Customer Reviews

HP Color LaserJet 2605dn Printer (Q7822A#ABA)

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

I have only ever owned color ink jet printers such as Epson and Brother, but I must say, for Laser printing, HP takes the cake. I do own the HP LaserJet 4 Plus (Monochrome B/W) and it has worked great for me for 6 years plus. This new machine is definitely a major improvement.

First off, it is very easy to set up and you can choose whether to have it run off of a USB port, or you can network it through your system. I personally have it connected to my Wireless D-Link router and I have 2 Windows PCs, 1 Toshiba wireless Laptop, and 2 Wireless Macs networked and ALL of them are able to pick up the HP with the provided HP software disk and all are able to print from it.

It also prints so fast and is remarkably quiet. It is a monster of a machine in size (be prepared to have a nice big space for it, both in heighth, width and length - it is (WxLxH) 18.00" x 16.00" x 15.00" but remember, you need room to feed the front of it, and you need room for the wires in back). It takes 4 different cartridges (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & Black - CMYK) so this can be costly. The cartridges run about $80 each, so it costs $320 to replace all of them, HOWEVER, they last for a whopping 2500 pages each color. It would take 5 ink cartridges of each color to last that long. And when the toner is low, you get a warning. You can even view the printer on a network from any connected computer and see EXACTLY how many pages are left for each cartridge (based on averages).

The Bad: I'll try not and leave a bad comment about this as the final thing to say, however, it is quite lousy as a paper feeder. I may be doing something wrong, but I've found that you can only print one piece of paper at a time. Sometimes I print out a lot of stuff on one-side of the paper, then, when I'm done looking at it, I turn the paper over, place those in the manual feeder, then use the paper again to do more printing on the other blank side. You can't really do that with this. And as far as printing Business Cards, or Cardstock, it is not the best. You can't simply lay the paper on the tray and then have the printer print from it. You have to insert the paper in a special way, wait for the printer to "suck" the paper in, then once it has it, it is able to print. It did print generic Avery labels okay though.

All in all, it is great. Oh, and there's one astounding point that I forgot to make: it prints on both sides WITHOUT having to change paper around or anything, called duplexing (sorry, I didn't know these terms before). For example, I had a 14-page document to print out, so I just went to the 'Finishing' tab and selected 'Print on Both Sides' and wahlah, it printed 7 pieces of paper, two-sided absolutely flawlessly, without having to touch or insert anything. I eventually printed 200 double-sided brochures on shiny color magazine type paper, and the printing was perfect.

If you don't need to have this printer on a network, and you don't need duplex (double-sided) printing, get the much cheaper HP 1600 Color Laser. Otherwise, for a color laser printer under $500 to be able to be networked and duplex among other things, it is really a great deal all around, thus, it gets 4 stars. I did have to deduct one star for the bad paper feeder, but aside from that, it's superb. Get yours now - the cartridges are already in it and full-sized (not sample cartridges), so it is ready to go. You may need a Network cable, but it does come with a USB 2.0 cable just in case you don't have one. Enjoy and thank you for reading.

I had been looking around for a color laser printer to replace my trusty old Laserjet IV. I've gotten really used to duplexing at work, and really wanted to have that option on any new printer I purchased.

There's plenty of inexpensive color laser printers out there with an option for a duplexer, but often the optional duplex unit is anywhere from 75-100% of the price of the printer itself!

The 2605dn is a nice upgrade from the 2600n, take a look at the feature comparison:

64 MB of memory standard (vs. 16 MB of memory on the 2600n)

PCL6 and PostScript Emulation (vs. Host based processing on the 2600n which can limit compatibility with other operating systems)

12 pages per minute black and white (vs 8 pages per minute on the 2600n)

10 pages per minute color (vs 8 pages per minute color on the 2600n)

Built in duplex unit (vs manual duplex option on the 2600n)

The duplexer works very well, the print quality is excellent and the printer is quiet. Unlike my old Laserjet 4, I don't hear it at all when it's asleep, and while printing, it doesn't bother me at all, even though it's located right next to my desk.

I previously had a MagicColor 2400W and used it for about a year - it had great color and resolution, but the color cartridges came will little toner and my attempt to use a third party refill (to keep the cost down) basically destroyed it by dispersing ink everywhere in the unit.
As a replacement, I looked again and saw good reviews for the HP 2600 series, including the 4000 copy initial toner load and improved toner empty management software. I've been particularly impressed with the 2605's duplex printing that uses a neat trick that kept the cost down. Other good impressions are: it's significantly quieter than the MagicColor with its one-pass 4 color printing (no faster, but quiet); it only recalibrates when necessary, and very quietly at that; absolutely no jams with a variety of media; very good color resolution, but I wouldn't use it for a photo printer; standby mode is very low power so I leave it on all the time, giving a relatively fast printout whenever I'm ready; and ultimately the reliability over the past 2 months and more than 1000 pages has sold me on HP getting its act together and becoming the leader in laser printers again.

I am always so impressed with HP. Their products are always good performers. When I bought this printer I knew that I was entering a new sphere of potential problems as this is my first color printer. I avoided them because they relied on inkjet-type technology and I knew that the printer was only a carrier of those costly ink replacement packages. Also, old printer that were inexpensive technologies could not duplex. When I saw this model my heart rose because they are toner cartridge based (four colors; black, blue, red, yellow). I knew that four toner cartridges cost more, and 'Boy Howdy' it costs about $300 to replace them all after a professed 3,500 copies. It also duplexes and does speciality papers, including, they say, card stock (heavier paper, such as postcards).

