Customer Reviews

HP LaserJet P2055dn Printer Monochrome

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Update: 1. If your printer hangs on some jobs, it's because you have a buggy version of firmware. The latest firmware version for this printer was released in October 2010. If you have earlier firmware, you should download the new firmware from the HP website. To see your firmware datecode, print out a Config Report by pressing the down arrow once, then OK, then the down arrow several times until you reach Config Report, then OK.
2. On three occasions, I have purchased the cheapest cartridge I could find on the Internet, and all have worked fine, with quality indistinguishable from HP's expensive cartridges.
3. Finally, since I never print graphics, my comments apply to text-only printing.

When I switched to a new computer running Vista x64, I was forced to replace my HP Laserjet 5P because HP failed to provide a driver that worked competently with the 64-bit operating system. Based on the second comment to this review, HP apparently subsequently fixed the nonfunctional 5P x64 driver after Vista had been out for more than a year.

I chose the P2055dn because of auto-duplexing and the standard 128MB of RAM. I was initially disappointed by the poor print quality and noise of the printer with the factory default settings. After digging into the clunky, digital-only manual and much trial and error, I created new HP Printing Shortcuts for 1-sided and 2-sided documents with ProRes quality instead of the default FastRes quality, and I set the default Printing Shortcut to be my new 1-sided definition.

I also set the printer to Quiet Mode. To set the Quiet Mode, press the down arrow on the printer several times until you reach System Setup. Push the OK button, then toggle down to Quiet Mode with the down arrow. Press OK, then use the down arrow to toggle the Quiet Mode On, press OK, and press the carriage return key to go back to Ready.

After these changes, the printer runs slower, but the print quality is excellent and the noise level is similar to that of the 5P. I also turned off the aggravating low toner reminders that are worse than spam email.

To print envelopes without smudging, you may need to set the Tray 1 (top tray) paper type to Envelopes. In System Setup, toggle down to Paper Setup. Press OK, then toggle down to Tray 1. Press OK, then toggle down to Paper Type. Press OK, then toggle down to Envelope. Press OK, and press the carriage return key as many times as needed to go back to Ready. Afterwards, when printing an envelope in WordPerfect or Open Office, the yellow light will flash after you hit print. Then you have to press the OK button on the printer for the envelope to feed and print.

Got this printer to replace my year-and-a-half-old, out-of-warranty HP LaserJet P2015d (which, like many, many printers of that model, developed a fatal formatter board problem). The P2055dn, like the P2015d, works great with my Macs and printing wirelessly while connected to an Airport Express, and directly via USB.

Because my P2015d died prematurely, and because the problem with that model was widespread and widely documented, I purchased a 3-year extended service plan from HP (hpshopping.com, HP product #UK929A) for around 60 USD, which essentially extends the warranty two years beyond the included one-year warranty. I'd recommend anyone buying a P-series LaserJet get an extended service plan: these printers work great, but are built somewhat cheaply, using lower-quality materials than HP's top-of-the line, business-oriented laser printers costing 1000 USD and up.

It's a shame to reward HP for their poor craftsmanship by buying another one from them, but for the year and a half the P2015d worked, it worked flawlessly. For my needs, this printer in combination with the extended service plan is the right balance of cost, performance, and longevity.

Chose to buy this printer for the following reasons: (1) Tired of replacing inkjet cartridges (2) Built in networking (3) Automatic duplex printing to save paper and (4) Didn't care for color (since 90% of the time, we manually adjust print jobs to do B/W anyways) - not to mention replacing ink/toner is ALOT cheaper!

Product was extremely easy to install and set up. Was worried about the noise level after reading reviews, but after having used it for myself, noise level does not bother me since it is completely silent on ready/standby and we'd choose quicker noisier printing over slower quieter printing any day. We were quite happy with our purchase for the first several print jobs - the problem came after we tried to manually feed an envelope. Every time we tried to print afterwards, we'd get an error saying to clear a jam on tray 2. Obviously, we knew that there wasn't a jam because the envelope got printed (quite well, btw) and there were no jams prior to that (we checked anyway).

