Customer Reviews

HP CP2025DN Color LaserJet Printer

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

I purchased this printer earlier this week to replace an HP 2600n that had failed. The software installed without issues on four computers, which run either Windows Vista or Windows XP operating systems. No problem printing on any (or all) of the computers. Printer prints both color and B&W very quickly. Duplex printing option works great. Prints are high quality.
The only issues to date include:
1. Installation software offered either default or custom installation options. Even though I chose the custom option, the software gave me no choices for installation, and everything was installed on all four computers. I had to call customer support to then uninstall unnecessary software on three of the computers.
2. HP defaults this printer to the setting: Stop at out. This setting stops the printer from printing when a print cartridge has reached the end of its estimated life. I've found that a print cartridge has several hundred usable pages of life left when this setting is reached. You can override this setting by setting: Override out.

What a fantastic printer! After spending a small fortune over the past 6 years with two top-of-the-line Epson Photostylus inkjet printers, I'd had enough when my R1800 started chewing through 50% of the 6 ink cartridges it has just trying to get the nozzles cleaned....all at $14/cartridge. So I did a little research and found the CP2025dn brand-new from HP. What a joy!

I just hung it off the home router with its network interface and leave it on 24 hours a day. It goes into sleep mode (from which it only draws a couple of watts of power) yet it immediately wakes up begins printing within about 20 seconds. AND it doesn't clink and clang and make all kinds of fuss: it just prints! This is in what I would call an medium intensity home office or very intense personal use. Four people are using it, 3 from windows, 1 mac and everyone loves it. Using the HP glossy laserjet photopaper it even produces decent pics - not near what an R1800 would do BUT at a fraction of the cost, about 50x as fast, they're totally waterproof, and the quality is easily good enough for a school project, to mail pics to relatives, photobooks etc. But that's not the main thing it will be used for with prints from CVS and others only costing 10 or 15 cents for a 4x6.

Being that the inkjets seem like nothing but cash-cows for the printer manufacturers and the outrageously small number of pages that one gets out of a set of cartridges and the fact that the vast majority of printing is not for photos anyway - but day-to-day text/graphic use, laserjets seem the only way to go. From that perspective, this feels like the best money I've ever spent on a printer and I HIGHLY recommend it - you won't be sorry.

After spending a small fortune printing brochures in Kinko's, I got this printer. It is great. Same quality as Kinko's. Now I spend a fortune in toners, but on a FULL color page I estimate a 20% savings in this printer over kinkos, but if you pages do not have a color background, the savings are even bigger since Kinko's charges per page does not matter the amount of toner they use.

*update June 09*
I had printed enough documents to get a better estimate, My costs are ~60% to 80% lower than printing at Kinkos. Paper included.
If printing from adobe products, use the Universal PS drivers to get the colors as you see it in a calibrated monitor. The PCL5 drivers for some reason do not give me the right colors.

Do yourself a favor and bring a laptop into a retail store and test the printer before buying. Make sure you download the driver to your laptop first. After all the glowing reviews, I thought I finally found a color laser for my small business. Duplexing and color are both important for me. And speed. I tested the 2025DN with a Macbook and it recognized it quickly. But to do duplex, you need to download the driver. For SMALL files, (less than 1GB) it works very well. VERY nice color output. But bring a hammock for larger files! I printed a 7 MB and 16MB pdf file. It was only 2 pages in length: color pictures with text. It took 4 minutes to print one page (with Duplex) and another 2 minutes to print a second copy. Yikes! Considering it comes with 128MB ram, what's the problem? It's the processor. The printer trays and components are also very flimsy. HP does have good tech help. All-in-all, for SMALL color files, this printer will work for you. Anything larger, better have a lot time on your hands.

If you've been waiting for a color laser that does two-sided printing at a reasonable cost, your wait is over with the HP CP2025dn.

Previously if you wanted an HP that does color laser duplex printing, you needed to spend over $700. That has all changed with the CP2025dn. For only $50 more than the manual duplex printer (CP2025n) you get the duplex feature. This printer is fast with a print speed of up to 21ppm. It is all in a compact footprint, not much larger than HP's other black laser printers.

The negatives are few, however. The LED display (1-3/4" x 1.2") could have been larger and easier to read. The CP2025dn comes with 4 starter toner cartridges for 1200 pages. Their replacement toners are for up to 3500 pages, by comparison. Both of these were done by HP to keep their costs down

Sure, you can get a color laser for $250 less, but not with the print speed and duplex feature. With this printer, HP is really giving you your money's worth.

