Customer Reviews

HP Officejet Pro L7680 Color All-in-One Printer

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(20)
1 star:		(84)

 

 

I've had the HP L7680 for slightly over three months. I've been a pretty heavy user, having printed (according to the self-test page) almost 4000 pages during that time. Unlike some of the others mentioned here, my unit has been completely reliable.

Print Quality - Printing is very sharp and closely approaches laser quality...it's certainly above the threshold for business correspondence and presentations. The color output is solid, with almost no visible banding. I have not used it to print many photos, but those that I have have been also acceptable, given the constraints of a four color ink system. If photography printing is your primary usage, you should buy a printer with more ink colors.

Ink consumption - Over the span of 4000 pages, I went through the initial set of ink cartridges and am now on the third black cartridge...the second cartridge was a standard capacity one, while the third is the XL version. It's still 2/3 full. A second set of color cartridges were also the standard capacity versions. They're still 3/4 full. When they go empty, they'll also be replaced with the XL versions. Most of my printing is obviously black with a minor amount of spot color.

Faxing - It works. Faxes seem to get there.

Copying - The internal memory is inadequate to allow more than 5-6 pages of a document to be scanned and stored for collated printing. This flaw was obviously anticipated by the printer's firmware designers...the page
that causes the memory to overflow is returned to the scanning input tray so it can be scanned in the next five page batch. Unfortunately this flaw requires manual intervention...you have to remove the five printed pages from the output tray, set them aside and then place them on top of the next batch out. This is an absolute pain...The leader of the copier design team should be required to make fifteen copies of Tolstoy's War and Peace as atonement.

Scanning - The HP software works, but is awkward. I have yet to discover where the defaults are set...and the preset ones aren't optimal for my office. I'd like to be able to set it to scan an 8x11.5 letter size by default, rather than have the software guess the paper size based upon the image. It's NEVER guessed correctly. And, after scanning something into Adobe Acrobat, I need to click on "cancel" three more times before the image is finally transferred...it's like a Japanese monster movie...The Software That Wouldn't Die. There's other annoyances. The bottom line, though, is that it works. It's just doesn't work nicely.

So...the copying and scanning issues dropped this printer from a strong five stars down to three. It prints great and if there was a socket where I could add in more memory, the copying problem would go away. But there isn't. And while the scanning stuff is just annoying, the copying problem is a real time-waster.

Update: Since I've had the printer for a year and a half, I thought I'd add in a quick update and note that it's still going strong. I've gone through 500cc of black ink, 50-60cc of cyan and yellow, and 36cc of magenta. There has been some drift in the alignment, resulting in some slight banding while printing, but I suspect that that could be calibrated out. The only major problem has been wear in the automatic page feed mechanism in the document feeder, which causes misfeeds while faxing or copying. Cleaning the rollers and pads helped, but they should be replaced. The purchase of a high speed scanner (Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 Sheet-fed Scanner) has pretty much eliminated my use of the automatic document feeder, otherwise this problem would be a serious hassle.

Update - 6/20/11 - The price of ink cartridges for this printer has climbed to insane heights. While it used to be fairly economical to use, it's now too expensive to keep. Although it bothers me to scrap something that's still printing beautifully, out it goes...

We set up the printer carefully and it seemed fine at first. A few days later, we tried printing, and the pages came out stained with ink. Opening up the printer revealed large black ink puddles in the area underneath where the print heads move. There was obviously an internal ink leak.

I've used many HP printers in the past, both at home and at work, so I was optimistic that HP would be helpful and efficient in fixing the problem. Little did I know, the frustrations were only beginning.

The HP representative spoke minimal English and insisted on having me do all kinds of silly things to try to "fix the problem". Nothing he suggested could possibly have cleaned up the ink leak, but I humored him. For more than two hours. By now, the moderate ink leak had turned into a giant horrible mess, with black ink spilling over the desk under the printer. The printer was now reporting that the black ink cartridge was empty -- i.e., the entire contents of the cartridge had leaked out.

