Customer Reviews

HP Laser Jet 3052 All in One Printer/Copy/Scanner (White)

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

 

 

This is definitely the best laser AIO machine that I've ever used. It is quick, robust, feature-rich, and networkable. Let me break it up to the different areas and give you my impression of each:

Printer - From the printer's sleep mode to the time first page is printed is only around 4 seconds, which is just simply amazing. One small thing to complain about the printing aspect is the print driver. I have a couple other computers on my network that I want to set up to be able to print to this printer, but won't need the scanning feature. Well, the software that came with the printer is 250mb! The "minimum" installation is still 150mb. I figured there had to be a "driver only" option. After talking to HP, they showed me a 10mb executable that installs a wizard onto your computer to help you set up the network printer. After it is done setting it up, I can safely uninstall the wizard. They really should have included this wizard along with the installation disk, so minus 1/2 a star for that.

Copier - This copier has all the features of an office copier, like auto document feed, priority paper feed tray, enlargement/reduction, dark/light, and of course number of pages. The ADF feature is awesome and fast, as it can quickly scan all your pages into memory before printing. One down side (same "problem" as the scanner feature) is that it takes a few seconds for the bulb to warm up (about 20 seconds). Once the bulb is warmed up, it can continue without any delay. I wish this part is faster, but it's understandable, so no star deduction here.

Scanner - Works great. You can set it up so that by pressing the "Scan to" button on the scanner, it will automatically scan and optionally bring up the scanner program on your computer, which will allow you to do many things, such as cropping, adjusting color/saturation, resolution, and many others. The bad part about this is that it takes a bit of playing around before I can find the option of bringing up this program. By default, the scanner will only scan and allow you to save the results to a file or send in an email. However, I discovered you can add a new target, and that can give you the option to bring up the scanner program.

Of course this printer has no fax. However, aside from that, it is the identical printer as the one with fax (3055). That printer is highly praised as well.

One more thing I like about this printer... actually, this is so for all HP and Canon printers. The printer cartridge contains both the toner as well as the drum. When you replace the one cartridge, you are replacing both units. If you buy non-OEM cartridges, the price is only around thirty-something. With other brands, you will need to change the toner when it runs out and then change the drum separately roughly around ever three toner changes. The price of this can certainly add up, as it is an additional component. Traditionally, drums are fairly expensive, so be sure to calculate that cost when trying to decide between brands. As for me, I think I have found a winner. Very happy.

I bought this printer after my HP 2100TN started needing us to press the button on the printer every time we queued a print job. At first the 3052 seemed the answer to our needs. It was very easy to set up for our home office and kids machines. It printed and copied fast and sharp. That lasted for about 100 pages and then it started producing a huge white area down the middle of the page. Removing and shaking the cartridge would fix this for a a few pages and then that stopped working. Faced with a long and frustrating time on the phone with support I decided to just get a new cartridge. This did the trick for about 200 pages and then it started missing the whole center section of the page again. Shaking the cartridge fixes it temporarily. Of course, it always does it when we are in a panic with a customer proposal or homework due that day. I am using genuine HP cartridges which are $55 each. My advice is to look at the competition. Great idea but it doesn't print!

I just shipped my HP 3052 back off to where it came from. I either have to really like something or really hate something to write a review on it, and I really hate this printer. I purchased the HP 3052 after reading some reviews on the HP 3055, and deciding that I didn't need the fax capabilities of the 3055 which didn't seem to work well for most people anyhow. Apparently, it's not just the fax feature that is faulty, but the scanning and copying leaves a lot to be desired as well. I purchased this to replace my aging, but still working, 10 year old NEC SuperScript 860 laser printer. I needed something to make decent copies, and to scan in documents. Well forget it with this! You WILL REGRET buying this electronic "Made in China" garbage if you are planning on using this for anything other than a printer. This has changed my opinion on HP, as it will yours if you buy it.

When I first power on the unit, I tried copying the Vonage advertisement that came with it by running it through the auto document feeder. The first thing I notices was that the ADF was loud. This was fine since noise isn't too much of a concern, just as long is it functions well, and there isn't anyone else around to be disturbed by it. After examining the copy, I realized the Vonage letters were stretched out about 1/8" about 3/4 down from the top of the letters. To make things worse, there was a 1 1/2" oval shape on the Vonage ad, which this printer distorted one entire side of, almost as if someone had tried to trace it with a pen. I tried several copies through the ADF with the same results over and over. I thought that maybe the stretched letters were due to a problem with the auto document feeder, so I tried copying the Vonage brochure on the flat bed. I did not see a problem with the Vonage letters being stretched when copying on the flat bed, but there was still distortion on the oval shape again. Next, I tried copying other documents with similar bad results. Copying bar codes revealed that when printing lines close together, the black bleeds between them! Edges on copied fonts were a rough as well.

Next I tried connecting the 3052 to my PC with USB 2.0. I ended up with an installation failed message on my first attempt at installing the software. Looking in device manager, I found a problem with installing the driver for "Generic IEEE 1284.4 printing support." I tried uninstalling and installing the drivers several times to no avail. I then tried a 400MB full download of the latest full driver release from HP, and had the same problem. Next, I tried a smaller 40MB driver release on HP's site. This time I kept getting prompted to locate files that the installation could not find. After performing a search on my hard drive, I located them in c:\temp, where the installer must have extracted them to. I had to keep navigating the installer to this directory numerous times during this install. Much to my amazement, this install attempt actually ended up working.

