Reviewed on: February 2018
Suitable For
Home users who don't print much, and want a simple-to-use printer that can give good quality prints. As our verdict above shows though, it's such an expensive printer to run that we'd advise looking at other recommended budget printers to buy instead.
Features & Connectivity
The HP Envy Photo gives you a good amount of functionality and connection options for the price:
- Scan and copy
- Automatic 2 sided printing (duplex)
- Wireless
- AirPrint and Google Cloud Print
- Cloud integration, print from social media
- 2.2 inch touchscreen
- Borderless printing
- 125 sheet capacity
- 15 sheet 6x4 capacity
Enough features for nearly all home photo users, possibly only missing a card reader, PictBridge and NFC functionality.
Print Speed & Quality
Print speed is okay, with a speed of up to 12 pages per minute (ppm) on normal documents, dropping to around 10ppm for mixed colour and image documents. Fairly normal speeds for a home printer and competitive with similar priced machines.
If this was a budget HP Envy machine we'd say the quality is great for the price, but this is a printer focused on photos that is meant to provide far more bang for your increased buck. Documents are just "Okay", and photo prints are "good". There's no wow factor, and we'd be more comfortable recommending any of the printers recommended in our photo printer buying guide. If you end up buying this printer rest assured you'll like the photo results and normal documents will do the job, but you could get more for your money.
Cartridges & Running Costs
The HP Envy Photo 6230 takes only two cartridges, a black and combined colour cartridge in the HP 303 range. They both come in standard and high capacity. The former gives you a paltry 4ml of ink and should be avoided. With a brutally high running cost, these inks should onlybe used by the lightest of users who more use the printer for scanning than printing. The higher capacity inks contain 10ml in the colour and 12ml in the black. These XL HP 303 inks are still expensive to run but are much better value than the standard capacity HP 303 inks.
Who Should Buy This Printer
Honestly, not many people. Decent print quality and connectivity aside, the printer is so expensive to run and risks waste due to the combined colour cartridge make it not really viable. If you want a photo printer that you can use occasionally and store it for a long time, and don't mind paying for it, then maybe the HP 6230 is okay for you.