Customer Reviews

HP LaserJet Pro P1606dn Printer (CE749A#BGJ)

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I have owned many different laser printers from HP, Dell, Lexmark, Brother and Samsung. This printer beats them all for three reasons:

1. Quick. When you hit print, the first page is out of the printer in less than 7 seconds. That is fast!

2. Quiet. You will hear the printer while it is printing, but when it is finished or in standby mode, it is quiet. If not silent. It sits right next to me and I don't notice it.

3. Small and good looking. When compared to older laser printers, this one is a model of good design. It sits compactly in the corner out of the way, but ready to serve at the touch of Ctrl P or the printer button.

4. Duplex perfection. First of all, watching this printer spit out a piece of paper and then inhale it to print the other side is really really neat. It is just plain fun to watch. Secondly, both sides come out printed perfectly.

5. Network Functionality. The printer was found without problem by my Windows 7 machine as well as my Mac. It just works.

6. Crisp Text. We purchase lasers because we want crisp text. This laser will make you proud.

This is a good printer and the price point is amazing for what it delivers.

Quick, Quiet, Fast, Good Looking, Duplex Perfection in a network printer with Crisp Text Output. What else do you need? HP engineers and designers hit a homerun on this one.

I previously owned a LaserJet 6L which was a reliable printer in its day. Since then, I've purchased several color printers from other manufacturers. I went back to HP for their reliability.

This printer quickly prints documents, especially with the built-in duplexer. I can send a print job to it and the first page (one sided) is coming out of the printer in two seconds.

The down side is the cost of toner. Normally, I have the print density set at 2 out of 5, which is on the light side. Using Econo mode does save toner, but the text is more difficult to read in low light conditions, so I rarely use that mode.

The sample toner (allegedly 1000 pages) included with the printer printed less than 400 pages before white streaks in the text began appearing. After installing a new cartridge (78A) just 4 days ago and printing 760 pages, the printer is reporting that 30% (or 300 pages) is left. At over $83 per cartridge, including tax, that comes out to 8 cents per page. I just purchased 2 toners at $49 to help save money.

But to call this a "green" printer, when one has to replace the toner cartridge after only 1060 pages, is silly.

Disclaimer: I just bought this printer. I have only printed about 300 pages with it. I bought this printer to replace an aging HP Laserjet Model 4P.

Initial thoughts: WOW! This thing is super-fast. The double-sided printing is AMAZING. The text is crisp and clean. It's easy on toner, and has an economy mode (although I haven't tested it yet).

I can't say enough about how fast and smooth this printer is. I cued up a 300 page service manual I had in PDF form. The whole thing was printed and ready for reading in under 5 minutes.

One of the neatest features is that it goes completely silent and in low-power mode when not in use: you don't have to turn it on, it senses when you want to print, turns itself on, prints, and then shuts itself off.

It's a bit on the noisy side - but I really don't care about that.

Overall, money well spent.

I've owned two HP LaserJet printers over the last 22 years. A LaserJet IIP and a LaserJet 5L. Bought the IIP in 1989, and it was great. When the 5L came out in 1995, I chose to upgrade. That 5L lasted until 2 days ago -- a bit more than 15 years! I figure 15+ years out of any piece of computing equipment means I got way more than my money's worth, thus I chose to purchase another HP LaserJet.

The good stuff:
This new LaserJet P1606dn Pro printer is so amazingly FAST! I've been used to 4 pages-per-minute (PPM) for so long, that this printer's 26-PPM speed just blows me away! And the fact that it's got a built-in duplexer (prints on both sides automatically, if you tell it to) is just icing on the cake -- no more printing every other page, then flipping the stack of paper and re-feeding it through to get the back sides of the pages. Fantastic! (I printed a 12-page document with duplex-printing enabled, and it did the job in about 35 seconds from start to finish. Very impressive! Turn duplex off, and it will print a bit faster -- but you're not saving money on paper that way.)

Setup of the P1606dn Pro was incredibly easy. I simply plugged it into my computer's USB port, turned on the printer, and got a pop-up-window from the printer's built-in software saying that it wanted to install the driver. Boom. Done. Easy. (I'm running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, but I'd imagine your experience would be the same with any version of Windows 7 or Vista or XP.)

The paper try holds about 3 times what the paper tray on my old LaserJet 5L held -- re-loading a lot less often is a nice thing as well. And the "auxiliary" feed (where you feed envelopes, for example) can hold about 10 of 'em, instead of the one-at-a-time thing that I had on the 5L -- another very nice feature.

I did not try to enable the printer's built-in network features. I plugged it into a computer and then shared the printer with my network that way. So I cannot comment at all on the ease (or lack thereof) of the Ethernet setup on this printer.