So we called HP support with the mindset that we'd probably have to return the product for refund/exchange since we don't have very high expectations of customer support to begin with. The first surprise was that we got a hold of a real person within probably a minute at most. The rep went through the usual troubleshooting procedures that you might expect, but found nothing interesting. Then after placing me on hold for about 5 minutes, he came back and asked me to try and follow some instructions to remove the main roller from the top of the paper tray. This was the first procedure that we weren't expecting as it was somewhat involved and getting the roller back on was even more trickier. Nevertheless, with my wife's help (she has smaller hands) we were able to get the roller back on (after putting the rep on hold for about 10 minutes). At this point, the only interesting thing discovered as to the cause of the paper jam indicator was that the main roller in fact does NOT move when it is supposed to in trying to feed itself the paper. So while we were getting a bit closer to trying to solve the problem, it also seemed as though we were exhausting all of the procedures the rep could offer in trying to figure out now what's causing the roller not to move - that is, until after he put me on hold for yet another 5 minutes and came back with the second surprise which I would have never thought they'd ask me to do over the phone. They asked me to completely remove the right side panel of the laser printer with a screw driver. Once we did that we noticed a plastic arm that was obviously not connected to anything else and moving freely. We had a hard time explaining to the rep exactly what we were looking at, so we asked if we can snap a few photos and send it to him. Having received them, he pointed out to us where this dangling arm was supposed to hook up to and lo and behold, that fixed the problem! The rep was quick to point out that the procedure of opening up the side panel is something they don't recommend the average user to do, but because we were able to take off the main roller and put it back on we unknowingly passed this little test to show we were quite competent to go even further.

Having said all of this, we were quite ecstatic to have a working printer again without having to go through the pain of shipping it back, not to mention we were quite pleased with the price of this model since there is no other HP-branded laser printer of this price that has both network capabilities and double-sided printing!

Although the total duration of the call with HP's customer support was about 2 hours, we couldn't be happier with this product along with their customer support if HP is successful in providing similar levels of support and value to other customers who purchase this item. Hope you enjoyed this review as I tried to be fair and include a lot of details so that it might be beneficial to some people out there who might encounter a similar problem.

I bought this printer to replace a similar HP printer (LaserJet 2100M) whose paper transport had become unreliable. My experience with this one has been good and generally consistent with the majority of other reviews here. Based on what I read, I was prepared for a noisy device, but I have been pleasantly surprised. The printer is indeed noisy when initially powered on, but that lasts about 10 seconds, after which the noise level decreases to a low whirr for another 20-30 seconds, followed by complete silence until it is used. The noise level naturally increases when it is actively printing, but the level seems no worse that that of any other home printers I've used that print at the same speed. Some reviewers report having to turn on Quiet Mode, which reduces printing speed. I didn't find that necessary; the default behavior (Quiet Mode off) was fine. Of course, some people are more sensitive to noise than others, and the environment in which the printer is being used is a factor, too.

The physical setup and installation instructions are comprehensive and flawless. I especially like the animations showing how to remove hidden pieces of packing material, which I might not otherwise have gotten right. The configuration process is also very clear (I'm using the network interface, not USB) and worked without a hitch. Well done, HP.

If you plan to use this printer for straight-through printing, be aware that the paper comes straight out of the back, meaning that you must leave sufficient space behind it. To activate th straight-through paper path you simply open a door at the rear within a larger panel that also opens (for clearing jams). It's important to get this right, and while the documentation is explicit, the warning is easy to overlook, and it's easy to make a mistake in practice. Finally, there is no bin to catch the paper coming out the back, so you have to make other provisions. Of course, none of this is relevant for the normal printing path, which deposits the paper in the main output bin on top.

Overall, a very satisfactory printer for my home office.

Pros

outstanding text print quality
great duplexing
prints on business card stock
quiet mode helps on noise
optional straight paper path
very easy setup
regular and "huge" replacement toner options

Cons

quiet mode isn't so quiet
windows drivers have obnoxious autoupdate feature
no printed manual
comes with starter toner cartridge

This is a very good printer. I have owned it for almost a month. I bought it for the two sided printing which works flawlessly. Text printing quality is absolutely outstanding, especially if you set it to the highest quality 1200 resolution (called prores). I have done some limited graph and image printing. No complaints there but I focus on text quality.

