HP Color LaserJet 3500 user reviews

4.0 stars

"Quality allround printer with cristal clear output. sturdy, but clumsy Linux support" on August 16, 2005 by alexkidbe

Pros: great B/W text; great COLOR text; really sharp images, no pixels visible; falls after a while in powersave (complete silence)

Cons: crappy linux support; heavy (but manageable)

Summary: Before buying this printer (HP 3500), I looked around for comparable types and read dozens of reviews, both by users or by professional reviewers. Since I found that there where not enough rewievs available I though I had to submit one that says a bit more than just 'ok or not'.

I was looking for a color laserjet that we could use our in home office. Networking was not important, nor the speed. The most important to us was functionality and image quality.

I read a lot about this printer being a host-based printer and not operating under Linux.
Host-based, means (as far as I made out) that it does not have native support for standard PCL or PostScript, but that a host-pc must perform the task of converting the image to the raw data format the printer understands. This is a drawback for some, but I looked around and found no good reasons for this to become an issue.
Linux, I found out, can make use of this printer (see www.linuxprinting.org). But HP is not the one suppling the solution which I found to be inconceivable for a company like HP! Really HP, do something about it!

now that I have the printer, here are my findings:
- yes it is bulky and heavy but that's not interresting, what's more interresting is that this is a quality made machine. No items that could easily break off or crappy plastics. The front panel opens up to install the 4 toners Which practically install themselves. Just slide them in.

The output:
- It makes cristal clear printouts. Both in b/w as in color.
- Black text is realy sharp, better than the previous model I had (HP LaserJet 6P).
- Color text is really something you should see! I have seen inkjet printouts that were really good, but this stands out! Text is really sharp and the colors are great! You have to consider that when you work (like me) on an LCD screen, the color is a bit different than on a CRT screen. And that the color of both LCD and CRT screens are hard to mach exactly on paper. But that is an issue for all printers. I can genuilly say that this was realy good.

Since I had no high expectations on output of color images, I was amazed by the sharpness of the colorphotos I printed. There was no banding or any pixels distinction possible. But that said, if you want to use this mainly as a photoprinter, dont't. This is not a an issue for this printer alone, but no colorlaser can match a good fotoprinter. (or real photo). Hard fluoresent tones of different colors for instance are not (hardly) possible with LaserJets. So don't go looking for it. The colors in the images printed out a bit too dark (in standard setup). But you could only see that if you put them next to the real photo.

Logo printing: The company logo must be printed perfectlly, and any small print must be cristal clear. And it did the job great!

Speed is realy good. Very fast printing of color images or text, and (I don't know what the reviewers are complaining about) fast black and white printing (for my usage or a small workgroup that is).

noise? Well some. When the printer is on and working it makes a bit more noise than my previous 6P. In between jobs, you mainly hear the ventilator that doesn't make more noise than a normal pc. After a while it falls into powersave mode which fills the room with utter silence.

price: well it is not cheap, but if you subtract the cost of the included consumables, the printer itself costs less than 200 euro.

in conclusion: Generally spoken, I am a demanding person. But I have to say that I am very pleased with this printer so far. It makes cristal clear and sharp images, is fast, is sturdy, has great colors, no pixels can be distinguished and does not make a lot of noise. The toner installation is hastle free.
The only drawback is HP's lack of proper Linux support, but that shouldn't stop you since there is a workaround.

Alex

4.5 stars

"an excellent all-around printer" on April 4, 2005 by cnlson

Pros: beautiful color

Cons: "Smart toner "

Summary: so far a little over 4000 pages and i still love it! only reason it did not get a 10 is that the "smart" toner locked me out of the black cartridge because it "thinks" it is out. while still having over 1/3 of the toner left. i do not understand what would be hurt letting it completely run out like i did with my 1012 laser that this replaced. one of the nice things is that it comes with direct chat so i do not have to wait on hold wasting cell minute to get an answer. Next year i am definitely going for the 3550 if i can afford it. 1/3 more speed would really be nice.

1.5 stars

"Gray color sucks" on June 21, 2004

Pros: Prints on any paper, the color is clear, and cartridges are easy to change

Cons: try printing gradient gray from photoshop and it prints some shades as green, dunno why? called tech support in the philippines and they said they'll call back, that was two months ago.

3.0 stars

"Nothing special." on December 15, 2010 by shiphen3

Pros: Moderately reliable.

Cons: Expensive running costs. Blew up severely after about 100,000 pages (4.5 years)

Summary: Nothing special.