The Internet of Things is here, and it's not going anywhere anytime soon. Everything's going online, from watches to kitchen appliances. Even light bulbs now have smartphone apps to improve convenience, functionality, and ease.
Printers, unfortunately, appear to have missed the boat.
It's somewhat strange, given the critical role they play in small businesses. They are one of the core centerpieces of your office and necessary for keeping physical copies of everything from financial records to contracts.
Yet for some reason, using them is still all too frequently an exercise in frustration. They require software drivers that seem to disappear at random, and proprietary PC software that offers little more than bloat. They fail to stay consistently connected to your wireless network even on a good day.
In a future defined by smart devices, the vast majority of printers are still, for lack of better terms, dumb. Retailing at around $230, HP's OfficeJet Pro 9015 is a noteworthy exception to that rule. As one of the smartest multi-function printers the company has ever made, it takes full advantage of everything your modern office has to offer.
The HP Smart App completely streamlines the printer setup process, offering exactly the sort of experience a modernized printer should, requiring no CDs, driver downloads, or nests of cables. Via app-guided setup, it's fast and easy to get your printer working with new devices and add new users. Beyond that, the Smart App turns your phone into a mobile printing hub.
From within the app, you're able to print, scan, and share from anywhere, whether to your printer, via email, or to the cloud. Thanks to automatic edge smoothing and detection, you can instantly scan multiple pages into a single searchable document with ease.
The HP Smart Tasks feature in the app, meanwhile, lets you streamline your most common workflows and jobs. You can quickly eliminate much of the busywork in repetitive tasks via customizable shortcuts that allow you to print, scan, and email with just a single tap, saving yourself a ton of time in organizing documents.
Say, for example, you frequently sign, scan, email, and print documents for a client. With Smart Tasks, you can do that with a single tap. No need to waste time and energy on busywork.
The printer itself sports self-healing WiFi, which automatically detects and resolves connection issues. No more struggling with a printer that refuses to connect to your network, or wondering when - or if - a critical document will print at all. Better yet, via the Smart App it can even access and print documents and images from cloud services like Dropbox and Google Drive.
Perhaps best of all, with the HP Instant Ink delivery service, the OfficeJet Pro 9015 keeps track of how much ink you've used and automatically orders more for you when you're about to run out. You automatically receive new ink delivered to your door when you start to run low. And although you still have to pay a monthly fee, HP Instant Ink still offers savings of up to 50%.
With HP Instant Ink, color prints and black-and-white prints cost the same so you never have to worry about choosing between the two.
Smart features aside, the OfficeJet Pro 9015's specs are also excellent. It can produce up to 22 professional-quality pages per minute with automatic two-sided printing. It also comes with a 35-page auto document feeder for easier copying and scanning.
Whether you're an entrepreneur looking for a new addition to your home office or a small business owner looking for a better workplace printer, the HP OfficeJet Pro 9015 is an incredible option. Cost-effective, easy to set up, and packed with smart features, it's capable of doing more than any other printer in its class. In a marketplace flooded by archaic print technology, it stands head and shoulders above the competition.
