HP Officejet Pro K8600's black and silver styling, with highlights in high-gloss transparent black, wouldn't look out of place in a graphic design studio. Handily, if you're only using the printer's larger format paper handling on occasions, the input and output trays can be telescoped back, so they protrude only a short way from its front. At the rear, there's a single USB 2.0 socket and one for a low voltage input. It's fairly amazing that in a printer this size HP can't fit the power supply inside the case, but instead relies on a fairly substantial ‘black block’ to kick around under the desk. Although you can get JetDirect Ethernet and Wi-Fi external adapters for the printer, there are no options to upgrade with a duplexer or extra paper trays, as there are with the K5400n. There is the OfficeJet Pro K8600dn, which includes duplex and Ethernet as standard, but you have to put up £325 for that. The initial, physical setup is a two-stage process, as you have to slot in the two-colour heads - one for cyan and magenta and the other for yellow and black - before plugging in the four, separate ink cartridges. The printer then takes around quarter of an hour to charge its ink system and to automatically align its heads. The software of HP Officejet Pro K8600 is pretty basic stuff, with HP's Solution Centre and a reasonable driver, which includes presets for common tasks, such as plain paper printing, photos and duplex, though only manual duplex on this model.

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