Now the bad stuff:
They didn't include ANY cables to attach this to the computer! Are you kidding me?! Just the power cable. So you absolutely MUST buy yourself a USB cable or an Ethernet cable if you don't want it to be a $200 paperweight. It *does* say on the outside of the box that there isn't a USB cable included, but it's not immediately clear on Amazon's web-site. So here's your warning: BUY A USB CABLE OR AN ETHERNET CABLE WITH THIS PRINTER BECAUSE IT DOESN'T INCLUDE EITHER IN THE BOX!

The toner-cartridge that is included with the printer is only about half-full. (Maybe a little less). It's designed to print about 1,000 pages, whereas a new toner-cartridge is designed to print around 2,100 pages. Please... I'd be willing to pay a few $$ extra to have a full toner-cartridge included with the printer... That's just ridiculous... So, you'll probably want to buy a new toner cartridge when you buy this printer. And, yes, new toner cartridges are expensive -- but HP toner cartridges have *always* been expensive for every HP LaserJet I've owned. It's the price you pay for the high-quality printing you get out of these printers. And it still beats the cost-per-page of an InkJet.

Summary:
I would've given this printer a 5-star rating, if they'd included a USB cable and a full toner-cartridge. Instead I bumped it down to 4 stars. The printer itself gets 5-stars -- fantastic speed, reliability, quality of the printed document, etc -- everything I've come to expect from an HP LaserJet over the many years that I've owned them. But not including a USB cable or a full toner-cartridge -- that means you don't get a perfect score. Sorry, HP. Love the printer itself, dislike the fact that you cut a couple of corners with the accessories that *should* have come with the printer.

A fast printer with crisp text and surprisingly nice black and white photo reproduction on regular paper for casual or temporary use. Be careful with hookup: I had many problems until I switched from one usb port on my PC to another (perhaps trouble with my PC, but I was told this printer requires high level communication between PC and printer so good connection is important). Ability to automatically print on both sides of sheet works very well for me and is a major attraction. No trouble with paper feeding. Envelope printing works OK for me but takes a little practice to correctly feed envelope in proper tray; once mastered it is fine for my purposes--if not "professional" quality some may demand--but certainly not bad at all and quite acceptable. Contrary to the experience of a one-star reviewer here, my printer came with a starter ink cartridge--not a full-size cartride but it has gotten me through several hundreds of documents of printing and is still going. (No usb cale, though) Ability to sleep when idle and then wake up immediately is welcome. Read the manual for many specific features to know about and learn how to use. Don't give up on learning fine points of on-screen preference menus that printer driver allows. It's worthwhile to experiment with finding choices and trying different ones. I can't comment on longevity or long-term operation and cost. Tech support was readily available; though they didnt solve my hookup problem they sort of pointed me in the right direction that allowed me to solve the USB issue on my own. Thank heaven I didn't immediately return unit. Once USB issue was resolved I became very happy with unit and wouln't want to have given it up.

After a few hours of playing tittly-winks with HP Technical Support, having them go on and on about how I can't use this in a "business environment" and how "it doesn't support printing via ethernet" (I really wish I was joking about that one, but the technician actually said that), I was just about to throw my hands up in the air - Until I happened to try the PCL version of the HP Universal Print Driver - And then it started working like a champ!

I generally make a habbit of only using HP Universal Drivers and installing both PCL and PS versions on my Windows 2003 print server so I:

A) Don't have to worry about maintaining individual drivers for all of the HP C/LJ's around my office.

and

B) If someone needs to use PCL or Post Script, each of them are there as seperate printer instances so my users can connect to them any time they need either version.

My issue was when testing to make sure I could print to this device - before maping a user to this printer - I was only testing with the Post Script instance of the printer. I suppose I should also mention that when I told HP I had a print server handling jobs (good practice when you have an office full of printers and prefer keeping your hair on your head rather than between your fingers as you pull them out), and that I had established a DHCP reservation so the printer would obtain IP information dynamically, but always be given the same address - let's just say that drove HP technical support up a wall; almost to the point where they just about put the kibosh on the entire support call. I suppose the kind of training that goes into those that support these is different than those that support, say, LJ 8150s.

The end result was after being told:

A) I had a bad toner cartridge (at which point jumped through the proverbial hoop and went out to buy a spare)

B) There were "multiple" bad ports on my Extreme Networks Summit X450-48p switch (yeah right, pretty sure I would have noticed that)

C) That ethernet printing was either "not supported entirely" or that at most it was "only supported being connected to a home Linksys router"

D) Not having enough paper loaded into the device (even when it was full)

We finally came to find that when a print job is sent via the Post Script driver this printer TANKS.

