HP Envy Pro 6452 All-in-One PC Review (2023)

The HP Envy Pro 6452 All-in-One ($109.99) is an entry-level all-in-one inkjet printerprinterTargeted at home and micro offices. Most comparable all-in-ones (AIOs) lose points for their high operating costs, and in this case, subscribing to HP's Instant Ink service makes using the printer relatively inexpensive. This Envy is about $30 less than our current low-end Editors' Choice.Brother MFC-J491DW; However, compared to the 6452 with Instant Ink, the printer is extremely expensive to run. This little Envy's low price and running costs make it perfect for home offices, family rooms, and dorm rooms. It reads 200 to 300 pages per month, enough to slot it into the slot of our favorite entry-level AIO for home and home office.

pictureEnvy Pro 6455 All-in-OneReviews from June show that the 6452 prints well and is packed with decent features for the price, though it is predictably slow for its class. You can find the former at:hp.com store, which is available at Walmart.

In most respects, the Envy Pro 6452 (it can print, scan, copy, and fax) is comparable to the 6455. They both measure 6.8 by 17 by 14.2 inches (HWD) and weigh 13.6 pounds, a footprint and weight that's about average for a beginner AIO. Both are part of the new Envy Pro 6000 series recently announced (the 6452 today, the 6455 in June, and the less powerful Envy Pro 6055 to be reviewed here later).

While there are some minor differences between them, it's primarily the 64xx models' 35-sheet automatic document feeder that makes them more flexible and a better value. For the record, this is a manual duplex ADF, not an automatic duplex ADF that scans and copies two-sided multipage documents without user intervention.

The 6452 has an interesting control panel pictured below...

You do get some feedback from status LEDs that light up on top of the input and output trays, for example, when the printer is in various modes such as copying, scanning, or printing. (Purple, for example, is setup mode.) But you mostly rely on your smartphone to control this printer.

Setup requires scanning a barcode with the handheld's camera. Once complete, all functions, including printing and copying, can be performed from your phone or tablet or desktop or laptop with the HP Smart app installed, which we'll cover shortly.

Another common feature in homes and home printers these days is smart home voice activation. Most HP, Canon, and Epson inkjet printers and all-in-ones can now be operated with voice commands. Envy Pro 6452 supports Amazon Alexa and Google Home Assistant. However, HP's voice-activation support no longer includes simple IFTTT (If This then That) scripts, which allow you to create voice commands for specific services such as Microsoft's Cortana and Apple's Siri.

Paper handling consists of an 80-sheet paper tray that alternately holds up to 10 envelopes or 40 sheets of Premium Photo Paper. This printer has a maximum monthly output of 1,000 pages, and a maximum recommended monthly print volume of 100 pages.

The 80-sheet capacity is by far the smallest of the machines mentioned here, with the Envy 6455 and the Brother MFC-J491DW next at 100. The 6455 has the same duty cycle as the 6452, and Brother has a maximum print volume of 2,500 and a recommended print volume of 1,000 per month.

Envy Pro Connectivity and HP Smart Apps

Standard connectivity includes Wi-Fi, USB and Bluetooth 5.0. No matter what wireless or wired connection you use to connect to the hardware, in most cases you can communicate with the Envy Pro 6452 through the HP Smart App. It is a cross-platform application that works similarly on all computing devices such as laptops, tablets and smartphones, but also supports other useful options such as scanning to and printing from cloud sites .

First, though, are the standard connectivity interfaces, which, as mentioned above, include USB and Wi-Fi, as well as Wi-Fi Direct. This last one can also be controlled via a smart app, as can the ability to use the handheld's camera to scan documents directly to the AIO or a local drive or your favorite cloud site. On some other HP machines, the Smart App can also handle the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) routine, allowing you to scan a text document and convert it to searchable PDF, Microsoft Word, or some other program that allows you to edit the scanned text directly. Format. But Envy AIO doesn't offer that feature.

HP Smart App printer drivers run on Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. However, depending on which HP printer you use, its capabilities go well beyond simple communication between your computing device and the printer. Smart Tasks for the Smart App is a collection of customizable workflow presets that automate repetitive tasks such as scanning to your favorite cloud site, scanning to email or a local folder on a networked PC or server, and printing remotely. The Envy Pro also supports Apple AirPrint, Mopria and HP ePrint (for printing emails and attachments).

