Customer Reviews

HP DeskJet 940C Color Printer

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

What I like about the HP Deskjet 940c: Printed output looks terrific, and it’s fast (more detail below). It’s very quiet. It has a Cancel Printing button on the printer console that does indeed immediately abort the current printing job, a very nice feature. It has an ink level display that can be viewed onscreen in the HP software as well as ink level warning lights on the console. Envelopes are not wrinkled running through the printer (a problem with some older HPs). There is also a convenient single envelope slot for printing just one envelope without removing the regular-sized paper from the tray, for which the loading capacity is 150 sheets. In my experience, HP printheads need much less time- and ink-wasting maintenance and fussy handholding than the clog-prone printhead on the 1998 Epson inkjet I just replaced. I can’t tell yet how long the ink cartridges last; I’ll try to post an update when I have a better bead on that.
What I don’t like about the HP Deskjet 940c: The manufacturer warranty is too short (only 90 days). The HP drivers install unusually slowly from the CD-ROM (8 minutes on my PC, where software for most printers installs in 2 or 3 minutes). Software uninstallation is also very slow and still leaves a lot of junk behind in the Windows Registry. Queue up four or more print jobs and you’re likely to experience a Windows print job lockup halfway through which requires ctrl-alt-deleting and reloading print jobs to recover, especially in the speedier Draft mode, with the current driver version. Envelope printing on a stack of up to 15 envelopes is prone to paper skips and jams within the printer in Draft mode; in Normal mode, a stack of envelopes feeds through much better. Documentation to show the user how to find or use useful features such as the onscreen ink level display, the Cancel Print button, and the single envelope slot is missing or confusing. I consider these defects minor, overall.
Quality: Text in Draft mode appears a little dim but reasonably crisp to the naked eye (though a magnifying glass shows otherwise). I consider Draft mode good enough for all but critical applications, and of course, frequent use of it will reduce ink cartridge replacement costs. Normal mode looks outstanding even under a strong magnifying glass. I saw no advantage to using Best mode for text. A photo printed on photo paper in Best mode was indistinguishable from a photo printed by a camera shop. It’s easy and quick to change the default printing mode onscreen. Speed: Advertised printer speeds are always inflated, like monitor screen sizes and modem speeds. HP quotes “up to 12 pages per minute” for the 940c. Of course, speeds vary depending on setups. So how fast is the 940c, really? I connected it to USB (parallel port is likely slower) and ran tests printing pages of all black text with Word97 in Win98, with double-spaced 12 point font, on a PII-400 with 128k of RAM. I came up with average speeds of 8.75 ppm in Draft mode, 4.1 ppm in Normal mode, and 3.0 ppm in Best mode… very good speed for this price. Adding graphics, as usual, slows things down considerably, especially in Normal mode. A 4x6 photo, Best mode on photo paper, printed in under two minutes.
The Deskjet 940c uses an HP#15 black ink cartridge, and either a low-capacity or high-capacity HP#78 tri-color cartridge. You can purchase accessories I haven’t tested from HP to allow automatic two-sided printing or networked printing. The 940c comes with a power cable, a black ink cartridge, and a low-capacity tri-color cartridge; you need to supply either a USB cable (with Win98 or higher) or an IEEE 1284-compliant (newer than 1997 or so) parallel cable to connect it to a PC.

I have owned this printer since Christmas ('01) and have had nothing but success with it. The print speed is great for text documents. I was also able to print great looking glossy slides for a poster presentation. The print cartridges seem to have a pretty good lifetime, as well. I haven't had any problems with paper jams. It has handled some documents with pretty hefty memory neeeds without locking-up too. Definitely, well worth the cost!

This is our 2nd HP printer. Only to say, we regret buying it. The 1st HP printer, was purchased over 3 yrs ago. It's an 1100c series color printer that is on a "higher" end of the printer line.
Buying a G3 PowerBook had us looking for a USB compatible printer. At first, we purchased the LexMark Z55, which worked GREAT for almost year, before a faulty part went out. *(we do a LOT of printing).

So, thinking about how a former HP product was great, we got this one at the store when we were in a rush. We didn't even look at the demo. BIG MISTAKE!

1. SPEED, was the first disappointment - way too slow. LexMark speed is way better, even for photo quality pics. The ole 1100c is faster than this one too.