Now I wanted to test the scanning functionality. The included scanning software is very basic. It does allow you to setup custom profiles for scanning resolution, destination, and paper type. I first tested scanning with the included Vonage advertisement again. The results were to say the list, shocking and very disappointing. First, the color scans were washed out. Second, the black on white text had extreme orange and blue halos around the edges, almost like looking at a 3d movie, without the 3d glasses. Third, there were some visual artifices, scanning inaccuracies, and scanned objects appeared wavy. Fourth, I got the same results as above when using the ADF for copying as I did scanning. I wish I could include a sample image so you could see the atrociousness for yourselves. Lastly, scans are slow, and I found that when scanning in 8 1/2 x 11 documents, they would often be scanned in skewed, no matter what paper the originals were on or how I adjusted the auto document feeder guides. Furthermore, when I scanned documents with print on both sides, the print on the opposite side would bleed through. From my experience with photo technology, my hunch would be that the cheap imager in this needs an enormous amount of light to scan, so that images on the opposite side of the page bleed through.

I really don't want to say anything good about this printer, but I will say that printing looked very good, and it gets 1 star for this. Printing was crisp and clear, even with small fonts. B/W photo printing was on the other hand was mediocre, but who uses a B/W laser printer for photos anyhow?

My advice would be to look elsewhere for your scanning and copying needs. This might do for a cheap printer/scanner/copier for your kids, but not for a professional environment. I might purchase the Dell 1815dn as it has received good reviews, purchase a separate printer and scanner, or hold out until something better comes along. I hope this review has been helpful, and can save you from the hassle and expense of a return!

This HP all in one printer/copy/scanner is just great. I've had mine for about a month now and I haven't had a single problem thusfar.

As far as printing, the printer is much like previous models of HP laser printers. The prints come out flawless and are crisp and dark. Speed was very important in buying a laser printer and this one lives up to my expectations.

The copy/scanning property of this AIO printer is easy to use and very powerful. While I can't copy color photos (b&w laser printer), the scanning of any image, color or not, comes out pretty well on the computer. It is easy to tell the AIO printer to scan an image from the computer and the picture is conveniently saved as a jpeg at a location of my choosing. No fuss or hassles.

I'm currently a college student and copying class notes or study guides has never been easier. I just put the stack of papers into the copying tray, tell the printer to copy them, and it's done...quickly. Long gone are the days when I had to run to the library or copy store and find change to get copies. This thing does it all.

The ONLY reason why I gave it 4 stars is because of the printer's size. It is big. I imagine it is quite difficult to pack a printer/copier/scanner all into one printer and maintain a small size, but I think HP may have been able to do it. This printer does take up a large amount of desk space compared to other printers I've seen. However, it still beats having a separate printer and scanner, so I won't complain too much.

I needed a printer that can do fax and make copy in the office, so I picked this one in a rush thinking All-in-One should have all functions. It turned out that I was wrong. This model does not have fax capability. I eventually bought 3055 again for the office and put htis one at home. It is a pretty good printer and copier. The only problem I have is that if you want to manually print double-sides, the roller seems to get dirty easily and the outputs are not so great.

I was very disappointed in this printer because I have had HP printers in the past that have performed wonderfully. I have had this one for about three months and have had nothing but trouble printing with it. Setup went well and it scans to my computer without a problem. Printing is another issue entirely. It does not matter if I have two sheets of paper loaded or twenty-two, it consistently jams and I end up wasting four or five sheets of paper simply getting it to print one good copy. Also it does not matter how carefully I load the paper, three out of four times it feeds through the printer slightly crooked. And forget about printing with anything thicker than your run-of-the-mill paper. Thicker papers, like the type used for printing resumes, and envelopes do not feed into the printer at all. If I do manage to get it to print straight on the paper without jamming, the page still does not come out unscathed. I have to try again and again to get a perfect copy that doesn't have two smudges near the top of the page caused by the rollers that feed the paper through the printer. I'm looking into returning this piece of junk as it has never worked as advertised.

After much review we chose the Brother over the HP and Lexmark. Having seen several HPs. I could not believe how quite and fast the Brother is. It beats the HP hands down. And we considered the HP to be the standard to measure printers by. The one thing that I have had an issue with is that in our office we use Lotus Notes for our email. The "Scan to email" function is not supported for Lotus Notes. When I phoned tech support, they acted as if Notes did not exist. In checking, Notes owns better than 50% of the corporate email market. We got it to work, but no thanks to Brother tech support. Hopefully we do not need them for anything else.

I have had this AIO for over 3 years unlike lot of people here who wrote review after first week of use. I have yet to have a paper jam or a bad print. ADF, Scanner and copier all work as expected. Printing is always best for any HP LaserJet so no comment on that.

Only one negative: Scanner software is huge and very slow to install. If you are not successful on first install then you very well be never successful! There is FixScanUtility3_1.exe to fix a failed install.

On positive note: Everything just works out of the box on Ubuntu 8.10+! No softwares to install!!

I got what i have expected and it was in good condition. Impressed with the service. hopefully buy again.

I have been pleased with the performance so far and the price was reasonable. Print/copy/scan quality is excellent.