HP OfficeJet Enterprise and PageWide Enterprise Printer - Unexpected behaviors while printing using grayscale settings

HP augmented its grayscale printing options by adding the ability to print “High Quality” (composite CMYK) pages as a complement to “Black Ink Only” (K) pages beginning with FutureSmart Firmware Bundle version 3.4.1 and HP Universal Print Driver (UPD) version 6.1.0.

Depending on the driver and firmware combination installed on an HP OfficeJet Enterprise or PageWide Enterprise printer, selecting Print in Grayscale option for the Color setting, in the driver’s Printing Preferences, might result in one or more of the following unexpected behaviors:

• A print job defaults to “Black Ink Only” or “High Quality” without an option to re-configure.
• A printer’s Usage Page might reflect inaccurate counts.
• The ink consumption might be misaligned with expectations for associated default setting (“Black Ink Only” or “High Quality”).

This issue occurs for the following printers:

• HP OfficeJet Enterprise Color X555
• HP OfficeJet Enterprise Color MFP X585
• HP OfficeJet Managed Color MFP X585
• HP PageWide Enterprise Color 556
• HP PageWide Enterprise Color MFP 586
• HP PageWide Managed Color E55650
• HP PageWide Managed Color MFP E58650

To resolve the unexpected behavior, install UPD 6.3.0 or newer version and FutureSmart bundle firmware version 3.7 or newer version.

nota:

For standard print queues: When selecting Print in Grayscale, this solution allows for end user selection of “Black Ink Only” or “High Quality” when HP EasyColor is disabled.

For generic pull print queues: When selecting the Print in Grayscale option, this solution sets the print to be a “Black Ink Only” job, which is non-configurable.