2nd disappointment was HP changed the printer cartridges. These are NO LONGER refillable. They have metal clips on the sides, and there is no way to refill them.

3. There aren't enough printing options available. Sometimes I wanted to makes changes that I could do easily with the older 1100c series printer. I found that the options change depending what program I am on, therefore making it more confusing. (to go into detail on this subject, I'd have to write a long long explanation). Basically, it was a LET -down, I don't even want to keep this thing. I'm better off buying a different printer, with refillable inks. Ink is just too EXPENSIVE to be purchasing and not refilling.

4. When the Black ink starts running low. It Basically makes you change the cartridge. It doesn't allow you to run the printer on low black ink. The machine stops functioning, and the big ink light blinks, and sends a message to your computer, saying STOP! Color inks run low, and the computer allows you to function with low color, but different story on the black ink.

The HP Deskjet is an oustanding printer for the money! I've shopped for weeks checking reviews comparing printing qaulity and price. I could not find a better quality photo printer in it's price range! Compare Prices and quality output at any store and you will find the same for yourself! Contrary to other feedback here, I have had no trouble at all with paper jams. There ofcourse is a drawback to this printer and for this reason only did it not recieve five stars from me, it takes 3 to 5 minutes to print a 2400X1200 dpi photo. For the price you can't beat it!!

After returning two malfunctioning HP960c printers due to frequent paper jams, we bought the HP940 hoping it would work better. It was worse. The paper jammed or was shredded every second page. It took a great deal of time to print even one document. We tried the more expensive HP paper and the paper jams continued at the same rate. We were unable to print any envelopes at all due to repeated jamming. It is clear that the paper feeding mechanism is defective in these HP printers.

We've had HP printers for years with no problems. We were loyal HP fans; however, we've had to return THREE of their printers in the past few weeks. That's unacceptable. We just returned the HP 940 and bought a Canon S630. So far, no problems with the Canon--a relief!

This is a great printer for any use up to 8X10 photo production. The "But" in the review is the cost of ink and the fact that it uses a single cartridge. I run out of one color ink even with it set to a lighter setting in the printing menu and I am out of luck. The rest is wasted. The two sided printing is great ...particuclary with all these programs now having the 'manual' on the CD to print.

...

Despite the great rating and rave reviews, I curse the day I brought this one home. I have gone through at least a ream of paper in the three weeks I have had this printer--not because I am so productive, but because the paper jams so often and the printer actually shreds the paper as it tries to eject. Several cries for help and complaints to HP customer service resulted in "that's a common problem. The arm doesn't detract after each page. You will have to manually reset the arm whenever that happens." So far, that means 6-8 times per day. No more HP for me! This is my second bad experience. You would think I would have learned by now.

I bought this printer based on the reputation of HP--not again. I have had it for 5 months and it just stopped working. I went to the web site to get troubleshooting info about the error codes. I have spent an easy 6 hrs working on it and nothing worked. It suggests calling phone support "if you are still having trouble." I called phone support but, because I had bought the printer more than 90 days ago, they wanted [money]per phone call--forget that. I email for support and it sent me a computer generated response redirecting me to the same web page I first started with. I am taking the [money] I would have wasted on the phone call just to get someone to read me the same damn web page and then ask me to phone back later and going to try a new brand of printer. HP no longer means quality!!!

Having previously owned an Epson 780 (wow, what a loud printer) I decided to go back to HP and I was not dissapointed. Photo print quality (at 2400x1200) is wonderful -- bright, accurate colors with excellent shadow detail. HP's print driver software allows you to edit colors and levels but this is best done in Photoshop or other photo editing software. Also, it's very quiet (a consideration when you're the only one up late printing). I have had no paper misfeeds as I did in older HP printers -- even thick photo stock fed well.

Setup was a breeze. Installed the USB software, plugged in the printer, and away I went. All in Windows XP.

The printer does use a good deal of ink and HP ink is not cheap, hence the four stars instead of five.

I decided to get a new printer for picture reproduction and small business projects. The printer shredded 40% of the print jobs I sent. The roller jams the paper in back, forcing you to remove a panel and ripping the sheet from the teeth of this monster. It is like playing toy-tug with my dog. If it does not eat your print jobs, then the sheet is fed in cockeyed and it prints off kilter when a lucky sheet makes it out of this beast. I was very dissapointed after only one week of ownership