Jill reviews it: The HP Envy printer and HP Savings Center offer wireless coupon printing from anywhere

Disclosure: I received an HP Envy 120 web-enabled printer, ink, and paper for the purpose of this review. All opinions about HP, the Envy 120, and the HP Savings Center are my own. Later this month, I’ll host a giveaway for this product, giving away a new HP Envy 120 to one of my readers!

Spring 2014 UPDATE: The HP Savings Center, which allows users to remotely print coupons, has been discontinued. If you are purchasing this printer solely to take advantage of this feature, know that no longer exists — and yes, it’s a bummer, because it was very nice.

I have to admit, I’ve been behind the times as far as wireless printing is concerned. My longtime current printer is an old workhorse of an HP that I bought used six or seven years ago. I use it daily, and it still works well! However, it has no wireless printing capability.

I didn’t really think about what I was missing until I got a smartphone and a tablet, then realized that neither of those devices can print to my old HP printer. So, when HP asked if I’d like to review the HP Envy 120, a web-enabled printer, I agreed. Once they began explaining what the printer could do though, I became even more excited.

The HP Envy 120 works seamlessly with the HP Savings Center, an online coupon printing component. The HP Savings Center is integrated with Coupons.com to offer direct-to-printer capabilities, sending the coupons you select straight to the printer over the web without having to install a browser plugin.

How is this different than simply using a standard wi-fi enabled printer? Because this printer is connected to the Internet through your home wi-fi network, it can receive commands not only from your internal network but anywhere over the web. Imagine being on a trip away from home and seeing some new Coupons.com printables that you’d like to print. With the HP Savings Center and one of their web-enabled printers, you can select the coupons you want to print from your computer, tablet or phone. Guess what happens next — the coupons you selected print at home. They’re not queued up – they print in real time, and they’ll be sitting in your printer’s tray waiting for you when you return from your trip!

I had no idea this was even a possibility! It sure would have come in handy when I was traveling on the east coast last month. Every time I found a good coupon matchup, I put it in an email to myself to remind me to print it once I got home.

So, I was eager to set up this new printer and try it out. The HP Envy 120 is a three-in-one scanner, copier and printer, all packed into a pretty sleek design. It promises that you can print from a smartphone or tablet from “virtually anywhere,” and indeed, coupons aren’t the only things you can print remotely to this printer. (More on that in a bit.)

Setup was pretty easy. Because this is a wireless printer, it doesn’t need to be attached to a computer, so we placed it in a central location where everyone can use it. The printer has a color touchscreen display that automatically searched for and found our home wi-fi network. I entered our network password on the screen, and the printer was almost ready to go. Next, I followed the on-screen prompts to print a setup sheet for HP ePrint. This sheet contained a printer code to enter into my account at HP’s website to link the account to this printer and enable over-the-web printing.

Once that was done, I went online to the HP Savings Center to create an account.

Once my account was created, I was prompted to enter the code from the HP ePrint setup sheet. This lets the site know which printer I want to send my coupons to when I select coupons or documents for printing.

Once I entered the code, a test sheet printed from my printer to show that it was now linked to my HP account.

Now I was ready to start printing coupons! All of the coupons in the HP Savings Center are the same as the ones on Coupons.com, and you can enter your zip code to display local offers too.

I clicked to select some coupons, and then…

Check it out – FOUR coupons on a page! Why doesn’t Coupons.com print this way on its own? What a great way to save paper!

One of the features of the HP Savings Center that HP asked me to try out is its ability to learn what kinds of coupons you like and deliver them automatically to the printer. On the coupon printing pages, you can give a “thumbs-up” or “thumbs-down” to specific offers to help the site learn what you like. You can also subscribe to certain categories of coupons. You can turn this feature on or off at any time.

Well, of course, the next thing I had to do was try to print coupons from somewhere else! I grabbed my smartphone and went for a walk down the street. When I was a couple blocks from home, I pulled up the HP Savings Center, logged in and selected some coupons to print. And when I came back home…

Oh, how cool is that? My husband had stayed home while I went for my walk-print session, and he was pretty impressed too. I said “This is beyond great!” My husband began singing, “Yes, I love technology…” (If that movie quote reference is lost on you, check out this clip from Napoleon Dynamite. Funny, funny stuff. When that movie first came out, my husband even bought me a “Yes, I love technology” t-shirt because of this song in the movie. And I still love technology…)

The HP Envy 120 has numerous channels of automatic content that you can subscribe to and automatically print free content from. Its on-screen menu offers everything from weekly menu planners to crossword puzzles to kids’ crafts, coloring sheets, games and more. For this review, I was asked to try out the 7-Day Menu Planner too. It was very easy to print from the printer’s touch-screen menu, and I was also given the option of subscribing to the menu planner. It will print automatically once a week, each week.

I printed this week’s menu planner, and it took up two sheets of paper. It also printed one sheet of coupons that corresponded to some of the items in the meal planner. I look forward to playing with this feature some more over the weeks ahead.

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My thoughts so far:

– Just like when you print from Coupons.com via traditional means, you get two prints per coupon when printing from the HP Savings Center.

– I was curious to see whether or not using the HP Savings Center to print Coupons.com coupons would prevent me from printing them the regular way from my computer off Coupons.com directly. I connected my laptop to the new printer and tried printing two more of the same Butterball coupons I printed two of from the Savings Center. Good to go – I got two more prints that way! And, I was also able to use the Coupons.com smartphone/tablet app to print two more to this printer — the app automatically found the printer and asked me if it was my printer of choice. So, between all three devices, I was able to print six of the same coupon. Wow!

– Next, I tried printing coupons from other websites – SmartSource and RedPlum. I had no issues with either. (SmartSource blocks printing to some scan-copy-print devices, but they printed fine from the HP Envy 120.)

– Occasionally I hear from readers who do not want to install the Coupons.com plugin in their web browsers for one reason or another. This HP Envy printer would be a great option for them, as you don’t need to install anything in the browser to print. The command to print the coupons comes directly from HP over the web.

– Not only can you print coupons from wherever you are, you can print just about anything from wherever you are. Once you register for an HP account and connect your printer to it, HP’s site allows you to select an email address for your printer. Pick any username, and that address is simply USERNAME@hpeprint.com. Once the address is established, anything you email to that address automatically prints at the printer. I sent an email to the printer with a Word document attached, and the document printed with no intervention – too cool! My sons were playing in the same room as the printer, so then I sent a plain-text email to it and asked if anything came out of the printer. They giggled and returned with this:

I’m sure there are all kinds of practical applications for this feature, but I can already see myself sending printed notes to my kids each day the next time I have to take a business trip! My daughter then told me that one of her teachers has this printer, and it’s how she turns in some of her assignments. She emails them to her teacher’s printer’s address, and they are delivered to his printer so he can grade them. Who knew?

I’m going to play with this printer some more and give you an update in a couple weeks to share what else I’ve learned about it and how I like the Savings Center’s features.

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Want one? You can purchase the HP Envy 120 at the HSN.com for $179.99 and at Target.com for $199.99. I’ll also have a giveaway coming up this month to give a new HP Envy 120 printer away to a reader!

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Disclosure: I received an HP Envy 120 web-enabled printer, ink, and paper for the purpose of this review. All opinions about HP, the Envy 120, and the HP Savings Center are my own.