The HP Smart Tank 7602 ($499.99) is the top-of-the-line model for the Smart Tank 7000 series of all-in-one printers, but it's got some tough competition from the Epson EcoTank ET-4850 and Epson WorkForce ST-C4100. These two Epson models, which are essentially identical, share a spot as our current Editors' Choice pick for heavy-duty personal, micro-office, or home-office AIO, and are also reasonable choices for light-duty printing in a small office. The Smart Tank 7602 matches them on most key features, and adds support for internet faxing, but it was slower enough on our tests to leave them in place as our top picks for the category.
A Four-and-a-Half-Function AIO
As a four-function AIO, the Smart Tank 7602 can print, scan, copy, and fax by definition, but it offers more variations on some of these features than other AIOs. Like most, it can function as a standalone copier and fax machine, and it will let you send faxes from your computer using HP's fax utility or by printing to the HP Fax driver from almost any Windows program. Like many, it will also let you print from and scan to USB memory keys. Unlike most, it adds faxing though your internet connection, using HP Smart's Mobile Fax option. (For that, HP includes a one-year subscription in the printer's price.)
The HP Smart app is available for Windows, macOS, and both Android and iOS mobile devices. Among other features, it lets you create and send faxes via HP Mobile Fax from anywhere, even if the printer isn't on. The app also lets you send print jobs to the printer from your phone or tablet; scan from the AIO flatbed or automatic document feeder (ADF) to the device; and copy from your mobile device. In the last case, the AIO uses the phone's or tablet's camera to take a photo and print it with a single command. However, note that although HP's specs online show Wi-Fi Direct under Mobile Printing Capability, when I tried using it and ran into problems, my HP contact said it doesn't actually support Wi-Fi Direct. So whether the printer is connected to your network by Ethernet or Wi-Fi, you'll have to connect your phone though the network, instead of directly.
The printer also supports HP's Print from Anywhere, which sends print jobs via the internet. In my tests, using a Samsung Galaxy S20 FE, the feature worked smoothly in some trials, but in others it reported that printing was unsuccessful, with no hint of what the problem might be. That said, I have not seen this problem with other HP printers using the same app, and HP wasn't able to replicate it, so it may have been an isolated problem.
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For printing, the Smart Tank 7602 offers a 250-sheet drawer and support for automatic duplexing, exactly matching the two Epson models it competes with. Those features make it suitable for heavy-duty personal use, as the staple machine in a micro office, or for light duty in a small office. HP recommends a monthly duty cycle of up to 1,200 pages, which would require reloading paper a little more often than once a week. Note that there's no multipurpose tray or even a single-sheet bypass tray, so if you occasionally print on letterhead or another special-purpose paper, you'll have to load it in the single paper drawer first.
For scanning, copying, and faxing, the printer offers a letter-size flatbed plus the 35-sheet ADF, which can handle up to legal size. However, it lacks even manual duplexing, which would let you flip a stack over, scan the second side, and then automatically interfile pages in the right order. This won't be an issue for everyone, and is true for the Epson printers and most other competitors as well. But it could be a deal-breaker if you need to scan, copy, or fax duplex documents even occasionally.
Mind the Long Setup Process
At 9.5 by 16.8 by 14.3 inches (HWD), the Smart Tank 7602 is small enough to sit on your desk comfortably, in easy reach for scanning or giving front-panel commands. The 3-inch touch panel is an unusual variation on monochrome, offering a brightly lit white on black for text and icons, making it easy to read.
Connection choices include USB, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet, which I used for my performance tests. Basic setup, from pouring the bottled ink into the tanks to downloading and installing software, was straightforward. However, some things aren't set up during the initial installation, and finding out how to set them up can be difficult.
Choose "Scan to Email" on the front panel menu, for example, and you'll get a message telling you the feature isn't set up, followed by three screens of setup instructions to scroll through. More frustrating is that some settings need to be made in the printer's embedded web server, which I knew to look for only because I've seen one in so many printers, and the printer doesn't come with any information about what each setting is for or where to find the details online. There's even one setting that the embedded web page says is disabled, and tells you "For more information, contact the person who set up the printer." In short, if you need to do anything more than the initial setup, plan to spend some time with HP's online support.
