HP OfficeJet Pro 6978 All-in-One Printer - Review 2022

The HP OfficeJet Pro 6978 All-in-1 Printer ($179.99) offers a wealth of features, including an auto-duplexing automated document feeder (ADF), which many of its competitors lack. Should you opt for HP'southward Instant Ink ink subscription service, it delivers competitive running costs. These perks, forth with good output quality for text, graphics, and photos, elevate the OfficeJet Pro 6978 to our new Editors' Choice midrange all-in-one printer (AIO) for low- to medium-volume printing in pocket-size or micro offices and workgroups.

Pattern and Features

At 9 past 18.3 by xv.4 inches (HWD) and weighing 17.9 pounds, the Officejet 6978 is a little larger than the Editors' Choice Blood brother MFC-J985DW (half-dozen.8 by 16.five by 13.iv inches and xviii.three pounds), and smaller and lighter than the Catechism Maxify MB2720 (12.6 past eighteen.three by eighteen.1 inches and 26 pounds), also an Editors' Choice.

The OfficeJet 6978's paper capacity consists of one 225-sheet cassette, compared with the MB2720'southward 500 sheets split betwixt ii 250-sheet drawers, and the MFC-J985DW comes with just one 100-sheet paper tray. All three of these AIOs take ADFs for feeding documents to the scanner. With its 35-sheet capacity, the OfficeJet 6978's ADF is larger than the MFC-J985DW's 20 sheets and smaller than the MB2720's l sheets. But, as mentioned, the OfficeJet model is the only one that supports unassisted two-sided scanning, a feature that can be handy in many pocket-size-role settings. The OfficeJet 6978'due south maximum monthly duty cycle is xx,000 pages, with a suggested monthly book of 200 to 800 pages, compared to the MB2720'south 20,000 pages maximum and 1,250 pages recommended, and the MFC-J985DW'south maximum duty wheel of two,500 pages and up to 1,000 pages recommended.

The OfficeJet 6978's connectivity options consist of Wi-Fi, Ethernet, connecting to a single PC via USB, and Wireless Direct, HP's equivalent to Wi-Fi Straight for making peer-to-peer connections with mobile devices sans a network or router. Other mobile connectivity options include: AirPrint, Mopria, and HP's own ePrint. The scanner can save to BMP, JPEG, PNG, RTF, TIF, TXT, and image and searchable PDF. Scanning to and printing from USB thumb drives is supported via a port located on the left-front side of the chassis. Among the standard security features for a midrange AIO like this, you as well go HP's Jet Advantage Private Print (a feature known every bit "Secure Print" on some laser printers), which allows you lot to secure sensitive print jobs with a Pin. You lot configure many of these options, equally well every bit execute walkup tasks, such as making copies or printing from a USB drive, from a command console that consists primarily of a two.7-inch color affect screen surrounded by a handful of buttons: Habitation, Back, Cancel, and Help.

Setup and Software

For the nigh part, installing the OfficeJet 6978 is straightforward. It'due south low-cal plenty so that getting it out of the box is like shooting fish in a barrel, but it's large enough that it volition fit comfortably on only bigger-than-average desktops. At the beginning of the software installation, you're asked whether to accept the software included on the optical disc or to download the latest version from HP'southward support site. I chose the latter. During the process, the installation programme checked the printer for the latest firmware version (there was none available), and offered to download and install I.R.I.S. OCR, a pared down version of Readiris, an industry-standard optical graphic symbol recognition (OCR) program. At the terminate of the setup process, the OfficeJet 6978 printed a calibration page that I in turn scanned to align the impress heads and complete the installation.

Aside from the printer drivers and help files, the merely other bundled software is I.R.I.S. OCR mentioned in the previous paragraph. It allows y'all to convert scanned document pages to searchable/editable text. Available besides are downloadable apps for both Android and iOS that allow you to print from and scan to your mobile devices.

