Customer Reviews

HP Color LaserJet 4550 Printer

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I printed a lot of photos with my old 895cse printer, and they looked great, but the ink could smear and it took forever. I recently bought this printer, and it is fantastic, clean and crisp prints... and full color in the same time it takes to print a text page, about 20 seconds. And you don't have to replace the cartridge every other week, so far it's been 3 months and I haven't changed the toner yet. I say if you can afford this now, it will pay off in the long run.

The HP-4550 Color LaserJet Printer is a great tool.

We live in a color world. Our television, magazines and newspapers are in full color. It only makes sense to be able to reproduce what we see on our computer screen in color. Black/White output is only a poor representation, not an accurate reproduction.

Since many people are considering trading up from a LaserJet 4 as I did, I will compare the two.

The 4550 is heavier. You will need two people carry it and to move it from its shipping carton to a table.

The 4550 is larger. Check the measurements. Make sure you have room for it.

The 4550 is noisier but the fan shuts off after a few minutes of nonuse and it goes into a sleep mode after 30 minutes (adjustable).

The 4550 is slower. It is first-page-out rated at 26 seconds in b/w while the HP-4050 is rated at 13 seconds.

The printer cable is rather short. You may need an extension.

If you have a small office and require more speed, you may be better off with an HP-4050 (b/w) printer and a small color inkjet printer.

The manual is excellent, the setup is easy and the color is great.

As a publisher, author of 26 Books, 109 revised editions, six translations and over 500 magazine articles as well as a consultant to the book publishing industry, I spend a lot of time using my computer. I need the best tools. The 4550 is a great tool. DanPoynter@ParaPublishing.com.

I broke down and purchased an HP Color Laserjet 4550 in March (my yearly bonus paid out!). While it required my teenage son and myself to lug it into the house (it is rather lofty in size), setup was simple and the quality and durability of prints cannot even be compared to an inkjet printer.

Prior to purchasing the 4550, I owned three color inkjet products and have never been satisfied with the final prints. Even if you could get the prints to look good right out of the printer, their durability (ink smears, color degradation, etc.) certainly suffered.

How to justify a rather sizeable purchase? Save your money and don't buy the poor reliability from color ink jet printers not to even mention the cost of the cartridges (but note you will have to anticipate the costly replacement of the four toner cartridges used in the 4550 laserjet eventually). Also, purchase a nice card maker software package (I use Hallmark Card Studio 2) and some good laserjet photo paper, and you can easily justify the cost of this color laserjet.

I wish I would have never bought into the color inkjets and waited for this nearly affordable color laserjet instead.

I'm a SOHO user, with an IT background. As a result I don't want to compromise on my computer equipment. I've only bought HP printers for the last 12 years, and I've been *very* satisfied ... UNTIL I bought this 4550 Color Printer two months ago. I bought this printer with the hope to do all my printing work myself, also in color (my 4050 satisfied my needs, except that is was Black & while only).

Compared to the HP 4050 it replaces, the thing is *very* bulky, the duplex keeps having paper jam problems if I start to re-use paper which was already printed on (which I never had with the 4050) and the warming up time is TERRIBLE (even after a paper jam, it takes AGES to warm up again). Also, having used the 4050, which was a 1200dpi printer, the 600 dpi of the 4550 is rather disappointing. Finally, the large drawer only takes 250 pages, compared to 500 pages for the 4050 - this means refilling the printer twice as often (and waiting for warming up again).

OK, my business cards coming out of the printer on 220 gr. look professional in color, but my pictures are less good than they would be on an Epson Deskjet with 1440 dpi.

Finally, I was really disappointed by the worth my "old" 4050 had - I got only 33% of it's value for a printer that was as good as new - HP only offered 16% of the initial value.

Conclusion?

For SOHO users - don't buy a HP printer that is bigger than what you *really* need - if you would resell it "as good as new" it will have lost it's value. For other users: maybe you should spend a bit more to get a better color printer than this one.

Bought one of these over a year ago now and it prints absolutly beautiful color, has been trouble free and HP actually has great tech support. Had some very complex network problems that they sorted out. I am thinking of buying the 8550 now form high volume.

I own the HP-Color LaserJet 4500 ( Older Version Of The 4550 ). There are 2 primairy Differences bewtween the 4500 and 4550, They are as Follows, #1: The 4500 Comes with Half as much ram and #2: The 4500 has a little bit Slower CPU. The 4550 In Every Other Way Identical to the 4500. Both Printers use the same exact Consumable parts, the front control pannels function identicaly. I Paid Only [money] total for the 4500. This will probably be the last printer I need to buy for awhile. Prior to getting my HP 4500 Color Laser, I had owned the Epson Action Laser 1500 ( MonoChrome Laser ) for more then 10 years. I Feel that most hown users and home based business would be pretty well off with Either of the Color Laser Printer's. So far I have not had any Major problem with the operation of the printer. I am currently running a Personal Computer System besides Windows or Mac; I am using the AMIGA PC.

