HP OfficeJet Pro 9015e Review

The HP OfficeJet Pro 9015e is a compact inkjet printer that does everything well. It can pump out 15 simplex pages and nine duplex pages per minute, has some of the best text quality that we measured, has a decent picture and graphic quality, and is fairly easy to use. The only real detractors we found were most notable in its graphic printing performance, but even those issues were marginal. The 9015e is a great printer for those looking for something budget-friendly and continuously performs well.

Performance Comparison

Text Quality

The HP OfficeJet Pro 9015e tied for the best text quality of any of the printers that we tested, receiving a stellar score here. We saw consistently great quality black and white text with sharp resolution. Thin texts and all font sizes were clear, crisp, and nearly flawless. We saw no striping or faintness when printing bold, dark lines and borders. Complex, delicate, monochrome patterns had no noticeable errors. The 9015e stood out here with an impressive performance, ranking among the upper echelon of printers in our test lineup.

It's worth highlighting that while there were some notable issues with text quality throughout our tested lineup, the 9015e had none to the naked eye. Coupled with the rest of what this printer does well--speed, affordability, and ease of use–-we highly recommend it to anyone who needs frequent and reliably good prints.

Operating Cost

While the 9015e has a commendable black and white cost per page score ($11.25 per ream), outclassing most of the other printers in our lineup, its color cost per page score isn't the best.

Its color cost per ream comes out to about $45.71, which is pretty dead average compared to the rest of the printers we tested–not terrible, but not great.

If pumping out high-quality color photos and graphics at a lower cost is a priority, you might want to check out some of the other top-ranked printers in our lineup. Otherwise, if you mostly stick to printing monochrome text, the 9015e is great at producing very high-quality, low-cost prints.

The estimated lifetime cost of the 9015e is among the less expensive in our lineup.

Not the cheapest buy-in of our lineup, the investment — including three years of cartridge replacements — will cost you $525. Though not cheap, it's not bad for a machine that does so much so well.

Ease of Use

The 9015e struggled a bit during the initial setup but was fairly easy to navigate after everything was up and running. While not the best printer in terms of ease of use, the 9015e performed strongly compared to the rest of our lineup making it still a great buy for the do-it-all package that it provides.

We found that this printer's cartridges were quite finicky to load, and it took us multiple attempts to get them to sit properly. During the initial setup, the printer experienced a jam, but it wasn't hard to fix. The supplementary mobile app was slow but easy to navigate. The interface had some weird quirks where buttons would often activate the wrong controls, but all-in-all the built-in touch display provides helpful setting navigation.

The 9015e includes a hideaway paper drawer and supplementary secondary paper sleeve that you can load with extra paper. We were impressed with this printer's paper capacity and the monthly duty cycle — the number of pages you can print per month without maintenance issues.

Graphics/Photos

The 9015e produces decent photos and graphics, landing a solid score in this metric. The photo prints displayed a great range of colors. Once during testing, the printer jammed without it reporting an error, and the resulting photo had some visible striping; however, a quick reprint provided a rich, errorless photo.

We did notice some faint striping when testing graphic prints, but otherwise, the prints displayed vibrant colors and legible text. The overall resolution was sharp, but we did find some loss of clarity in large blocks of black, with noticeable striping. Color quality was accurate, and, again, the printer displays a great range of rich hues.

The 9015e does a stellar job at photo and graphic prints for the price. More expensive printers in our lineup did expectedly better, but a slew of printers also did a lot worse.

Printing Speed

As with a few of the other inkjets that we tested, we were impressed with the speed of the 9015e. Pumping out nine simplex pages and 15 duplex pages per minute earned it a strong overall speed score.

It also performed well in our mixed color graphic and text document test, printing nine pages in about 1 minute and 27 seconds. We saw no striping in the images, crisp text, and vibrant colors. Its high-resolution, full-page photo test print took only 24 seconds to produce, and its color quality stood out as exceptional.

We did experience one jam during our speed test, but the printer immediately noticed and sounded an alert. The jam was easy to clear, and, once fixed, the printing resumed flawlessly.

Should You Buy the HP OfficeJet Pro 9015e?

The HP OfficeJet Pro 9015e will work great for those budget-conscious home offices that print frequently and need those prints to be good quality. While not the best at any one thing, you get a machine that can do anything and do it well for a reasonable price. Unlike some of the other budget printers in our lineup, the 9015e comes closer in performance to some of the best printers we tested.

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