To be clear, this was not a case of a bad support agent. The guy was obviously working from a series of scripts whose sole objective was to prevent them from fixing an obvoiusly defective product. From a "bean-counter" perspective, this probably saves HP a few dollars, but it's an incredible waste of time for customers. And it resulted in ink spilling everywhere. (Shouldn't HP know that, if a customer calls with an ink leak, you don't tell them to do things that will cause more ink to leak out?)

Meanwhile, the agent was still refusing to fix the printer and was insisting that I needed to get a new ink cartridge. Of course, adding more ink would just have caused more ink to leak out. (Also, the ink leak was on the right side of the printer and the cartridges on the left, so this could not conceivably have fixed the problem.) He was steadfastly refusing to replace the printer.

Finally, I told the agent that I was going to post a description of what happened to Amazon, and he should tell this to his manager. A long time elapsed. Finally, he came back and said they would replace the printer after all.

Another hour elapsed of trying to get the agent to enter the credit card information correctly. (HP neededs "collateral" before they'll honor their warranty obligations, and the combination of a balky credit card approval system and an agent with awful typing and English skills meant the process took forever.)

In summary:
-- HP product quality is not what it used to be.
-- HP support is the worst I've ever experienced - ever.
-- HP will refuse to honor its warranty obligations unless you threaten to post your experiences.

I've had this machine for about 5 days and so far so good. I had trouble installing it on one of my desktop computers and made the mistake of calling HP. Tech support answered right away, but the lady who was trying to help me didn't understand english very well and I had touble understanding her because of a thick accent. She suggested making some changes to my startup file and if I had followed her instructions, I don't think my computer would have re-booted.
Instead, I tried installing it on my laptop and it installed quite easily. I then installed it on another laptop and a different desktop and it is working fine on all machines. The printer is plugged into my router and I've had no trouble accessing it from the wired desktop, or wirelessly on the laptops through my wireless access point.
I am not a technical expert, but to me the print quality looks very good. The printer is very fast. I purposely handled one of the dried printouts with damp hands, and the ink did not smear.
I have not had a chance to set up the fax yet so I can't comment on that. My only complaint is the amount of software that HP installs. I might uninstall it and then re-install it with the "customize" option. Right now Zone Alarm is constantly reporting attempts by the software to access the internet, even if I'm not doing anything with the printer. I don't know why the price is showing up on Amazon at $414. I've seen this everywhere for $399; and Staples has a $50 off coupon too.

UPDATE 3/18/07
I used the fax wizard and set up the fax machine quickly, with no problems. The printer is faster than I expected. In draft mode, the quality is very good, and the L7680 is faster than my laser printer.
Scanning is problem free. I like the having the option of scanning directly to a portable USB device. I'm hoping it has a "preview mode" for scanning. I haven't been able to find it yet.

Let me start by saying that I own an HP computer that I'm very happy with, and I have owned several HP printers in the past that have been reliable long term performers (the last being an Officejet G85). This printer is a piece of junk. With the first L7680 I had to jump through many hoops dealing with HP support (not very helpful and they wanted to charge me to get it to work out of the box!). Finally, I had to download an update to my BIOS so that I could turn on my HP computer with the L7680 turned on. Also, had an issue with color printing (didn't print red) so the support told me to take out the cartridge and shake it. This worked temporarily. Fast forward a week and only blue prints for a while, and then nothing worked colorwise and they told me I needed new printheads. I took it back to the store and got another L7680. This one wouldn't load paper to print without jamming.

Went back and got an older and cheaper model (that they are phasing out) Officejet 7310 (it feels more substantial and well put together than the newer model) and am so far happy with it (my fingers are crossed). This new Vivera print ink system (3 separate color cartridges) is getting a lot of hype, but if my experience is representative, they need to go back to the old more reliable single Tricolor cartridge setup. Save yourself stress and money and don't buy this printer until they get their design and/or manufacturing issues sorted out.

This is supposed to be an office product right? One might think that an automatic document feeder is most useful when scanning multipage/large documents, right? So it would probably be highly desirable to have a means of scanning 8.5 x 11 documents into .pdf instead of having an autocrop function that you can't turn off, no way to set any default to always scan at 8.5 x 11, and not have to manually resize every page that you scan?