My used HP 4550 Color Laserjet was purchased from a local computer dealer and I rate the deal as four-star. I'm rating the product on Amazon as three-stars since it is actually a collection of different deals from different sellers. The quality of the printer you get will vary. The HP 4550 comes in different models. The models differ in features such as the amount of installed memory, whether the machine has an ethernet interface etc.

I find that the HP 4550 is less useful than my HP 4000 T black and white laser printer. As a home user (not a business user) I often wish to print out documents or web pages that don't need color. A used HP B&W laser printer is an excellent tool for this type of work. It's handier than ink-jet printing since you can print thousands of pages without worrying about putting in a new black ink cartridge. The HP 4000 is quiet when not printing, it is light enough that one person can move it and it automatically recovers from minor errors such as running out of paper.

In contrast to this, the HP 4550 weighs about 130 lbs. It is noisy even when idle. I'd say it makes almost as much noise when idle as the HP 4000 does when its printing. It's footprint is about 21 x 20 inches versus about 17 by 15 1/2 inches for the HP 4000 (both without the optional attachment on the back to do two-sided printing). The quality of the color printing is not as good as modern (i.e. 2011 ) high end home ink jet printers. (Most reviews that compare the HP 4550 favorably to color inkjets were written nine or ten years ago and the HP 4550 may be as good as inkjet printers of that era.)

When turned on, you must wait about ten minutes for the machine to be ready, so turning the printer on only when you want to print isn't a convenient solution to the noise problem. When you press the power switch to turn the power off, it takes about ten minutes for the machine to turn its fans off. (This is how the machine is supposed to be turned off. You aren't supposed to cut the power to the line cord until the fans have stopped.)

The machine uses 4 toner cartridges, which are available, but expensive. The machine must be turned on when you replace a cartridge since you have to use the a menu to rotate the particular cartridge that you want to replace within reach.

If you decide to buy one of these printers, I recommend that you ask the seller for a copy (or, by email, an image) of the configuration page for the printer. I'll give the most significant text information on mine and a few comments on it. ( I'd be delighted if people who know how to interpret this information in more detail would add comments to this review.)

Product Name: HP Color LaserJet 4550
Printer Name: HP Color LaserJet 4550
Printer Number: F
Printer Serial Number: JPNAA13081 (You can check this versus the printer that you actually receive.)
Formatter Number: VAG7NO
Firmware Datecode: 20001019 01.003.0
PS Wait Time-out: 300 Seconds
Page Count 155037 (This important number gives you an idea of how much the printer has been used.)
Color Page Count 73571 (I don't know whether the number of color pages printed is in addition to the 155037 listed above or whether its part of that total.)

Event Log (This log shows malfunctions. It might tell you about past problems)
Number of Entries in Use: 50
Maximum Number of Entries: 50
Number Error Page Count
30 13.1.00 155029 (You can look up the meaning of errors like "54.02.00" on HP web pages for the printer.)
49 54.02.00 155021
48 13.25.00 151517
47 13.25.00 149444

Installed Personalities and Options
PCL (20000205) (I think this indicates the printer has the standard HP printer control language software in ROM)
PS (20000205) (I think this shows the printer has Postscript software in ROM)
PCLXL (20000205)

(The amount of memory installed will vary. My machine had 64 MB installed and I added a 128 MB. The maximum memory that my model of 4550 will support is 192 MB. I'm not sure that all models of the machine support that much.)

DIMM SLot 1:
Side 1: 64 MB SDRAM (On my machine, this is the long slot farthest from the edge of the memory board.)

DIMM Slot 2: Side 1: 64 MB SDRAM (This is the long slot nearest the edge of the memory board.)

DIMM Slot 2: Side 2: 64 MB SDRAM (The single memory chip has memory on both sides.)

DIMM Slot 3: Side 1: 8 MB ROM (This is the firmware. It is in a short slot.)

DIMM Slot 4: Empty (This is an empty short slot, presumably for ROM.)
EIO 1: Empty
EIO 2: Empty
RAM DISK Storage 130 MB Capacity

Memory
Total Memory: 192 MB
DWS: 140.65
Automatic Resource Saving Enabled

Security
Control Panel Lock: NONE
Control Panel Password: DISABLED
Write Protect: DISABLED

Paper Trays And Options
Default Paper Size: Letter
Tray 2 (LETTER)

I have only 1 tray on the machine and it takes only standard 8 1/2 x 11 inch size paper. If you need to print special sizes such as 17" sheets, you'll have to investigate the availability and cost of other trays. My machine does not have an attachment to do two sided printing. I think such an attachment is available, but I haven't investigated it.

My printer has no network interface.

My printer uses as cable that hooks to a parallel port connector on my computer. You should ask the seller what type of cable, if any, is included with the printer. Many modern (2011) computers do not have parallel ports.

HP reliability, laser convenience and speed, outstanding color. For photographs or graphics, you simply will not find a better color printer for the money.