When my old inkjet from 2001 wouldn't work seamlessly with Windows 7, I decided it was time to upgrade my printer.

Although I did love my inkjet for color pictures, I found that I didn't do much photoprinting but that I did do quite a bit of professional laser printing. So I decided to finally go for a color laser printer. I'm glad I did.

This HP 2025DN is a wonderful printer. The D stands for duplex (prints on both sides) and the N for network.

Amazon shipped this to me two day for free (because I'm an Amazon prime member). At 60lbs, I think my prime membership paid for itself with just this one item.

When it arrived, it was in perfect condition (both the box and the printer). I must admit, it was hard carrying this sucker up the stairs to my study. Once I got up there, I unpackaged it and put it where I wanted it and followed the easy instructions to pull out a bunch of strips from the laster cartridges. It was pretty straight forward.

Then I grabbed a ream of paper and put half of it (250 pages) into the large capacity bin which is very nice.

I plugged an ethernet plug into the printer to connect it to my home network and then plugged it it. The printer went through a self diagnostic which was pretty straight forward.

I went to one of my laptops downstairs, which is connected via wireless to my home network, and I went to control panel and chose to add a printer. The HP color printer was there. I chose ADD and put in the enclosed CD. The driver was updated and I was printing within 10 minutes of unpackaging the printer.

I must say the quality is phenomenal. My wife turned around and printed her 120 page dissertation in color in about 5 minutes and she was was ecstatic with both the quality and the speed of printing. I used the nice HP Color Laser Printer 28 lb 8 1/2 x 11 Inch Paper 2500 Sheets (20500-0). It's expensive but it's worth it.

Of note, the printer comes with toner cartridges that are only about 1/3 full - you get about 1,200 pages before you have to replace the cartridges of which there are 4 (black, magenta, cyan, yellow) and they're also expensive about $100 each but replacement cartridges yield 3,500 pages each. When you do the math, the cost for printing out of this printer is significantly less than inkjet printers so if you'd doing volume printing this is the way to go.

What I loved about this printer:
-easy setup
-network printing (I can print from any computer throughout the house)
-large capacity paper bin
-speed of printing 21 pages per minute
-print quality (wow its good)
-cost per page
-the auxilary bin for when you have one off printing
-duplex printing
-that it goes to sleep and wakes up whenever you have a print job

What I didn't like:
-It's heavy
-It's a bit loud when it's doing its self test
-The screen is small (but that almost doesn't matter, you don't use it much)

Honestly, this computer is probably overkill for a home but if you have a home business or home office, definitely consider getting this printer. It's well worth it.

Common questions:
Q: is this as good as an inkjet for color pictures?
A: In my experience, no - although it comes close

Q: Is this as good as inkjet for color business graphics?
A: This printer is better, the colors are sharper and the images are crisper

Q: Overall is this better than an Inkjet for text?
A: God Yes! Color Text and Black and White Text is amazing in this printer...far far beyond inkjet

Q: Is this better than inkjet for brochures?
A: YES! It's better. Crisper and nicer especially on brochure paper (yeah HP is in the paper business now, but HP as well as other high quality cardstock works)

Q: Does this smear like inkjet
A: No. The laser process bakes the ink onto the paper. You get a great permanent result with this color laser. no drying time needed. Paper literally comes out warm off the press.

This is a workhorse printer that rivals HP's Laserjet 4L. I bought my 4L in 1996 and it's still printing away.

This new color laserjet is the best of them all. Do the research, this Energy Star model has the fastest print time from startup, uses the least amount of energy & toner cartridge and overall cost is more than reasonable.

Unlike other brands, the HP CP2025 does not spend 1-2 minutes going through a series of noisy tests while it warms up. Your page will be printed within 20 seconds of hitting print on your PC at the blazing rate of 21 pages per minute.

Print and color quality is as good as it can be, and I prefer laserjet over inkjet anyday. This printer weighs some 63 pounds, it is not a cheaply made printer by any means.

HP seems to make one indestructable high quality reasonably priced printer/scanner/etc. in each class and hides it within a bunch of not so useful similar products. Like the legendary 4L, this printer is one of those gems that could last a lifetime, literally.

MAY 2010 (I don't know if this is a rant, book, or review. I know I invested easily over 12+ hours into researching for a printer before this purchase). Price I paid $550 (includes the tax).

This is my first laser printer purchase.

I DO NOT print marketing material, brochures or pictures.

I mainly print correspondence letters w/ colored letterhead and PDFs of documents e-mailed to us, which look like birth certificates, marriage certificates, etc. And basic B/W print jobs.

