HP ENVY 6055e vs Canon PIXMA TS6420a: Which Compact Home All-in-One?

The HP ENVY 6055e and Canon PIXMA TS6420a occupy the same shelf, the same price bracket and the same use case: a compact all-in-one for a household that prints occasionally and wants it to look reasonable on a sideboard. What separates them is the ink architecture and, more consequentially, whether you are comfortable with a subscription.

Specifications side by side

The first row is the whole comparison. A two-cartridge printer throws away usable cyan and yellow when the magenta runs out. A five-tank printer lets you replace only what is empty, and gives you a dedicated pigment black for text plus a separate dye black for photographs.

Running costs

Bought at retail, the ENVY is one of the most expensive printers per page on the market: roughly 12 cents for a mono page and close to 28 cents for a colour page. The Canon is roughly half that.

HP's answer is Instant Ink, and to be fair it is a good answer. Plans start around $1 a month for a handful of pages and rise through tiers with rollover, and because you pay per page rather than per millilitre, photo printing becomes remarkably cheap. If you print 50 to 100 mixed pages a month and stay subscribed, the ENVY genuinely undercuts the Canon.

Our reduce printing costs guide covers the settings that reduce consumption on both, and ink tank vs cartridge explains where a refillable machine beats both outright.

Print quality and speed

The Canon is the better printer in almost every quality dimension. Its pigment black produces text that is dense, sharp and water-resistant, and its separate photo black gives shadow depth that the ENVY's tri-colour cartridge simply cannot produce. On glossy paper the difference in a 6x4 print is visible without looking hard.

The ENVY is no disgrace. Colour is bright and pleasant, and HP's photo output on its own paper is decent. But text has a slightly softer edge, and blacks in photographs go muddy because they are mixed from cyan, magenta and yellow rather than printed with a dedicated black.

On speed the Canon is quicker in mono and marginally slower in colour. Both are slow when duplexing because they pause for ink to dry.

Who each printer suits

Choose the HP ENVY 6055e if

• You want Instant Ink and print a steady, predictable monthly volume.
• You print photographs often and want per-page pricing rather than per-cartridge.
• Dual-band Wi-Fi matters because your 2.4 GHz band is congested.
• You use HP Smart's mobile scanning and scan-to-cloud features.
• The printer needs to be as low-profile as possible.

Choose the Canon PIXMA TS6420a if

• You want to buy ink when you need it, with no subscription.
• Text quality and water resistance matter.
• You print photographs and want the best output of the two.
• You would rather replace one empty colour than a whole tri-colour cartridge.
• Your printing is unpredictable, which suits cartridges better than a monthly plan.

Setup, apps and drivers

HP Smart is required in practice for ENVY setup and doubles as the driver installer. It is the better-designed app of the two, with excellent document edge detection when scanning with a phone camera, and scan-to-cloud destinations built in. It requires an HP account and will offer Instant Ink repeatedly.

Canon uses Canon PRINT for mobile and Canon IJ Setup on a computer. No account is required to complete setup, and the app is functional if less polished than HP's.

Both support AirPrint and Mopria Print Service. If an iPhone cannot see either printer after setup, the cause is usually the network rather than the printer; see AirPrint no printers found.

Known weaknesses and common errors

HP ENVY 6055e

The ENVY's printhead is built into the cartridges, which is actually an advantage: a clog is fixed by fitting a new cartridge rather than replacing the printer. The trade-off is the high cartridge price, since you are buying a printhead each time.

The routine support tickets are ink cartridge problem messages, usually caused by contact contamination or a partially seated cartridge, and the printer dropping off the network as HP printer offline. If HP Smart cannot find the printer during setup, our HP Smart cannot find printer guide covers the network causes.

Canon PIXMA TS6420a

Canon uses a fixed printhead, so a permanent clog is a serious problem on a printer at this price. Head or power-circuit faults show as error B200. The waste ink absorber counter eventually produces error 5B00, which is a service item rather than a fault.

Wireless dropouts after a router change are the routine ticket; see Canon printer will not connect. A DHCP reservation prevents recurrence.

Regional availability and model names

• United States and Canada: HP ENVY 6055e with HP 67 and 67XL ink; Canon PIXMA TS6420a with PGI-275 and CLI-276 inks.
• United Kingdom and Ireland: HP sells the ENVY 6020e and 6030e using HP 305 and 305XL cartridges. Canon has no direct TS6420a equivalent; the nearest are the PIXMA TS7450i and TS6350a using PGI-580 and CLI-581 inks.
• Australia and New Zealand: HP lists the ENVY 6020 series with 305-series ink; Canon's local range centres on the TS7450 family.

Cartridges do not cross regions. HP 67 will not work in a UK ENVY 6020e, and a UK 305 cartridge will not authenticate in a US 6055e.

Verdict

Choose the Canon PIXMA TS6420a if you want the better printer. Five inks, a pigment black, sharper text, deeper photo blacks and roughly half the retail cost per page. It is the right choice for anyone who prints irregularly, dislikes subscriptions, or cares about output quality.

Choose the HP ENVY 6055e if you have decided Instant Ink suits you. On a plan, with steady monthly volume and a lot of colour, it is cheaper to run than the Canon and the HP Smart app is the more capable piece of software. Off a plan, it is expensive.

If your volume is high enough to make either painful, look at a refillable tank machine instead. See our printer comparisons, or the HP and Canon support hubs for model-specific help.