Tech Support told me that they took that functionality out of the software so consumers could scan pictures - on an office system? Using a document feeder? Oh, and then suggested I reload software.

As a printer, it would be very very nice if there was actually a way to stop the unit from printing a blank separator page before and after every document.

Could just be I'm picky.......

I just purchased this printer as a replacement for a 5 year old HP ink jet that died. I use this printer in my home networked between a half a dozen computers, including a Mac notebook, a vista desktop, and a couple XP machines. Installation was a breeze in all operating systems although full Vista software support is still pending.

I originally intended to buy a laser because of the lower cost per print, and the generally higher black print quality. However after reading about these new HP ink jet printers I opted for this one. It's as cheap per print or cheaper than laser, generally has better color printing than laser (as do most ink jets) and has acceptable black text printing (If I was printing professional documents for a business it would not do nor would any ink jet but for my home is fine)and it is as fast or faster than a laster to boot. This thing really cranks out the pages.

It is easy to set up as previously mentioned, prints dramatically faster than my previous HP ink jet, and supposedly should be cheaper to run than the older generation ink jets. So don't write of ink jet printers just yet, for the home I could not find a comparable all-in-one laser color printer for anything near this price, and they were noisy and unreliable and generally the size of a small car.

In my opinion, office or all black text printing=laser.
Home all-in-ones=these new ink jets.

I give it 4 stars because of the lack of a fully featured Vista driver (come on HP, how long has the vista beta been in your hands, and fully released for 2 months now, and you are still shipping product without a full vista driver???? Someone should get FIRED for this gross incompetence!) Otherwise very happy.

Where can I begin to say how bad this product (and support) is.

Firstly, if you are using it in wireless mode (e.g. physically connect it to a wireless router, and then use a wireless connection from your computer to print) this product is AWFUL. You have to un-install and re-install the software every time there is a problem with the wireless router! I'm not kidding, this has happened several times, and on two different computers with two different versions of XP, a problem with the router (for example, it gets reset) means that you have to un-install and re-install the software. Which means you need to re-configure the software each time - what a waste of time. Despite repeated calls to HP, and despite the fact that all the configuration information in the installation is ok in the control panel, something in the software is blitzed and you must re-install.

Oh, and did I mention, that un-installing is for some reason never straightforward, and that each HP support technician has their own method of uninstalling? Some get you to use windows add/remove programs interface, some get you to use the util\ccc\uninstall_l3.bat utility (which takes hours to complete). Un-install and re-install is ridiculously time-consuming and often requires help from HP - which you have to pay for once your warranty is up. I'm appalled by the thought that this expensive printer is going to cost me even more money by having to either extend my warranty or purchase per-call support at the end of the year.

The software portion of this printer (e.g. the driver on the computer) is a complete mess, it takes ages to install and is very clunky to use for scanning etc. Scanning and faxing work ok, it is the usability that is a problem.

Another thing is that the cartridges are supposed to last for a few thousand copies, but I keep getting error messages that the cartridge is going to run out - the one that I just bought. Hmmmm.

But probably the worst thing is how incredibly bad HP support is. I mean truly, major-leage, epic badness. Not all companies provide disgraceful overseas support (dell for example) but HP does. The canadian support is not terrible but it isn't great. This is a product that requires a lot of support and it isn't a cheap printer. I was so disgusted with HP support that I called HP to complain and went through their labyrinthine, kafka-esque system to register a complaint. Finally, after days of trying, I had a surreal conversation with someone at HP where I kept explaining that many of the technicians on the support desk had inadequate training and could not understand the problems, and he kept replying "you mean they have a thick accent?" and I kept explaining no, the accent was not the problem, the problem was that they could not understand the technical problem. "Oh" he'd reply "you mean they have a thick accent"?

My old non-HP printer ran out of cartridges quickly and I thought it would be 'convenient' to have a printer that had longer-lasting cartridges. How wrong I was.