I run a small business, translation agency, and a service we offer is certified translations that people use for government, legal, immigration, etc. Print quality is extremely important to me for these projects.

For my business whether it was for 1 page or 20, I'd have to run over to my local print shop that offered high quality color laser printing. It was time for a laser printer.

I originally contacted Xerox. However, after not receiving the sample prints requested after a week, and after I followed up with them on the phone (and e-mail) and still not receiving them. I wasn't going to call a second time. I was originally looking at the Phaser 6140 (not to mention I didn't read a lot of feedback on this printer since there are hardly any user reviews on this product anywhere online - minus CNET, PCReview, etc.).

I started to look at what printers are available that I could purchase in stores.

The main things I was looking for in a laser printer were high quality printing (color printing a must) and low printing cost.

At my copy store I was getting .35 color. I knew printing at home in the long run WILL be more expensive but it's something I was willing to do for the convenience and if somewhat a reasonable cost per page.

Anyone considering a purchase of $500 for a printer I hope you know the basics, that you will NEVER get the page count that your ink box says.

Anytime it says what the page count is on a box of ink or specifications it's going by 5% ink coverage on a page.

Full cartridges is supposed to print 2,800 pages @ 5% coverage on this printer.
-5% coverage looks like 1/3 of the page, 2 small paragraphs. No bold characters, no graphics and no pictures.

I'm estimating I'm printing around 15% coverage(full page text) on average to 30% max.
-This cuts it from 2800 pages to 450-900 pages when I insert full cartridges. Median is about 675 pages.

Genuine HP cartridges ($400 to replace all 4). Would be paying .62 per copy.

You can buy re-manufactured/compatible for around $200 per set, which would be around .33 per copy.

When it comes to quality, with HP the printing QUALITY will be there. If it's anything from the reviews I've read and my own experience, it's better if not the same than copy store printing which was my main goal.

I felt with a lower quality printer, I'd be investing in toners which is what I don't want to do. Just like the "disposable" ink jet printers you pick up for around $40-$99 and invest more in inks that print barely a 100 pages.

Before finding this HP printer I considered:

Brother brand laser printer, specifically model HL-4040CDN ($400) however I was really suspicious of the reviews. Amazon, and store retailer sites it seems every brother printer is rated 5 stars and great reviews. However, if you look at the few negative reviews, everyone specifically mentions the quality of printing, a reoccurring theme, and they seem to strongly disagree with the positive reviews. Not to mention it would need maintenance parts. I decided to forgot about this brand printer. I do own a small label printer (QL-570) by Brother which I've really enjoyed.

I thought about going back to Xerox, and ordering the Phaser 8560 ($799) specifically this model because of "solid ink" what they don't mention is it's basically wax. The machine has to be turned on at all times to keep the wax at the right temperature. When it's turned off and then on, expect 3 minute wait time to print and printer will automatically always print a full color test page when ready (which wastes ink). That still didn't deter me from buying this printer. I'll tell you what you did:

1. You can scratch off the ink with your nail (it's wax on paper!)
2. I don't feel it's safe for archival/long term purposes (since my clients are getting official documents translated/certified, you can bet these will be stored for a long time).
3. If the pages are scanned, and the scan glass becomes hot, the wax can melt causing smears, etc.
4. Since the printer is always on and wax is heated apparently overtime whether in use or not, this causes ink to evaporate (since I may go days without using it, this didn't seem like a good choice).
5. Apparently it sucks up a lot of juice when printing or cleaning itself, causing lights to flicker (I have old wiring in my home, so prob not a good choice).

If I was printing just marketing materials, etc - I may have actually pursued it to get some samples to actually see the hold up on this ink and put some of the above to a test. Since the solid ink did have some pros, seemed cost effective and ink never expired.

I looked up Minolta brand laser jet, but after researching toner costs and cost per page, it didn't take me long to not pursue any of their color lasers.

I did not research Lexmark (bad experience with this brand in the 90's).

Samsung, same thing as Minolta, once I start getting into toner expenses and cost per page, didn't seem reasonable.

I did not research any Canons too thoroughly, the ones in stores were "MultiFunctions" ($600+) which I didn't need.

A quick look compared to Canon and HP, at this point still looked like HP was a better deal on cost per page.

**Beyond the Brother printer, I did not research the other brands to find out what maintenance parts may have been needed or if needed.