Now for my review. The color is excellent! Duplexing works well and I find that the product produced is exactly what I need. Now for my negatives. I am used to printers that always available. You need to printer something, your printer is on, you send it, it prints. When not used it moved to a 'snooze mode', waiting for that next request. My last work horse is a HP 1100 black/white laser printer. This new, color model has a problem in that it goes through cycles of re-"calibration", is not available, or when you send a print job later, it can't handle it. This is really annoying! Another negative is that I frequently submit jobs that print part of the paper and then tells me that this job could not be printed. I then get messages that I must restart the printer. When I do, it begins to print the entire job from the beginning. Talk about a toner-eating monster! About 20% of the paper printed is a waste.

I think that this is a new model and the software that manages the system is still not fully debugged. I use my printer in a single computer, home office. It is connected by an USB (Not a CAT5 cabled network). I find that I must turn off the printer until I need it, and then if I don't have another job to print, turn it off.

I don't know how a network of computer can access this without having problems.

Don't get me wrong. This produces excellent results but may need software upgrades by HP to make it less annoying.

UPDATE: Problems solved..
Here is an update from my review. Working with the help desk at HP, they discovered that I had an old version of the firmware. Once they helped me give the device a 'new brain', all the problems that I had disappeared. The help received from HP was excellent and Debbie spent over an hour with me to trouble shoot the problems with printing. Since this solution, there has been no problems printing. As per the choice of selecting only output from the black toner cartridge in order to save the others, the jury is still out. It appears that even with all black text that some of the other three cartridge's toner is used.

If possible, I would change my rating for this printer from three stars to 5 stars. This printer serves all my needs with excellent color representation.

For normal use (e.g. printing to normal laser printer paper) this printer works well. However, when printing labels - such as address labels, CD labels - or cardstock, it's terrible. The fuser doesn't fuse properly and the toner flakes off. I've even had the printing on address labels rub off during shipping - causing packages to be returned. My old giant laser printer never had these problems. I am really disappointed because I bought this to produce nice labels, and it's completely unacceptable for that.

I have had this printer for several months now and have printed a wide variety of material from plain paper, to cardstock, envelopes and labels. All work perfectly without misfeeds. The only trick is to set the paper type in Properties when printing so it will go slower for thick stock.

It's not photo quality, but great for brochures, marketing material, etc.

It's quiet and fast. The duplexing works amazingly well.

I recommend this printer highly.

This printer has about the same footprint as your average ink jet, but is about twice the height. Print quality is very good, and has the sharp edges that you would expect from a laser printer.

Be prepared to spend some time reading how to set the printer up in your environment. The printer has powerful features such as duplex printing, networking, and Postscript, but it takes some research on how to best use these features. Also be prepared to download drivers on any PC that will print to this printer.

I've run into some memory limitations while printing complex documents with full color photos. The standard 64 MB of memory is probably not enough for my printing needs, so I plan on upgrading to 192 MB. The memory from HP is overpriced and is available from other companies for a much lower price.

I bought the 2605dn because it is the first networked duplex color laser (to my knowledge) that isn't ridiculously expensive.

Everything is stable and robust; no problems running off USB or ethernet. No misfeeds, color and text both look nice. I mainly print documents with color figures/charts, so I can't speak to printing pictures.

Not blazingly fast (~10ppm) and the printer pauses to calibrate itself once in a while, but it's a great deal overall.

Printed 3903 color pages with the original cartridges ($0.08-0.09 per page).

I've had this printer for 11 months. Well two of them actually. HP sent me a replacement 4 months ago because I completely lost red after about 4 months. Now the replacement has lost its red too. I talked to HP today and we are still trying to work out what they will do. The HP rep told me that apparently this printer doesn't work well in a dusty environment. Well I live in the high desert of New Mexico. Dust is a way of life. The printer is great when it works, but a pain in the butt since it keeps breaking.

By the way, to get labels or cardstock or other funny stuff to print right you have to set the properties to that before you print. If it thinks it is printing on plain paper, labels will not come out right.

Hp usually has good products (think about all the 3si and 4's still printing) but this printer isn't one of them.

I've been very happy with the HP printers I've owned during the past 15 years, both LaserJet and DeskJet models. Until now.

Printer #1 showed gray streaks and magenta spots on the page in addition to blurry non-black text. HP sent me a set of new toner cartridges; this fixed the streaking and spotting but didn't help the cartridge alignment problem (what HP calls CPR or Color Plane Registration).

Printers #2 and #3 were badly misaligned. Look at the right-angle lines on the configuration page. Non-primary toner colors are created by laying down dot patterns in varying densities to create say green (yellow plus cyan toner). If they are not aligned correctly, the green line is bordered on one side by yellow and the other by cyan, resulting in blurry text and images. Look at these lines with a magnifying glass or do a 600dpi scan (the printer's printing resolution) of these lines to see what I mean. I sent numerous scan samples to HP tech support and there was never a question that the printer was defective.

Printer #4, at long last, was aligned properly. Unfortunately the page had gray streaks, broken text, and dark images had white spots (where there was no toner). <Sigh.>

HP offered to send me a 5th printer. But I've given up. Four-in-a-row DOA printers over the course of two months, to me means this is a poorly designed, fragile product. HP is sending me a refund check.

And if you read through the HP support forums you'll discover that I'm far from alone. I think the entire 26xx color LaserJet family has some fundamental design problems.

It is truly sad.