And when I say "tanks", I mean:

A) Web interface stops working
B) Ping requests time out
C) The NIC completly shuts down (link light drops offline)
D) The printer appears to restart / re-initialize (yellow lights flicker on the top)
E) You have to wait 15-20 seconds for it to come back up

Worse yet, after being sent a job via PS (and it subsequently goes into it's fit of rage), it usually requires a restart to remain stable. I found this out because while testing I had a continuous ping going throughout all of this, and it would randomly time out long after the restart / reinitializing sequence was complete - even when no job was being sent. The only way to get it to remain stable again was to completely shut it off and reboot. WOW - What a joke!

Moral of the story, I'm rating this a 4 because if you don't even think Post Script, it's actually a good light-duty (all I'm planning on using it for) printer that absolutly WILL work in a network environment (in a business or otherwise). Just make sure you don't try to use a Post Script driver, unless you enjoy making your brain hurt watching your printer act a fool for no apparent reason.

PS: I generally NEVER write reviews about things (even though, full disclosure, I read them all the time). That said, the wasted afternoon I spent troubleshooting this was SUCH A PAIN IN THE REAR that I couldn't resist the temptation to share my experiance with those of you wanting to pick this puppy up. Hope it's helpful for you!

When I decided to go back to school for my Master's degree (all online) I knew it was time to drop some cash on a new printer. I had to find one that is compatible with my Mac, printed on 2 sides, and printed quickly. This one does that and more. I love this printer. I can power it up and in less than 30 seconds its spitting out printed pages. I've had this printer for over 6 months now and can honestly say I've had no issues - no paper jams, low quality printing, etc. The toner claims are true - I probably got 1500+ pages out of mine before I had to replace it. The design is simple enough that even I can change them out with no problems. The entire printer is easy to setup and use. If you are looking for an affordable printer, this is your best bet!

The specifications of this printer for the price represents an outstanding value. The only true complaint that I have reviewed is that the number of copies each toner cartridge produces is low. At less than a 1000 pages per cartridge it is an expensive printer to operate. I am the owner of two older HP Laserjet 2300dn printers which can be found on a major online auction site refurbished for approximately the cost of this printer. My experience has been that the majority of these pinters were low volume lease returns. The primary advantage of a HP Laserjet 2300dn over a HP Laserjet Pro 1606dn is that each toner cartridge produces approximately 6000 pages versus less than a 1000. The cost of the HP 2300dn cartridges vary from approximately $30 for remanufactured cartridges to $125 for HP OEM cartridges generating a cost per page from a half a cent to two cents per page. The HP 2300s were designed for a duty cycle of 25,000 pages per month. I purchased both of my HP2300dn printers with less than 2000 pages printed on them and thus were virtually new machines. I am just offering another view of how to accomplish high volume printing at a lower cost at this printer's price point. To survive today in business, we need to keep costs as low as possible.

I'm a Graphic Design student and my school recently started charging for our black and white prints, so I quickly sought out an affordable laser printer for home. The reviews claim that this printer prints out crisp clean text, but after trying all different configurations...I have yet to see this. Laser printers are suppose to be the best for printing text, but this printer definitely fails in this department. As long as you aren't being graded/paid for type quality then this printer is great. The automatic duplexing option is amazing, although the crop marks do not align perfectly, it's still the best I've seen with a home printer. If you need speed and don't really care about the text quality then this is the printer for you.

Also I would like to mention that I attempted a live chat with HP, and after waiting 10 minutes to finally get to "speak" with someone, I am then asked which operating system I use, when I say I'm using a Mac this is the response I was given:
"I would love to help you out however I would like to inform you that unfortunately, we do not have expertise in the Macintosh operating system and HP does not offer Chat support for the Macintosh operating system. However, we do offer e-mail and phone support. We are not trained in mac os x im sure you understand my limitation."

I understand that they make their own computers, but with the design industry needing quality printers for their work I feel that they should also be able to assist us conveniently through the internet, rather than wait a long time on the phone to get someone that you can't understand, or wait a long time for an email response.

As someone who has purchased many HP inkjets before I am rather disappointed in the customer service and the lack of quality.

I bought this printer from HP telling them I had a windows 7 (HP) computer. It would not print duplex without printing the reverse page upside down. I called help desk 3 times and got no help whatsoever, spending hours on the phone, trying everything they suggested. I was called by a "case manager," a snippy woman who said she was too busy to give me the help I needed. I called help desk again for a fourth time, this time after another 1 hour 50 min was told that there was a glitch in the program so that it does not work duplex with windows 7, and I should look in another month or two to see if HP has written a new program for this machine. No they would not notify me when this program is done, neither the help desk nor the snippy case manager. I should just keep looking at their site. It works on my old XP Pro machine. HP is HORRIBLE about notifying their support staff when they have a programming problem; this is the second time something like this has happened to me with an HP product.