Testing the Envy Pro 6452: No Hurry

One downside of entry-level home inkjet printers is that most (including the Envy Pro 6452) are slow. HP rates the machine at 10 pages per minute (ppm) monochrome and 7ppm color pages per minute. Six seconds per page (or less than 10 seconds for a color print) might not sound slow, but trust me, it is when you're waiting for a multi-page print job to complete. (Learn how we test printers.)

To gauge its speed (or lack thereof), I tested the Envy 6452 over USB from our standard Intel Core i5 testbed running Windows 10 Pro. It printed our 12-page Microsoft Word text document at an average speed of 11.2ppm, slightly faster than its 10ppm rating and tied with the Envy 6455. 2ppm slower than Brother's MFC-J491DW.

Next, I printed several full-color Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint business documents that included charts, graphs, and other business graphics with embedded photos. I combined these results with the Word document test to calculate a composite score for printing the full set of test materials. Here, the Envy 6452 was pretty slow at 3.3ppm. In fairness, however, the two HP printers and the Brother aren't really designed for printing the large, complex business documents that make up this portion of our testing.

themyesHowever, designed for printing photos. The Envy produced our colorful and detailed 4-by-6-inch test snapshots at an average of 36 seconds each. This is a typical printing speed for its segment.

Output Quality: No Complaints

Like the Envy Pro 6455 and other members of the family we've reviewed, the Envy Pro 6452 prints beautiful text as well as respectable graphics and photos, which is what you'd expect from an entry-level inkjet all-in-one. The text I printed was sharp and highly legible at most point sizes (down to about 6 points). Excel charts and graphs, PowerPoint handouts, and Acrobat documents also looked good, but dark gradients and fills weren't perfect. I saw some streaking, but the overall graphics output was fine.

As far as photos in general, though HP does an excellent job tuning its four-ink (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) machines to produce nice photos (even better if you use the company's premium ) paper), the consumer printer market is highly competitive. A wide range of entry-level photo-optimized all-in-ones, includingEpson Expression Premium XP-7100andCanon Pixma TS6320, deploying five (sometimes six) inks. These additional colors provide a wider color gamut (range) and more detail, resulting in more vivid and accurate color images.

That's not to say the Envy's photos are bad, but they're not the best in class. One advantage of this all-in-one, though, is that it can print borderless documents and photos up to 8.5 x 11 inches. A framed photo, or an image with a quarter inch or so of white border around it, rarely looks as professional as a frameless photo.

Printing costs: Instant Ink to the rescue

Until recently, one of the downsides of entry-level inkjet all-in-ones was the high per-page cost of use. If you opt for the traditional method of buying ink cartridges as needed when they are depleted (or nearly depleted), printing monochrome pages on the Envy 6452 will cost you 10.3 cents each, and a whopping 22.3 cents for color pages.

Even though it matches the 6455 model, this value is painfully high. The Brother MFC-J491DW costs 6.8 cents per page in monochrome and 16.8 cents in color. brother also offersMFC-J995DW INK investment tank all-in-one machine, for less than a penny per black page and about 4.5 cents per color page.

This brings us to HPInstant Ink Subscription Plan, the Envy Pro 6452 itself keeps track of the number of pages you've printed and orders ink cartridges from HP when it's time to buy new ones. Designed for low-volume users who print about 50 to 300 pages per month, the plan offers three levels of service, with the 300-page plan ($9.99 per month) costing 3.5 cents per page. The big advantage here though is that the 3.5 cent cost applies toanyWhether it's a monochrome text page with minimal ink coverage or an 8.5 x 11 inch photo with 100% ink coverage.

And, to make Instant Ink even more enticing, as of this writing, HP is giving you the first two months of your subscription, or 600 pages, for free. So if your monthly plan hits the 300-page cap for the first year, your running costs will drop to 2.8 cents per page.

Printing photos? you are in the enviable position

Overall, the Envy Pro 6452 isn't an impressive machine. Its capacity and volume levels are minimal; it's slow; and it really shouldn't print more than a few hundred pages per month. However, if you only need a few hundred high-quality prints and copies, this Envy is ideal, and its ability to leverage the HP Instant Ink ecosystem will save you time and money, especially when you use it to print photos with a lot of ink. That's enough to elevate the 6452 to our Editors' Choice for entry-level home office and home printers.