Paper tray use and adjustment is very easy and toner replacement also simple. I haven't done envelopes as I use a label printer so no idea how well envelopes work. Network installation in a home office was simple and straightforward. I us os X and the driver has a nice booklet printing feature that I find very useful. The printer does business cards on card stock which I have found problematic on other lasers. It also has the option of a straight paper path which is highly useful for some kinds of jobs. It can be set to a quiet mode that slows things down to about half speed, but even that speed is fine for most jobs and can be easily reset for the few big ones I do. One negative is that even in quiet mode it is a little loud, not overwhelming, but that is the only (very slight negative). Another downside is on the windows side (which I run from a virtual machine now and then). The windows drivers have an intrusive autoupdate feature that I have not figured how to disable. Also, it comes with a starter toner cartridge (maybe 1600 pages) which means having to add the cost of a full cartridge pretty soon. The positive here is that there are two replacement toners, a 2500 pager and a huge 6300 pager. Too bad Amazon doesn't sell these directly so I can't use Amazon prime. My final complaint is the lack of a printed manual - you have to rely on the .pdf on the install disk. Unfortunately, this seems standard for all manufacturers. By the way downloading and installing the latest drivers for os X was a piece of cake.

I have been very critical of some other HP products in the past, but this one is a winner.

Had to replace this machine twice because I couldn't believe the bad quality I was getting from HP. I've never had a machine from HP that I've been disappointed with until now. I ran a test - printed a large black box on plain paper and card stock on an old Laserjet 4L and and this "NEW" d2155dn. Hands down the 4L was far more darker and clean. The toner didn't even fuse!! on the card stock with the 2055. Yes, I did make sure my settings were correct for paper type. We found this out trying to print award certificates on card stock. The lettering looked like it had flaked off. The black box on plain paper wasn't bad but it was still no were near the quality of the older machine. Text on plain paper was great and if you do not print much graphics this is a good machine as it is well priced and rather fast.

I have 2 of these in my office and was thrilled at first, they are fast and easy to set up really. I'm not sure whats up with HP lately. I've got plenty of warranty on the printer, but they won't back it up at all. I've called in twice now to see if I can get it serviced, but no luck, they keep making an excuse that they won't take the printer back to service it. They just tell you to run the auto clean program and switch the ink cartridge. I tried changing cartridges, cleaned everything inside, but it turns all of my paper into rolled up dog eared lumps and they refuse to service it.

I'm bummed.

-J

While I have seen several of these in the office continue to work, the unit we had failed after less than 1000 pages! It was very lightly used, and the mechanisim works, but both the network and usb interfaces would just drop offline, and not be viewable. Started with it on network and after that failed IT put it on a local computer thru usb and after a couple weeks THAT failed too.

This is not the end of the world, but it failed less than a month out of warranty. HP did absolutely nothing for us. We spent close to A million dollars with that company under contract over the last few years, and they can't even replace a clearly defective printer?

Too bad, even though they were pricy, the one thing HP had going for them was their support, and now even that seems to have disappeared. It will take alot to get me to buy another one after this Horible Experience.

Here is how I break down my 4/5 stars:

Speed: 5/5 - This thing is FAST! Even on 2 sided printing it blazes.

Print quality: 5/5 - Nothing outstanding really. Pretty much what I expected from a laser printer. Nice crisp text but raster images are fuzzy.

Construction: 4/5 - The thickness of the plastic housing is pretty thin and flimsy. The front door that you use to feed stock to looks like it can easily be broken if you are too rough with it. This is not as solid as HP's older laserjets. We have a few of those and work and those things are built like tanks.

Interface: 4/5 - The buttons on this thing are pretty solid. Not like some of the other printers that I looked at. Some of the other ones looked like the buttons would fall off or break if you were too rough with the. The LED display could use a back light though. It is hard to see what is displayed if the light in the room is too low.

Networking: 5/5 - I was able to get all 6 computers in my house connected to the printer and printing successfully. I did however have to flash the firmware to be able to view the printers web server from my browser.

Support: 1/5 - This is where HP dropped the ball. There is no printed manual included. Just the CD-ROM with the manual on it. I guess HP's logic is that you will print out the manual with your new printer, thus requiring you to go out and buy an new toner cartridge since the one that comes with the printer is only a starter cartridge....shame on you HP! If I spend $400 on a printer it better have a manual with it.

This printer is quick and quiet enough. The toner is pretty expensive, however, at only 2500 copies per.