How come I have the time to write such a long review? Gosh, it must because I'm running yet another uninstall...

Unfortunately, I don't have any advice on what type of printer to buy, but I would say, definitely don't buy this one. And if you do buy an HP printer, make sure it's one that you are confident will not need any support. This is definitely a printer to avoid.

Update to this review on 1.24.8 with two important points (I feel so sorry for the folks who have posted positive reviews after owning this printer for a short time. They have no idea what awaits them!). I felt I should take the time to include this information so that other potential buyers can have information as to what they can expect from HP:

1. HP evidently do not think it is their responsibility to provide software that actually works with their printers. I had an intensely frustrating and ridiculous conversation with an HP escalations manager called Kathy who told me that HP could not provide a refund for this machine because some functions worked stand-alone (e.g. copying). I pointed out that on two different XP machines the software needed to constantly be re-installed over and over again, and that it took an hour to de-install and an hour to re-install, and that this wasn't acceptible, and it made the printers simply unusable. She disagreed, stating that the hardware itself was ok (which is largely true, apart from the odd paper jam and erroneous low-ink warning). I countered by pointing out that you can't print or scan to a computer without software, and that therefore this printer is simply unusable without drivers that, you know, actually work. Here is an excerpt of the conversation:

"are you seriously telling me that HP have no responsibility to provide software that works?"

"I'm not going to argue with you"

"I'm not asking you to argue with me, I'm trying to clarify what you are saying: Are you telling me that HP have no responsibility to provide software that works?"

"I'm not going to argue with you about this"

"Can I ask who your manager is? I'd like to be able to escalate this issue further"

"I don't have a manager"

"Are you seriously telling me you don't have a manager? You don't report to anybody? Not even the CIO?"

"I'm telling you sir I don't have a manager"

"You are clearly lying, everyone in a corporation has a manager, nobody is completely unaccountable".

Then she used the fact that I had (quite justifiably) pointed out she was lying to hang up the phone. Ahhhhh that wonderful HP customer 'service'.

2. The HP warranty system is completely bizarre. By default, the warranty starts ticking away according to the serial # of your product, not when you actually bought it. After I'd called HP the first few times they started telling me that my warranty was almost up. In order to stop them expiring your warranty prematurely, you have to mail them the original receipt. No other company I have dealt with has this weird policy. I can only assume it's a way of squeezing more money out of people for extended warranties.

I've owned a total of at least six or seven HP printers over the years, so when my "all in one" died, I decided to go with their latest/greatest L7680 model.

Big mistake. The printer is decent enough, but for what I need most, namely the scanner, this is SIGNIFICANTLY worse than earlier models.

It may be that the problem is the new, definitely not-improved software. For individual scans from the flat glass, it's no longer possible to adjust an out-of-kilter photo by one or two degrees -- it's ninety degrees or nothing. But that's minor compared to what happens when you want to scan a longer document (after all, what else would that document feeder on top be for?). There's no way to tell the machine that you're using 8.5" x 11" sheets; instead, the machine takes three to five times as long as earlier HP scanners or all-in-ones, randomly makes every sheet a different size (cutting off text on many pages, making others impossibly big), then saves a pdf file that (I kid you not) is roughly twenty times bigger than files from the older machines.

I have burned up countless hours with HP's technical "support" people in India, and at the end of each multi-hour session, they get around to telling me what they could have told me in the first few minutes: That's how the software works, and no, you can no longer do what you want to do. You don't have any other options.

DO NOT BUY THIS MACHINE, at least not if you value your money, your time, or your sanity. I'm going to eBay to find replacement parts for an old beater instead.

Chances are fully researching a product before you lay down the cash is an ingrained trait and I suggest you take one additional step. If it is feasible, visit one of the office product chains and try out this printer side by side with costlier color laser AIOs as well as comparably priced B/W laser AIOs. As far as inkjets are concerned, I couldn't find a truly competitive unit from another manufacturer. Like so many other reviewers, I was hesitant to purchase another HP product since my most recent experience became a negative one, primarily due to bloated software and marginal technical support however no matter how I tried to justify looking to other manufacturers, the cost/benefit side of the equation continually led me back to the L7680.

