Customer Reviews

HP Deskjet 6940 Color Printer (C8970A#B1H)

5 star:		(60)
4 star:		(40)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

I have used this for about 6 months with no problems. I have used it with both windows and mac computers. I use it mostly for print but color photos and graphics come out well. It is easy to set up and use.

I have never had a paper jam.

Contrary to a previous reviewer, there ARE large print cartridges available that last very well.

The printer is fast and prints very nicely at the fast (low ink usage) settings.

I like the paper tray as it holds allot of paper, is easy to use, and is covered.

It is a good, fast and simple unit but I do wish it did two-sided printing.

It looks good and works quietly and reliably.

Edit 2010: This printer lasted 3 years of light use (mostly black only prints) and then the color cartridge stopped working. Cleaning and new cartridges did not solve the problem. The printer would not work at all with a color cartridge in the machine but continued to work as a black only printer if the cartridge was removed. Still, 3 years is about the most I've ever gotten out of a inkjet printer. I prefer toner machines now as they seem to last longer.

I've been in the computer world for many years. I am a die-hard HP fan but the past few Deskjets have not really had the WOW factor to them. Until this one. I just recently purchased it and it was hooked up in no time on my network, all 5 computers can print to it simultaneously and it doesn't have any problem handling the spooling.

I gave this printer a 5 out of 5 because of its quality, ease of use, print quality, appearance itself as it looks great with an all black desktop and overall satisfaction with it.

I recommend this to anyone looking for a good bang for the buck factor as well as an amazing product, once again, from Hewlett-Packard.

When replacing print cartridges there is a folding, wire spring that contacts the cartridge. The spring easily comes out of place. If so, it will damage a printed circuit when the cartridge is installed. The printer is now worthless. I had no luck with support or repair parts. Searching for help, discovered multiple postings of this issue.

The price was great and this printer performs very well for my
needs. The color is excellent and the ink cartridges which came
with the printer are lasting a long time considering the amount
of printing that I have been doing. Putting in the two ink
cartridges is very easy. I wanted a printer that did not have
the five or six cartridge set-up.

A caveat for inserting a print cartridge into the inkjet printer...make sure the printer is turned on before you lift the cover. This allows the little plate in front of the cartridge receptacles to descend...otherwise this plate interferes with the cartridge insertion. I learned the hard way...I tried to insert new cartridges with the printer turned off; hence, the plate did not descend...and I forced it. In the process, I damaged the folding, wire spring that contacts the cartridge to complete the electrical circut...rendering the printer useless in part or whole.

This is an excellent inkjet printer...the mea culpa aspects aside...I've just ordered another HP 6940 Inkjet Printer from Amazon. I recommend this printer to any one...but be careful.

This printer is, in many ways, a true success. It is sturdily made, so far as an outside inspection can determine, quite compact, and has some excellent features, such as the covered paper tray. It's one of the first printers I've had which actually pulls in one sheet of paper at a time if you put more than one sheet in, rather than pulling in a clump and printing the document partially onto three or four sheets. The printer settings on the computer are easy to use, and although only an ethernet attachment is provided, the USB port works perfectly well with a standard USB cable (although it was fortunate that I keep several spare USB cables handy, since it's all to easy to forget to buy the cable in addition to the computer).

That said, there is one glaring flaw in this printer -- one which, in my opinion, cancels out many of its other excellent features. The ink cartridge is tiny -- I measured it against my old Deskjet 920C's cartridge, and it's only 1/6 the size. There's no room inside to fit a bigger generic cartridge. There is so little ink in this acorn-sized cartridge that I ran out of ink printing 50 pages. These weren't full page pictures, either -- it was text with several small color pics in there. Since the new cartridge costs about $50, that works out to $1 per PAGE -- which is a lot of money for a small business owner like myself, and could be enormously expensive for those who do more printing.

In short -- it's a wonderful printer if you're the kind of person who prints maybe 3 or 4 pages a month. If you do any more than that (for business, college, etc.), then you're going to find yourself cursing as a $50 cartridge disappears in an hour of printing. Really, would they have lost so much money if they'd built it to accept a cartridge larger than a grape?

Because of a design flaw, there's a small plastic tab that holds the x-bias spring in place. When the tab breaks (notice I used the word when and not if), the spring will punch a hole in the circuit. As a result, my printer only does black and white.

HP provides pictures of this problem. Look for "Cannot Insert Print Cartridge" and you'll see the image of the spring out of place. What it doesn't show is an image of the damaged circuit.

I bought this printer a few weeks ago, but was putting off installing it. I dread spending tons of time with hardware, and usually there are problems, incompatabilities, and needed updates. The installation was a snap! I connected it using the enclosed ethernet cable. I connected it directly to my wireless router--works great. I then noticed in the written directions that you could only use a wired ethernet connection to establish the needed link to my son's laptop. I was totally bummed since the main reason I bought this printer was to enable us to print directly from the wirelessly routed laptop. WELL, to my great happiness, I was easily able to install the printer wirelessly. It prints really well. I'm very satisfied with all my HP products, and this printer was no exception. If you need to install it directly with a USB, just know that the USB cable is not included in the box.

I've had this printer for a few months now. I intially installed it using the Ethernet port connected to my router. I was constantly plagued with error messages from it, so I switched to a regular USB connection. The problems didn't go away. Every time I go to print, I can expect to spend ten minutes playing with the paper loader hoping that the printer will recognize that there actually IS paper in it. When it actually does print, the quality is outstanding but it is so unreliable that its hard to pleased with it.

I have had a number of HP deskjets over the years...this one lives up to the excellent quality HP is known for. Black text prints super-fast, and colors are vibrant. I printed a black and white photo using HP Premium Plus Photo paper, and a photographer friend upon seeing it, asked when I had gotten a darkroom. Highly recommend this product.