, the computer says the printer is not connected (despite the fact that it IS connected, and not wirelessly but with a cord); when I restart the printer, then it works. But seriously, this is SUCH a pain in the ass. And during the past week, some kind of malfunction has caused the printer to swiftly spew out pages with bizarre symbols across the top edge that bear no resemblance to what I was trying to print. So thats a pain in the ass AND a serious waste of paper. Speaking of waste, do not waste your time with this printer. I have never owned anything that performed this poorly.

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HP released a firmware that sabotages third party ink cartridges. It had a time delay so everyone was sure to upgrade before the bomb exploded, ensuring the warning would come too late. The firmware was released in March 2016 but was designed not to "explode" until Sept 2016. Anti-competitive? You bet. Long time HP customer gone forever? You bet. They finally admitted to sabotaging third party ink cartridges in late Sept in an apology letter.

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Every time we print, the print heads need cleaned. We have spent over $150 in ink in the first month we used this printer. Called HP and was told this needs done each time you change ink and/or once a month. The amount of ink you use to clean the print heads is too much. I was on the phone with a rep for 45 minuites. It took 3 cleanings to get the right print. This used 1/2 of each ink container, which was about $45.00. I would never buy another HP Product with this kind of customer service. This printer should be replaced. They offered to send a new print head. Who knows how to put this in?

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