Customer Reviews

HP P1505 Laserjet Printer

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Every year we rotate out about 250 printers of a total around 700 printers. That means we are on a three year rotation schedule. The batch going out this year is some pitiful Brother printers that are only one and one-half to two years old. The ones we are keeping past their rotation time are some HP1012 and 1022 printers that have performed flawlessly. Their replacements are these 1505s.

These printers are simply well-suited to their jobs. They are shared at every installation where we use them. They have been fault free so far and most likely will be if they mirror our experience over the last 20 years with HP printers. They are not network printers or meant for heavy production use. For that you have to expect to spend a few more dollars.

Based on our experience here with these printers I bought one for home and it is performing flawlessly.

I would recommend this printer to anyone who needs an everyday, reliable, easy on the combustibles printer.

I have bought several 1505's and 1505N's and overall had a great experience with them. They are the replacement entry-level Laser monochrome printer for the 1022/1022N. I like them better because they print faster than 1022 (in my experience) and have a power button on the front.

I did receive a bad 1505 but I emailed Amazon and they overnighted me a new printer and emailed me a pre-paid RMA label. Couldn't have been easier - Amazon rocks!

Great little printer! (If you need something a little heftier with HP, I would look at the LJ1320 and so on...)

HP claims this printer is compatible with Mac OSX. Don't believe it. There are major problems printing from Word on a Mac, a problem of which HP is fully aware but claims that downloading the latest version of the driver from their website will fix it. In my recent and very frustrating experience (3 calls so far to HP Tech Support), it does not. My Laserjet is still not performing consistently (sometimes it prints, sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes it print horizontal lines instead of text), &, having exhausted all the "fixes" HP is able to provide, I'm about to ship it back to Amazon.

Thought I would update this thread-- the printer and its new drivers still do not work with Mac (10.5.8) as of 8/24/2009. Apparently any impending hp driver fix has dropped off of their "to do" list. Mac users shouldn't buy this printer.

The printer worked fine and was a cinch to install. Time will tell how well it holds up to light home use. My previous Samsung printer was also good until it c&^%$#-out.

I wasn't able to connect my LaserJet 1100 to my home network so my wife always had to turn on my computer to use it. But I bought the P1505 (NOT the P1505n) to replace the 1100 because I had a cheap Hawking H-PSU1 print server and figured I could use that to connect the printer directly to the network. Well, the incredibly inept HP support folks were of little help, with one rep proclaiming that this model ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY couldn't be networked. "You shoulda bought the P1505n!" he told me. And I had a bit of trouble getting the Hawking print server up and running on my network, since networks and I don't get along all that well. But now it's up and running and works great! My wife can print without my PC being booted. The print quality is excellent and the features and price were terrific. It's noisy but we don't print a whole lot of stuff anyway. When I compare the speed over the network to having it connected via USB to my computer, the print server appears to slow it down somewhat but it's tolerable. And the PPMs are quite good compared to my LJ 1100.

One quirk, recently discovered. If there's a power failure or the printer is turned off, you have to take the following steps to get the print server to reconnect with the printer:

1. Unplug the USB cable from the Hawking print server and plug it directly into your computer.

2. After PnP adds the printer to your computer, open "Printers and Faxes" from the Start menu and right click on "HP LaserJet P1505". Select Properties and click "Print Test Page".

3. Unplug the USB cable and re-connect it to the Hawking print server. The printer is now re-established on the network and ready to print.

OK, really stupid that you would have to do this but apparently that's what HP's done to get you to buy the P1505n! But don't believe reports that the P1505 can't be networked...especially if they come from HP's tech support!

I just bought an HP P1505 yesterday and hooked it up to my Lenovo T61 notebook. The install was a bit time consuming, I thought & requires both a CD/ROM & an internet hookup. Par for the course, these days, I guess. But all went well and the first time I tried to print a doc from the internet, it happened & there were no glitches.

There is no paper manual supplied; the manual is on the CD/ROM.

I have not yet tried to print a range of pages from a WordPerfect .doc (I don't have Word).

I bought this from a Canadian electronics big box store in Vancouver for about HALF the USA Amazon price (doorcrasher?) so they tried to upsell me their overpriced USB cable, paper, & replacement cartridge without success. They let me walk out the door with just the printer.

I haven't used a laser for a while except on a network so I was amazed at how FAST it is!

I MIGHT have given it five stars except I have not yet tried out with WordPerfect.

Update: Almost a year and 1000 pages later, & I'm still very happy with this printer. It has given me no problems yet, despite being carried around (in it's original box & packing) in the back of my van for many thousands of miles. I'm sure that HP did not intend the P1505 to be used as a portable printer but it works OK that way for me.

It works fine with WordPerfect X4, too.

I'm just about ready for a new print cartridge, which I think I'll buy from Amazon. The cartridge that comes with the printer is a "mini" 1000 page one. The replacement cartridge is good for 2000 pages, they say.

"Nother update: After almost two years, this printer is still performing flawlessly and has given me zero grief. It is the best printer I have ever had since I got my first computer printer in 1985. I'm on my second toner cartridge which is about used up, I reckon. This printer rides around, in it's original box, in the back of my van, in all weathers, when I'm not printing with it. No problem, so far.

Today, from H-P's website, I downloaded the drivers I need for my new netbook, running Windows 7 32 bit. The P1505 also works fine on that platform, printing .docs created with Sun's Open Office word processor. The driver download & install is a bit time consuming (better allow the better part of an hour) but was smooth and straightforward. Make sure you "save" the download (don't "run" it) and then let the install wizard pop up & do its job.

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It's been an roller coaster battle getting this printer to work consistently on a Mac. For one thing, the box didn't contain any documentation, and there wasn't any on the CD containing the drivers.

Once installing the drivers from the CD, I immediately had problems printing from Word. This was rectified by changing the formatted printer from "any" to the specific printer.

After this, I had more issues. The printer will stop printing. It will flash forever but never print your documents. Rebooting the computer and deleting the printer does nothing to fix it. The only thing that did allow me to print, albeit for a short while, is to delete the printer and reinstall the drivers that I downloaded from the HP site.

After pulling my hair out for awhile, I stumbled onto some open source drivers that do work. Visit the Linux Foundations's OpenPrinting page at [...]#Printers. I discovered this through this link, [...], which has some directions. Replace HP1100 with the P1505 for best results. If you've done it right, the printer icon should look differently that when using HP's drivers.

My opinion about this printer, and HP, is that I don't know how they can claim this printer is compatible with a Mac when given the drivers they provide, it most clearly is not. Did they do any testing at all? I feel very disappointed and duped by this company and their compatibility claim.

So far I have purchased three of these.
Best things about this printer:
-very fast printing
-long life on my toner
-very large paper tray/250sheets
-very reliable
-NEVER had a problem
-simple to use and set up

Nice printer in most respects (we have three in our offices) but it uses a whole lot of ink. The toner cartridges are supposed to be good for 2000 pages, but we get nowhere near that...
We like HP, but don't recommend this model.