HP OfficeJet Pro 8135e Review: Capable Hardware, Locked-Down Ink

Updated June 18, 2026

Functions Print, scan, copy, fax, auto-duplex, ADF

Connectivity Self-healing dual-band Wi-Fi, AirPrint, HP Smart app

Ink System HP cartridges, firmware-locked to HP chips

Our Verdict

Capable home-office hardware wrapped in exactly the cartridge lock-in cost-conscious buyers come here to escape. The 8135e earns a conditional verdict: buy it only if HP Instant Ink and HP-chip-only cartridges are acceptable. For ink freedom, route to a bottle-fed supertank instead.

Best for: Home offices that accept the HP+ ecosystem and want a feature-packed all-in-one in a small footprint

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Overview

The lock is the headline, not the spec sheet

Look past the glamour shot and the OfficeJet Pro 8135e tells two stories at once. The first is a good one: a small-office all-in-one that does more than its footprint promises. One owner expecting a larger footprint was pleasantly surprised to find the feature-packed printer smaller than anticipated — it is a true all-in-one with print, scan, copy, fax, auto 2-sided printing, an automatic document feeder, and a 225-sheet input tray, all in a body that tucks onto a home-office desk.

The second story is the one HP's listing buries, and it is the reason this page exists. The 8135e is firmware-locked: HP's own copy states the printer will block cartridges using non-HP chips or circuitry. That single sentence is the difference between a capable machine and the one a cost-conscious buyer should think twice about — because controlling the cartridge is exactly how the cheap-printer trap works. The lens this site puts on every printer is what it costs to own over time, and on the 8135e the cost story is not the cartridge price. It is who gets to decide which cartridge goes in.

The split in the reviews follows that fault line.

Owners praise the hardware and the machine still lands at 3.8 across 13 reviews — low for a home-office printer. The gap between "good machine" and that rating is the whole review, and almost none of it is about print quality.

What the hardware gets right

Credit where it is due: the spec sheet is a real office spec sheet. HP rates it at Print speeds up to 10 ppm color and 20 ppm in black, and the listing leads with Fast color printing, scan, copy, fax, auto 2-sided printing, an ADF and a 225-sheet input tray that means fewer refills. It is a true multifunction machine, not a homework printer with a scanner bolted on.

The interface is a quiet upgrade too. It carries a 2.7-inch color touchscreen — HP's pitch is to Quickly navigate your printer with a phone-like user interface — and the connectivity is HP's better radio: dual-band Wi-Fi that, per HP, automatically detects and resolves connection issues. Setup backs that up — one owner went through the step by step setup guide in the app and printed the first page in under ten minutes. HP also throws in two extras worth a line each: it is Made with more than 45% recycled plastic, and HP Wolf Essential Security bolsters security at the network level. One marketing flourish stands apart — an AI tidy-up where HP AI easily removes unwanted content before you print — and it is the only listing claim the owner record treats as a sideshow.

So the hardware is not where this printer loses people. Set up cleanly, it does its job. The trouble starts at the cartridge bay, and at the tray.

Performance & Real-World Testing

Print quality is the calm part of the record

Here is the irony that defines the 8135e: the pages are good, and the rating is bad. Owners report clean output for professional documents, and the complaints almost never mention resolution. The honest caveat is photos — one owner notes that Some quality is lost in photo printing, but again, this is not a dedicated photo printer. That is fair framing, not a fault. For office paperwork, the page that lands is the part nobody argues with.

Everything dragging the score sits around the printing, not in it.

The physical annoyances owners hit first

Before the firmware ever bites, two hardware niggles set the tone. The build feels cheap to some — multiple reviewers call it a terrible printer, with one finding the plastic so thin it felt ready to break during ink loading. And the paper handling has a real flaw: an owner reports The paper tray has a design flaw where it does not secure 8 1/2 x 11“ paper lengthwise. A tray that lets letter paper drift every time you open it is the kind of daily friction a spec sheet never shows.

Then there is the noise. Quiet it is not — when it prints, it is L-O-U-D! in one owner's capitals. Connectivity has its own gotcha: one buyer connected it via a USB cable, but the printer wouldn't recognize the cable and kept defaulting back to the less-reliable Wi-Fi. None of these is a dealbreaker on its own. Stacked together, they are why a machine with good output reads as a 3.8.

Value Analysis

The real cost is the ink lock, not the sticker

Here's the thing about an 'e'-model HP: the cartridge price is the smaller trap. Cartridge ink already runs far dearer per page than bottle ink — RTINGS' cost-per-print and page-yield testing puts the gap at several times over, and Consumer Reports' inkjet running-cost testing reaches the same place. That is the baseline cartridge tax every cartridge printer charges. The 8135e adds two layers on top of it.

The first layer is the lock itself. The defining warning in the r/readbeforebuying thread is blunt: The ones with an 'e' at the end are tied into HP’s print services and will refuse to work without genuine HP supplies. That is HP+ firmware, and it is a hardware gate, not a nudge. HP's own HP+ terms confirm the printer must stay enrolled in genuine-HP-cartridge use — and the community adds the part HP doesn't advertise: the e-models They also require online access at all times to print to enforce their cartridge DRM. An internet outage can stop a printer that has full ink in it.

The second layer is the subscription. Cancel HP Instant Ink and the catch lands at the exit, not the entrance: the community warns that the subscription cartridges are only usable with an active subscription — so stocking up before you quit does not keep the printer running. We run the cartridge-versus-tank fork across the whole catalog in our type-versus-type tradeoffs analysis.

The control question, not the volume question

A normal cartridge printer's value splits on how much you print. The 8135e's splits on something simpler: do you accept HP deciding what goes in the cartridge bay? Say yes and you get a competent, well-featured office machine. Say no and there is no print volume that makes the lock worth it. We grade every machine against that running-cost and lock-in case in our inkjet printers evidence hub.

What to Expect Over Time

Living with it: the firmware never sleeps

Two failure modes shape life with the OfficeJet Pro 8135e past the first week, and both trace to the same software-first design.

The first is reliability you can't predict, because the failures are digital. One owner's unit died after 5 months of use: The first printer lasted approximately 5 months before failing with WIFI not being recognized. And the firmware can turn a routine task catastrophic — on a sibling 9135e bought to fix the tray, a cartridge swap triggered an Error that the ink cartridge is leaking. It is not. HP confirmed a known internal firmware error with no date for a fix. A printer that bricks on a false alarm, with good cartridges installed, is a different kind of risk than one that simply wears out.

The second is the failure mode every inkjet shares, made worse by the always-online lock. Liquid ink hardens in the printhead when the machine sits unused, and it spends ink on automatic cleaning cycles to clear it. A home office that idles the printer for a week is courting a clog — and with the 8135e, that idle machine still needs an internet connection just to validate its cartridges before it can print at all. We track that idle-clog risk in our safety and known-risks guidance, and the brand-specific picture in our guide to HP inkjet printers.

The community verdict is not subtle about where all this lands. In the same thread, commenters call HP They are the most anti-consumer company in printing and repeatedly steer buyers toward Brother or Dell instead. One frustrated buyer went further and replaced the 8135e with a Brother printer that worked right out of the box. That is the reputation the 8135e inherits — earned not by its hardware, but by what HP wraps around it.