Customer Reviews

HP K5400DTN Officejet Pro Color Printer

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

 

 

I purchased a K5400dtn to be able to print two-sided over my network. I was never able to get the printer to reliably print two-sided. Most attempts jammed after printing the first side of a sheet. I spent over 2 hours on the HP support chat with no help. I returned the printer.
This is the second networked HP printer (different models) that I have attempted to get working in the last 3 months. In the past I have always used HP printers; not ever again.

I use this printer mainly for printing envelopes, but also have used the duplexing letters for large mailings. It can handle about 30 envelopes at a time, and prints the 30 in about 1minute in draft mode which typically looks just fine. I have only had my printer for about 1 month and have done about 3000 envelopes. The XL ink cartridges seem to last forever. The duplexer is great and the extra paper tray is a plus. I have another K5400 without the duplexer extra tray, and both of these printers are work horses.

The product assembles well. Then problems then start. Despite carefully doing everything according to instructions, the printer would barely put ink on paper. Within 23 printed pages, the yellow ink cartridge light indicated it was out of ink, despite being brand new. Soon no ink, even pure black and white MS Word documents would not print despite what sounded like the print heads working fine.


I called HP and spend 45 minutes on the phone with a tech. He was a Windows tech and could not help with a Mac running OS 10.4.10, but graciously tried. I wish he didn't. All he could do is read from HP's web site (badly) and do the obvious print head cleaning, re-seating of the cartridges, and the like. To no avail. He did offer to send me a free yellow cartridge...but he didn't seem to understand that even B&W would not print

I bought HP precisely since I wanted to avoid quality problems. Ooops

I advise you to wait until they refine this printer model and get the kinks out

This printer has all the features anyone might want and low cost ink supplies as well. It is well to note that if you want to print on paper that is heavier than 20 lb. Bond you better stick to tray 1. The specs tell you this and in practice the machine complains mightily when you try to print 70 lb. Bond from tray 2. It works but it is not a pretty sound.

If HP had not cut the price a week after I bought from Amazon, I would be totally elated, but it was still a great buy.

The printer works as advertised. It is fast and the duplex feature is very handy when printing large documents. I chose this model because of the separate ink cartridges. My only complaint about the product received is the short warranty period of the print heads. One had a warranty period of just under 2 months and the other just under 4.

It is far better than the HP932C that it replaced. Faster, better print quality, networkable, two-sided printing works very good. I use an IMac, it was very easy to setup. For the money I am well pleased.
Only con is it's size.

PRINTER WORKS GREAT WHEN PRINTING ON ONE SIDED. WHEN TRYING TO DO DUPLEXING (two sided coping)THE PAPER JAMS UP

ALL THE TIME. I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW IF SOMETHING CAN BE DONE TO CORRECT THE PROBLEM. I SENT THE SELLER AN EMAIL

TO LET HIM KNOW WHATS GOING ON AND HE NEVER GOT BACK TO ME.

The HP k5400dtn is a great printer, has two speeds, fast and faster. We use these printer with our Continuous Ink Systems. They were designed as a continuous ink system from the factory, ink tubes run from the cartridges to the separate printheads.

Pros
Extra page tray (600 sheets)
Duplex printing (both sides, great for brochures, we recommend HP tri-fold matte)
Network ready (Ethernet)
CIS ready (install a continuous ink system in less than five min.)
XP and Mac OS 10.5 ready

These are great system. Buy this on Amazon and then add a Continuous Ink System for the HP#88 cartridge and save 95% on ink, WOW

Check out the Website
[...].

The Cons
It's a big printer

You cannot go wrong with this system, we print out 1000s of pages per month at pennys a page.

II got this printer because I wanted a color printer that would connect to my home wireless network so that my wife and daughter could print from their laptops.

The good news:

The printer connected to the network without any problems.
The printer is very, very fast.
The text print quality is superb.
The graphics are a step down from some printers but then again this is not advertised as a photo printer and graphics are more than satisfactory.

The bad news.

After a while the printer starts to take a lot of time and make a lot of noise when it is turned on. It appears that the print heads are cleaning. The print heads are also using a lot of ink while cleaning. Further, the print heads start to degrade over time and lines of text start to fade out. Worse, replacing the print heads is very expensive. The problem is that unlike some printers, the print heads are separate from the ink cartridges and therefore you do not get a fresh print head when you replaces an ink cartridge. This does mean that cost of the ink cartridges is less, but when you factor in ink wasted while the print heads are cleaning and the cost of replacement print heads, this printer becomes very expensive to use. If not for the problems with the print heads I would give it a 5 star rating.

I am not willing to spend a lot of money maintaining this printer and it is going to be replaced. I think I am going to give up on color and get a good laser printer that is network ready. If I need color I will take a memory stick to a print store and print in color that way.

I really like this printer but it is just not reliable enough.

and have not been disappointed over the past year of ownership. Here is the quote from the review that sold me:

"[M]y research points to the HP Officejet K5400 as having the most cost-efficient ink supply right now. The estimated cost per page of black ink for the K5400 is 1.4 cents, and color is 5.9 cents per page ... It prints extremely fast, faster than any desktop printer I've seen. It runs reliably, and prints with near laser-quality for office stuff."

Full review here: http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/002701.php