Which ink does the HP ENVY Photo 7855 use?

Photographs are what make this printer expensive to run, and the reason is in the cartridge list. The ENVY Photo 7855 takes the HP 64 family, and our record shows no separate photo cartridge for it, so the same tri-color that prints a coloured letterhead also prints your photographs. A photo covers the whole sheet and pulls on all three colours at once, and the cartridge is finished as soon as the first of them runs out.

The family is four cartridges: HP 64 black and HP 64 tri-color at the standard size, HP 64XL black and HP 64XL tri-color at high yield. The number sits on the label inside the cartridge door. If you arrived looking for ENVY Photo 7855 toner, that is the laser word, and nothing sold under it fits an inkjet.

Given how the tri-color empties, high yield is the sane default. The HP 64XL tri-color is rated 415 pages for $40.00, which is 9.64c a page, against 165 pages at $22.00 for the standard, or 13.33c, so about 28 percent comes off each colour page. Black moves further: 6.33c on the 64XL against 9.00c on the standard, roughly 30 percent. A standard pair costs $40.00 and a high yield pair $78.00.

Ratings like 415 pages are measured on standard test documents, not on photographs, so treat them as a way to compare cartridges against each other rather than a promise of how many prints you will get. On glossy paper at full coverage the true figure is a fraction of it.

Firmware is the thing to plan around on this model. The Photo 7855 is a 2017 machine subject to HP Dynamic Security, so the printer can check cartridges for an HP chip, and an update can start refusing a third-party HP 64 that has been printing happily for months. If you intend to use compatibles, set the printer to stop checking for updates before the first one goes in rather than after, and buy a cartridge at a time. A remanufactured cartridge built on a reused original HP chip is the safer route. Our ink DRM tracker covers which HP models are affected and how to check yours.

When the printer refuses a cartridge, work out which of the two faults you have before spending anything. A seating problem reads as missing, not detected or incompatible, and clears when you reseat the cartridge with the contacts wiped dry and the film off, or after a minute with the printer unplugged. A firmware block instead names the cartridge as unauthorised or not an HP chip, and no amount of reseating changes it. Faded photos with ink still showing in the gauge are a third thing again. Run a nozzle check, then one cleaning cycle, and read the test page before you buy a replacement.