HP Color Laser Printer... bad experience

Author's Rating:

Pros: Comes with full ink cartridges, unlike 1600 series

Cons: Dead on arrival, returned to store

The Bottom Line: 
Avoid HP printers

Author's Review
My dad asked me to research the best color laser printer in the market for his small business office, wherein he wanted to print ads and letters in large quantities. His needs included:

- Double-sided printing
- Good color graphics (but not photos)
- Low cost (printer and cartridges)
- Capable of using different media (different paper sizes)

We shopped among HP, Dell, Samsung, Xerox, and Minolta lines of color laser printers, and found the HP 1600 and 2600 series the best bang for the buck. The biggest difference between the two lines is that the 1600 comes with USB support only, and its ink cartridges are only half full; thus they print less out of the box. Whereas the 2600 series offers network support and comes with full cartridges.

Besides cost and features, an advantage of the HP line versus other brands is that the paper is run only once through printing, whereas in some brands, including Xerox, the paper is run four times: once for black, once for blue, once for magenta, and once for yellow. The problem with this approach is that it takes much longer to print, and requires replacement of additional parts over time.

Office Depot had a $50 off coupon on the HP 2605 printer at the time, so we brought this item home.

:-: Installation :-:

The HP 2605 is easy to install: one simply installs the drivers included on the CD (one has the option of installing drivers only, or the entire HP printing solutions software), then plug in the printer via USB or network cable. I used an USB cable

** Note that the printer does not include any cables, except power. Fortunately, I had a spare from another product.

After removing all safety shipping orange plastic tabs and tape from the printer, I plugged it in and Windows XP found it immediately.

:-: Printing :-:

I printed both black and white and color documents on this printer. The quality would have been very good if it weren’t for a problem discussed later below…

Text is easy to read, and colors look bright and sharp on graphic documents. Even photos look good on this printer. I used the sample paper included with the printer.

The paper tray under the printer allows users to adjust plastic tabs to the media type, facilitating printing. I found this very useful.

In regards to speed, I found this printer extremely slow (over a minute to start printing).

:-: Quality and Technical Support :-:

Our printer came with a defect: the ink would not take hold to the paper and would roll and smear out; hence, documents would have ghost images of text printed further above on the paper, as well as thick globs of ink. Since the unit was still in the 30-day window of return at Office Depot, I exchanged it for another new unit.

Once I got home, and installed the new unit, I found it exhibited the exact same problem. I found this very odd, and contacted HP technical support via e-mail. They responded the very next day suggesting I run a calibrating and cleaning procedure, and to please reply with news. The results were horrible: ink all over the paper. I scanned the papers and sent an e-mail back to HP with the results attached...

Their reply? Exchange the unit for a third one at Office Depot.

I decided not to waste my time. I packed the unit and returned it outright, without getting another unit.

My dad thought we might have hit a bad batch of printers, but a quick look at CNET online of reviews of other HP color printers showed that many other folks have had the same problems recently. Clearly, HP should be avoided.

It’s back to the online printer research for me...