How long should print heads last on Officejet 8500?

[revbaw]

Anybody know cause I sure can't find that info on Hp's site.  Strange they should want to hide that from you?

[erniesf]

Great Question!  Since they cost approx. $60 each and there are two of them, this bit of info is seriously keeping me from making my decision as to whether or not to settle on this printer.   I am seriously considering a color laser MFP instead.

[DexterM]

One thing is for sure, you won't have to replace them often like you replace cartridges. The printheads never run out of ink like cartridges. They should serve you a good 1.5 - 2 years before giving any problems like print quality issues or 'Printhead problem' message on the printer.

@Ernie: If it is medium\high volume printing that you do, then a laserjet printer will definitely be a better product for you. Unless, of course, you need all the additional features that the Pro 8500 offers.

[erniesf]

Thank you for the answer, my printing needs are low and although I currently have a Dell Color Laser 2135CN AIO, it is not compatible with my new MacBookPro, hence the shopping...  I grabbed an HP Photosmart Premium Wireless Fax two days ago at local San Francisco Staples for $200 BUT I am returning it, NO PROBLEMS with it at all, but I received my monthly Costco Magazine last night and Costco has the mid-level OfficeJet Pro 8500 going on sale from Oct 15th through Nov 1st for $199.99 including delivery and you get a free 2500-count case of HP ColorLok paper...  I will return the unopened Photosmart tonight and order the 8500 on the 15th.  Like I stated above, the ammount of printing I do is not high but I want quality prints and don't plan to print photos often and have no need to print on CD/DVD's.  I think this 8500 with wireless is going to be perfectly fine - love the feature of scanning documents to a memory card or USB Flash drive in case getting scanner to send to NAS or another proves difficult.  Thanks again!

[scrompton]

I assume it is the same as the older Officejet Pro L7780, where they last 40 000 prints according to HP but I've found they normally last significantly longer than that (I've printed 175 000 pages on my L7780 and only used about 3 sets of printheads, so over 50 000 pages per head). On top of that I use a continuous ink system and never even bought a single original HP ink cartridge.

I would also not recommend a laser for high volume printing unless you want to pay double or triple the cost per page, the cost per page with lasers is beyond absurd, the 8500 costs nearly a third the cost per page.

[BDSolomon]

Finally I found some place that people give some guestimates.  I don't understand why HP makes it such a big secret.  Sure it depends on usage, but i was trying to find out if we're talking about every 1-4 times you replaced cartridges (in which case the price is significant), or more than 10x, in which case it's pretty insignificant.  I'm look at the hi capacity ink cartridges.  From what I'm reading here it's proab'ly at least 20x, maybe a lot more.

They quote how long a cartridge lasts and it's SO dependent on how much page coverage you get, can't they say something like "typical life is 20K or 20-40K"?  As I said, I didn't know if we were talking about 2K, maybe 4K.  They could also suggest what typically pushes it one way or the other (e.g., printing > 2000 pages in a day does x;

[MarkJonesRanger]

I have had to take my print heads out 2 times and clean them. It's pretty easy to do.  A video from inkproducts.com on youtube shows how to do it.  Once I clean them they are ready to go again.

They do have a chip that will stop the print head after a ton of printing.  They figure they will be worn out at that time. 

I got the same 199.00 price and the scanning feature is great.  I have scanned 3 books with it. I just cut off the binder with a stack paper cutter and place them in the printer and it will scan hundreds of pages with out missing a page both sides as well.  Great tool for archiving your books.

The print quality is good.  I use a continuious ink system with it and it works pretty well and is very inexpensive this way.

I do quite a bit of printing for our District Royal Rangers. (Church Boyscouts)  The 8500 is a good printer.

If you have problems with the paper picking up clean the rollers with a baby wipe. 

I do get aggravated with the boot up or cleaning time but it's part of the process..it just sometimes happens at a bad time.

I would reccomend this printer.  You must print with it or it will dry up on you.

Mark Jones

[BDSolomon]

The scanning is off the topic, but since you mentioned it...

I've tried to fax the same ~12 pages two or three times.  The pages were actually printed on that or an HP laser printer.  (Why'd I print/fax rather than just print to the fax printer  Because it was from several source documents and easier than trying to stitch them together into one document.)

In any case, it kept double feeding somewhere in the middle.  By double feeding, I do not mean that two pages stuck together, I mean that one page would get sucked through and then it instantly scanned the next page.  This was well into the document when it had already buffered all it was going to, so it would scan the next page as each page was transmitted.  That is far too unreliable for me.

[Joe_Offer]

My magenta-cyan print head went out after about a year - just barely into my second cartridge of ink. I tried cleaning it, but it didn't work. I was disappointed the print head didn't last longer, but I was able to find a replacement at Amazon for about $25. No problems with my black/yellow printhead. I thought of buying a replacement black/yellow just in case, but I get the impression it may well last a long time. It may be my magenta/cyan print head was a victim of lack of use.

The new printhead worked immediately.

-Joe-

[Dschtzl]

What are the symptoms when an 8500 printhead needs cleaned?