HP OfficeJet Pro 6978 All-in-One Printer

Performance

HP rates the OfficeJet 6978 at 20 monochrome pages per minute (ppm) when press in Normal mode and 30ppm in Draft mode. I tested it over Ethernet in Normal mode from our standard Core i5 testbed PC running Windows 10 Professional. When printing our simply formatted 12-page monochrome Microsoft Give-and-take certificate, I clocked information technology at xvi.9ppm, with a showtime page out time of xiii seconds. The Catechism MB2720 printed the same certificate at 20.6ppm and the first page out in six seconds. The Blood brother MFC-J985DW was tested with an before methodology and hardware, making a straight comparing impossible.

When I combined the results from printing the above monochrome text certificate with the times from printing our complex color Acrobat, Excel, and PowerPoint test documents containing photos and graphics, the OfficeJet 6978's print speed plummeted to 6.4ppm, compared with the MB2720's rate of viii.2ppm. Both machines' print speeds dropped by l percent on this part of our test, which, given the complication of some of our charts, graphs, and PowerPoint handouts, isn't unusual at all.

The OfficeJet 6978 printed our test four-by-6-inch snapshots at an average of 16 seconds, much faster than the MB2720's 41 seconds.

Output Quality

The OfficeJet 6978's print and copy quality was a cut above average for a business-oriented inkjet AIO. Text came out well-shaped and highly legible, fifty-fifty at smaller bespeak sizes (when printing common fonts), making text output suitable for most business applications. Our Excel charts containing gradients and PowerPoint handouts with night fills and backgrounds looked good, too. Gradients flowed smoothly from one color to the adjacent, and backgrounds didn't contain the banding we ofttimes see in inkjet printer output, though the OfficeJet 6978 did accept a niggling trouble printing hairlines, or rules, thinner than 1 betoken or so, on ane of our charts. The line came out broken and incomplete in spots.

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The photographs I printed on good-quality newspaper looked skillful, likewise. Colors were bright and accurate, and detail was about what I've come to wait from HP inkjets—better than average and more than than good enough for all merely the almost exacting business applications. When I took the time to go into the printer driver and fix print quality to Best, photos printed on premium photo stock rivaled those output from dwelling- and family unit-oriented inkjets–better than what you get from the corner drugstore or Costco.

HP OfficeJet Pro 6978 All-in-One Printer

Running Costs

If you buy the highest-yield ink cartridges for the OfficeJet 6978 outright (as opposed to the visitor's Instant Ink program), compared to its competitors, this AIO's per-page ink costs are a bit loftier. Using HP'southward estimated yields and advertised prices for this printer's "Xl" ink cartridges, nosotros calculated the monochrome toll per folio at iii.2 cents, and color pages run almost 10.4 cents. The Canon MB2720, on the other paw, delivers running costs of ii.7 cents for monochrome pages and 8 cents for color, and the Brother MFC-J985DW (as well every bit Brother's other INKvestment line business-oriented printers) print at 1 cent for monochrome and but under 5 cents for color.

If, however, y'all opt for HP's highest ($9.99 per month for 300 pages) Instant Ink subscription, you'll pay 3.3 cents for both monochrome and color pages, which is especially a expert deal if you lot print a lot of colour pages. In addition, equally I was writing this, HP was offering the showtime three months of Instant Ink—a $thirty value—for free. A drawback to Instant Ink, though, particularly if most of your press is monochrome (as virtually modest-office and small-business press is), is that after the showtime 300 pages, the cost goes upward to 4 cents per page, merely, over again, if the bulk of your printing is color, iv cents per page isn't such a bad deal.

Conclusion

The HP OfficeJet Pro 6978 All-in-One Printer prints well and at a competitive clip, and if you print and copy many color pages, HP's Instant Ink subscription service will help go on ongoing operational costs down. If, on the other hand, the majority of your printing is monochrome, the Catechism Maxify MB2720 might exist a better choice, as might the Brother MFC-J985DW (or possibly a college volume INKvestment AIO, such equally the Brother MFC-J5830DW), but the Brother model doesn't print photos as well every bit the OfficeJet and the Maxify do. The OfficeJet 6978 likewise comes with an machine-duplexing ADF, which is, if you scan a lot of two-sided originals, a huge time-saver. Automatic two-sided scanning, excellent impress quality, competitive impress speeds, and potentially low color printing costs are enough to make the OfficeJet Pro 6978 our latest Editors' Choice for depression-to-moderate print book in a modest office or workgroup.