Is the HP Smart Tank Plus 651 any good?

Updated June 18, 2026

For weekly home printing it is decent, not a standout. The bottle ink and an 8,000-page in-box supply gut the cartridge tax, and most owners call it Use it for ordinary home/small home office printing, and its reliable, trouble-free. The catch is age: the 651 skips auto-duplex, carries HP wireless-setup friction, and is a weaker bet on stock than a current Smart Tank or a proven Epson EcoTank.

Here is the honest shape of it. The 651 is an early entry in HP's refillable Smart Tank line — the same bottle-fed idea as Epson EcoTank and Canon MegaTank — and HP has since moved the range forward with the 5000, 6001, and 7602. HP does not publish a tidy retirement notice the day a model leaves the active range, so the cleanest read is the current line-up itself: HP's current Smart Tank printer range lists the models the brand is selling now, and the Plus 651 has rotated toward third-party and clearance stock. The practical truth for a buyer is not a date — it is supply and support. A printer you cannot reliably get new, with ink and warranty behind it, is a weaker buy than one HP still stocks.

651 — front

Bottle-fed tanks

What made the 651 worth owning is exactly what survives in the current line. HP rates it to get up to 8,000 color pages or 6,000 black pages right out of the box — bottle economics, not the cartridge tax — and refilling is hands-off: you plug the bottles in and let them drain—no squeezing, no spilling. Output earns praise too. One owner reports It prints very good quality pictures and documents., and a heavy user logged that they have Probably have printed over 7,000 pages at this point and it is still running well. The savings case is real — it carries straight over to the models HP sells today.

Now the catch, because it is the part that should steer the decision. The 651 carries the wireless friction that defines one-star Smart Tank reviews — one owner calls it Terrible wireless printing, always have to screw around getting it to work. It also skipped a feature its newer siblings gained: a buyer was let down that the premium-priced 651 did not have automatic duplex feature like the cheaper jet-ink versions. The cost-of-ownership logic that RTINGS independent printer testing scores — cost-per-print weighed against long-term supply — lands on the current line, which prints the same way with ink and support still behind it. We rank the bottle-ink options in our best supertank printers roundup.

Is the HP Smart Tank 5000 a good printer?

For a print-often home, yes — the 5000 is the better-aged buy than the 651. Owners single out the running cost and the ease of use. The strings are line-wide: print every 4-5 days or the head clogs, and the HP Smart app expects a connection. Want a current Smart Tank over the older 651? This is the cost pick.

Match it to your volume and the verdict falls out. The headline is running cost — owners call it The HP Smart Tank 5000 is a fantastic all-in-one printer that really stands out for its efficiency, low operating cost, and ease of use., and the output backs it for everyday work: Color prints are vibrant and consistent. A family user sums it up as It's perfectly fine for my personal and family printing needs. The one condition is the idle-clog rule the whole tank class lives by — one owner's only downside is you have to print in every 4/5 days otherwise ink might get dried up in tubes. Settle the in-house matchup in our Smart Tank 5101 vs 5000 comparison.

Is the HP Smart Tank 6001 a good printer?

It is fast and quiet, and the bottle refills are easy — but the reliability record is a coin toss. Across the reviewers we read, some units run for years; others die inside 18 months with little support behind them. The cheap ink is real; so is the risk. Like the 651, it is a weaker bet than the current line.

Honestly, the 6001 splits owners harder than the 651 does. The good units are genuinely good — The Smart Tank 6001 prints quickly and quietly. and The ink tanks are a breeze to refill. The bad ones are a write-off: one owner reports After 18 months my smart tank 6001 has failed and HP are refusing to do anything about it. There was also a software gap — It turns out that HP decided not to provide drivers for Windows operating systems., which forced a workaround. The pattern Consumer Reports tracks across inkjet reliability and owner satisfaction is exactly this kind of bimodal split. We map the running-cost math across the catalog in our type-versus-type tradeoffs analysis.

Control panel

Ink path

Is the HP Smart Tank 7602 a good printer?

The 7602 is the 651 grown up: it adds the automatic document feeder and auto-duplex the 651 never had, so it suits a home office that scans and copies. Owners praise the refills and value, but the ADF is the weak link — jam errors recur and double-sided jobs run slow. Need duplex and an ADF? Buy the 7602 over the older 651.

Here's the thing: the 7602 is the model a 651 shopper usually wants once paperwork enters the picture. It adds the features the 651 skipped — Wi-Fi, flatbed scanner, automatic document feeder, 2-sided printing, and even an ID card — and owners back the value: Compact, high quality unit, SUPER easy ink refills, great value, fast print and good color. The honest caveat is the document feeder. One owner hit It has a ADF Jam error that will not go away. HP Support wont save you., and the duplex itself trades speed for convenience — The printing speed is slower, which will be much more noticeable when printing multiple, double sided pages. For a desk that prints documents over photos, it is the stronger pick of the two. We track ecosystem-lock and reliability patterns model by model in our safety and known-risks guidance.

Can the HP Smart Tank Plus 651 print double-sided?

Not automatically. The 651 has no auto-duplex unit — 1 buyer flagged that even cheaper HP cartridge models had the feature the premium-priced 651 skipped. You can still print both sides by hand, flipping the stack, but there is no hands-off mode. The newer Smart Tank 7602 is the sibling that adds true auto-duplex, the cleanest reason to pick it over the 651 for paperwork.

Take the answer plainly, because it is a hard no on the automatic version. A buyer named the gap directly: the 651 did not have automatic duplex feature like the cheaper jet-ink versions, which stings on a printer priced as a step up. Manual two-sided printing still works — you print the odd pages, flip the stack, and print the evens — but that is a hands-on chore, not a setting. The fix is a different machine: against the 651, the newer 7602 adds Duplex printing, dual band wifi., so it is the sibling to buy if hands-off paperwork matters. Map which Smart Tank models are current in our guide to HP inkjet printers.

Bottle refill

Compact body

Add it up and the 651 question resolves into a buying instruction. The printer itself is fine — a refillable Smart Tank that prints cheaply and skips the cartridge tax — but it is an older model, it lacks auto-duplex, and new stock is thinning while long-term ink and support get shakier with every month. Nothing the 651 does well is lost in the current line: the 5000 is the cost pick, the 7602 adds the duplex and ADF the 651 never had, and a proven Epson EcoTank is the safer tank for a cost-watching home that wants a longer reliability record. If you already own a 651 that works, keep printing weekly and feed it bottle ink. If you are buying today, skip the fading number and buy a current model with ink and warranty behind it.