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"Constant Trouble"
Pros
Specifically, there is nothing about this printer I find exceptional or impressive, especially compared to color laserjets by other manufacturers
Cons
Constant "service errors", lost print jobs, ridiculously hard to configure if not using standard 'letter' paper. Terrible at manual feed objects such as envelopes, no edge-to-edge printing, poor quality vs. amount of toner used, poor interface
Summary
It does its job, but it does not do it well. My company purchased a solution from Lexmark later down the line and we were 'OOH'd' and 'AAH'd' when the new simple-to-configure device easily spit out high quality prints on letterhead and envelopes. The Lexmark was doing it'... Read full review
It does its job, but it does not do it well. My company purchased a solution from Lexmark later down the line and we were 'OOH'd' and 'AAH'd' when the new simple-to-configure device easily spit out high quality prints on letterhead and envelopes. The Lexmark was doing it's job, something we were not used to with the HP color laserjet. The HP Laserjet 5500 has wasted so much of my money for supplies due to being impossible for users to configure and other various 'problems.' We later purchased a Ricoh Africo MPC2500 which promised to be a office 'super-device'. I can vouch for that, Ricoh. The C2500 is so user friendly, it's very rare that my office staff have to 'retry' printing non-standard documents. The color is INTENSE and all-around perfection. No toner streaks or fading, something the HP 5500 would put on every print, no matter how many cleaning kits we purchased from HP or age of toner device. After upgrading to the new Lexmark and Ricoh products, I had the 5500 decommissioned immediately and sent to 'electronics heaven'. Since then, my books report a major decrease in printing costs - nearly 45%, which for a large part I give thanks to Ricoh. I am glad we are no longer wasting twice as much paper than we actually needed due to these unimpressive HP LaserJets being so over-complicated. I purchased three high-end HP LaserJets around the same time as my company grew, having thought HP was the Cadillac of LaserJets, I was surprised when the technology still worked as poorly as it did years ago. Having had to replace all of these machines way too early, I learned a hard lesson that HP went from being the edge-cutter of Laser printers to creating garbage products. Disappointing, but not my problem - as consumers, my employees and I undoubtedly recommend against this product and all related machines from this company. As a business owner, I highly recommend other entrepreneurs stay away from these products due to low value-to-investment ratio and cost of use. As a software engineer, I recommend HP get their head in the game when it comes to drivers & user interface - I can understand a sharp learning curve for a few less-tech savvy employees, but my entire team of engineers, including myself, still had issues getting things to print right on this machine after three years of use. As a business with respect for the environment, my employees should not have to feel ashamed that the company's printer technology wastes so much paper & supplies - when I heard this was the case through the grapevine, I tossed out these devices well before the end of their useful life. Why? Their useful life never started for us. I recommend staying away from this product... Like I said, it does its job (sometimes), but you really won't know how bad of a product it is until you check out the competition. For us, Lexmark and Ricoh were impressive. I believe we also have a few Canon laser fax machines that I have allowed to stick around after installing the Ricoh because employees campaigned "simple to use, high quality printing & they're already paid for." My assistant has a Brother InkJet that she swears prints in 1080-High-Definition and I personally have an impressive little Kodak inkjet in my office... So tell me why HP of all companies cannot get these machines up to par?
Loyalty. HP probably figured that since they were the gold standard for laserjets, consumers would naturally continue purchasing them. That, works... to an extent, and I must admit I fell for it... But I won't ever again. Decommissioning almost ten thousand dollars of equipment investment after only two-three years due to poor design is nothing this CEO will forget anytime soon.
This company is far too up and down for me. It's well known to avoid their PCs like the plague... now I suppose their printers... yet, after hiring a disabled individual, I was in the market for a touchscreen LCD to make the individual's workstation accessible. After searching around, HP was the only vendor that sold a display that fit the job, so I had no choice but to order. What came in the box was one of the highest-quality desktop-class displays I've ever seen - and we're a tech solution provider! What gives with the swaying overall product quality, HP?!