My business oriented needs:

1)B/W printing and copying of approximately 2200 pages per month. This printer has a rated duty cycle of up to 7,500 per month and has 50 sheet ADF.

2)Color printing for brochures and flyers. The four color system employed here is superior to the results I encountered with laser AIO in the range of $500-600. I don't have a need for photo reproduction however Pictbridge and card slots are standard. According to an HP sales rep that front side USB port can also be used to add memory but I haven't had the need to test it yet.

3)Scan capability up to 8 ½ by 14 with PDF support. The software is only adequate but it is far superior to the resident facility built in of Vista Ultimate. IRIS OCR is also built in although it is what it is. Italic text might just as well be Sumerian.

4)Fax capability with auto answer and speed dialing. The documentation professes a 50 page capacity. My personal needs seldom exceed five pages.

5)Wired Networking. If you need wireless, take the step up to the next model.

Typically, I had pretty much convinced myself that my B/W needs would preclude consideration of inkjets and the cost differential would preclude color lasers AIOs. This model isn't a compromise, it meets the need. I've only had it in operation for just over a month and in that period, there have been a few moments of exasperation but overall performance outweighs the negatives I have encountered.

The estimated ink cartridge capacity is probably ambitious. I printed nearly 1800 pages when it gave out. Compared to laser toners in models I considered with projected output between 1,000 to 1,200 pages, I still come out ahead and ink cartridge replacement cost is about ½ of the cost for laser toner cartridges. As a side note, this unit also has two dual color printheads that will eventually require replacement. Still, they are less expensive than laser drum units. I doubt that will ever approach a cost factor of 1.5 cents per page as is noted in the documentation but once again compared to the similarly priced lasers, this unit outperforms.

The auto document feeder is a minor annoyance. More often than not, it pulls two sheets at once so unattended usage is a slight risk. The printer tends to vibrate more than one would anticipate and even for an inkjet, it is somewhat noisy.

The L7680 is the mid-level of the 7000 series and a number of concerns noted by other reviewers may have been addressed by purchasing one of the other models. All have the same internal components and performance specifications. The l7580 is primarily an upgradable standalone unit with less memory, lacks ADF as well as direct digital filing and does not support auto two-sided printing. The L77780 adds wireless networking, 32Mb Ram, and a supplemental 350 sheet paper tray.

Once the unit is up and running, it is definitely faster than most low to medium end lasers. After powering up, it takes two to three minutes to initialize and interim warm-up is around 12 seconds. That 34ppm B/W is purely marketing tripe but 15ppm is not unusual. The two sided copying is even fun to watch, as the graphics display advises the copier has paused to allow the ink to dry. The keypad is layed out well and the onboard menus are easy to follow and understand.

In the end, while I have only had it a month, if I had to go buy another unit today, I would make the same choice.

I read the reviews for this and similar multifunction printers from HP. Lots of reviewers complained about SVCHOST.EXE eating up too much CPU time. I decided to purchase the printer anyway and try my luck.

The other reviewers were right. As soon as I loaded the printer software SVCHOST.EXE started using lots of CPU time and slowing things down.

I went through several iterations on the HP email support site with no resolution to the problem.

I uninstalled all the software and downloaded the most recent version of the software from the HP web site. When I installed the updated software I still had the same problem, plus I lost duplex printing.

I uninstalled that software and installed only the basic driver software. The printer/scanner/copier works ok this way, but I have lost a number of features that I paid for. For example: I can no longer use any advanced scanning features. Also, I lost the OCR features that are present in the full software.

If the software worked, I would rate this printer as 5 stars (I like the printer, but the software doesn't work). Since I'm not getting the features I paid for, it gets one star.

Additional comments:
1. Don't plan on using a phone next to the printer. It makes more noise than most.
2. The copy and scan features seem to work well, incuding the ADF.
3. I had no problems seting it up to a wired network.
4. Ink usage seems ok so far.
5. I have not tried the FAX.