It's also unclear how much the internet fax subscription costs after the first year; HP did not respond to our request for a quote.
Testing the Smart Tank 7602: Acceptable Speed, Low Running Cost
HP rates the Smart Tank 7602's speed with its default settings at 9ppm for color printing and 15ppm for monochrome, which is 0.5ppm faster in each case than Epson's ratings for the ET-4850 and ST-C4100. However, in our performance tests, using our standard testbed, it was slower by just enough to notice.
For monochrome text, using our 12-page Word file, it took 15 seconds to print the first page, compared with 9 seconds for the Epson models, and it printed the rest of the file at only 8.8ppm, compared with roughly 15ppm for the Epson printers. On our full business-applications suite, which adds files with color graphics and photos, the total time was 4 minutes and 57 seconds, or only 5.1ppm, more than 90 seconds slower than the Epson printers. Snapshot-size (4-by-6-inch) photos on glossy paper averaged 53 seconds each.
Keep in mind, also, that for any given level of performance and features, tank-based printers are generally comparable to cartridge-based printers that cost less. For example, the HP OfficeJet Pro 9035e and the Epson WF-4820 both offer comparable paper capacity and features to the Smart Tank 7602, both cost significantly less, and both delivered faster speed on our tests. (That's 26.4ppm for the text file, not including the first page, and a total of 2 minutes and 9 seconds for the full suite.)
The advantage for tank printers is low running cost. The Smart Tank 7602 and Epson twins all offer ink costs that work out to 0.3 cent per monochrome page and 0.9 cent per color page. Print enough pages, and the savings compared with cartridge printers can more than repay the higher initial cost. Which choice is the better buy depends on the total cost of ownership, meaning the initial price plus the running cost for the number of pages you expect to print. (Here's how to compare total cost of ownership between printers.)
Output Quality: Near Top Tier
Text and graphics output quality for the Smart Tank 7602 were close to top tier for business inkjets. Edges on characters didn't have quite the crispness to match a laser, but all the fonts in our tests that are likely to be used in standard business documents, including an italic font, were well formed and readable even at 4 points. Two stylized fonts with thick strokes tended to fill in loops and spaces between characters, making them hard to read, but one was readable at sizes as small as 10 points, and the other maintained readability at 8 points.
Graphics with the default settings offered nicely saturated color, and held thin lines well, including single-pixel-thick lines on a black background. Visible banding ranged from obvious to none, with the most obvious banding in darker colors. Photos on the recommended paper barely cleared the bar for the low end of drugstore quality, however. Some suffered from low contrast, and some colors of fruits in a fruit bowl were clearly off. Still, photo quality isn't much of an issue for most offices.
On our smudging tests for plain paper, gently wiping a few drops of water off output printed at least 24 hours earlier, the black ink smeared noticeably. Color ink didn't smudge, but it dried showing obvious water patches.
The Verdict: It's a Fax Above
Although the HP Smart Tank 7602 doesn't offer enough to challenge the Epson ET-4850 and ST-C4100 as our top-pick twins for personal and micro-office heavy-duty AIO printer, it matches them for paper handling and running cost. If you need its HP Mobile Fax and Print Anywhere features, that could be enough to make it the better pick, despite its slower performance on our tests.
If you won't be printing enough to benefit from the savings for a tank-based printer, the HP OfficeJet Pro 9035e and the Epson WorkForce WF-4820 are both good alternatives, with paper handling that is similar to the three tank-based models and faster print speeds. Between them, the WF-4820 has a lower initial price, while the 9025e offers a somewhat lower cost per page and essentially the same HP Smart features as the 7602. That said, if you want those features and the far lower running cost of a tank-based printer, the Smart Tank 7602 is the obvious pick.
In addition to its basic four AIO functions, the HP Smart Tank 7602 All-in-One offers internet faxing and is cheap to run, making it a good fit for heavy-duty personal or even small-office needs.
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