Experience so far with my HP:

SET-UP:

Very easy to set up once it's un-boxed, HP is very "plug and play" friendly. I didn't even read the main set-up manual, just went by that 1 page that's taped on the printer that has like 5 steps. The software CD downloaded in like 5-10 mins (I have Vista). Remember not to plug USB into your PC until the software tells you too. I should mention it's heavy.

EASE OF USE:

Once all connected I was printing a page within a minute, that should tell you everything. I noticed we didn't have the traditional, normal, best, fast, draft, options like a normal ink jet would, which isn't an issue, anytime I'm using this printer I'd probably be doing the ideal setting anyway.

FEATURES:

Pretty basic, I'm not recalling any features specifically on this printer that stands out. One thing I would have LOVED is automatic wireless networking (like their office ink jets), but since I print only occasionally I don't mind moving my laptop to the printer to connect to USB.

Noise and Print Speed:

I'm neutral on those. These two factors really didn't play any factor in me purchasing this printer. As I start actually using it, I don't have a problem of how it sounds or the speed, the pages pop right out, way different than an ink jet.

Since I mentioned electricity earlier, I have horrible wiring in my house, older home, and lights didn't even flicker when printing, or calibrating, etc.

Quality:

No complaints here. This is probably why HP is a leader in this domain, their quality of printing. For what I print, it's excellent, A+.

Paper:

I feel the quality of paper also has a lot to do with the quality of prints. I noticed when the copy store would accidentally print my paper on regular copy paper, it would look horrible/low quality.

For my HP, I'm using Hammermill Color Copy, 28lb, 100 brightness (has an apple on the front as of May 2010, retails $13 in a chain store).

I compared it to HP paper, HP 100 paper (I think 24lb on HP) to Hammermill 100 paper, HP actually looked gray!

Forgot to mention---printer comes with introductory (half-filled) cartridges, supposedly 1200 pages @ 5% - I'm expecting around 200-400 pages.

I'll update this review once I use the intro cartridges out and let you know how it did on page counts.

I know this was a long read, but if this was all in one place when I was searching it would have saved me a lot of time.

Thanks!

I got this printer directly from HP as they offered a really good discount. My 10 year old Lexmark SC1275 was dying and needed several hundred dollars for new toner and drum, so buying a new printer would be a better alternative. After doing some research this HP model became its substitute.
Installation couldn't be easier. The fact that my wife and daugther unpacked and installed the printer and drivers without my help tells you how easy it is to install. They just followed the pictures on quick install sheet, connected to network, installed drivers and 10 minutes later printer was cranking its first job. We have computers with XP, Vista, and 2003 server, printer works flawlessly with all of them.
When people evaluate printer parameters then must have a reference point, you can't just say it's loud or silent, good or bad quality, it's all relative. Comparing this HP to older Lexmark, I can say that it's much faster, less noisy, draws less current, print quality is way better, and it works flawlessly (no paper jams, no driver errors.) We have a number of bigger models of HP color laser printers at work and they are all very dependable, high quality machines. So there is a hope this model will also show good durability, time will tell. Comparing printouts from this HP to printers from other manufacturers in this price range, it's obvious HP colors are closer to reality, more saturated, and print is more crisp. I haven't seen any other color laser under 500, that can come close (I checked Brother, Konika, Richo, Samsung, Xerox). The down side, cost per page is some of the highest among other printers. With current HP toner prices on Amazon, the cost per page is 2.2c for 5% black and 13.5 cents per 20% cymk color page. In comparison, el cheapo Brother toner would run 20-30% less. It's a tradeoff, cost vs quality. You decide what's more important in your case.

I am a long time fan of HP products beginning with an HP 11C calculator purchased in 1980 that still works just as well as it did the first day it was used. I purchased this Laserjet to replace an HP 812C Deskjet that was purchased in early 1988 when the current batch of cartridges dried up and the cost of replacing the ink was a significant fraction of the cost of this significant upgrade in performance. I've had the printer for about a week now and have printed close to 300 pages on it already -- a good mixture of simple b&w documents, color documents with embedded figures and spreadsheets, and using both its single sided and duplex modes. All have produced high quality results at good speed. BTW, I have printed from both my Mac Pro and MacBook Pro over both a wireless network and connected to the printer via its USB port.

My only complaint is that the printed directions and the directions on the CD that the printed directions tell you to use are somewhat contradictory. The printed directions have you perform the CD installation very early in the set-up; the CD wants you to connect the printer to your computer as soon as the drivers are installed. Fortunately I had read ahead in the printed directions which don't want you to connect the printer to the computer until the very end. Otherwise the installation was very smooth on all 3 of the home computers.