Customer Reviews

HP P3005 LaserJet Printer

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

 

 

I work at a hotel where we have 3 of these printers and ALL of them have the same problems. First, the paper frequently "jams" in that every 20-30 pages printed it stops printing because it detects a jam; when you open up the paper tray, however, you find a page that the printer has attempted to feed but failed - it's not even really jammed in the traditional sense. The "jam" happens less often when the paper tray is full so even though you can put a whole ream of paper into it you have to fill it up constantly so it won't "jam" as often. One other thing: when the pages feed out of the printer they do not collect together anything close to neatly. After a few pages, the pile quickly becomes a jumbled mess with some pages almost coming off the pile. Do not buy this overpriced piece of plastic.

I have had this printer for about a month. It was very easy to setup on our small school network, I assigned it a fixed IP address to make it easier to find and install on the 10 computers. I used the HP network installation utility to create an install program that each of the Windows XP and Windows 2000 pc's could use to load/install and make the default print driver. Very straight forward. (I set it up to default to double sided printing to save paper).

I downloaded the Vista PCL6 driver directly from HP and used that driver on our 4 Vista pc's.

I estimate we will be printing a couple 1000 sheets a month. I choose this printer for a several reasons:
- Past experience with HP higher end printers (my work uses them by the dozens).
- Ability to Duplex print (double-sided).
- Heavier duty than most of the 'bundled' printers that come with a new PC. This LaserJet can easily handle our printing load.
- Paper tray holds a full ream of paper (500 sheets)! We should not have half full reams laying around.
- Fairly fast printing. Although using the duplex mode takes about 2.5 times the time to make a single sided print. Estimate the first page in less than 10 seconds, then if single sided, a print every 2-3 seconds. In duplex mode, the page comes out about half way and then pauses for a couple seconds and it is pulled back into the printer and then is ejected out with the back side printed on. Takes about 6-7 seconds to print both sides of a page. (These are normal word processing documents without large graphics).
- Built in networking, the Jet-direct embedded print server is very easy to manage with a web interface. Also very easy to check on usage and toner level. Very good status and usage information, telling how many of which size paper and if single sided or double sided, error messages or paper jam logs etc. (So far no paper jambs or errors!).
- Had a $450 instant rebate which cut the cost in half, very good value for the money. Picked it up locally for the same price as Amazon had. Didn't have to wait for shipping and it was a sales tax-exempt purchase.
- Amazon had one of the best prices for the genuine HP toner kit, so I bought the toner from Amazon. You do get what you pay for, so compare the P3005dn to other printers in the same price range. This was a better deal than the HP P2015x.
- Printer came with one of the HP Q7551A toner kits ($110 value). This toner should last 6500 pages (the fuller Q7551X cost almost twice as much and gives double the number of pages). Double sided printing counts as 2 pages.

This was a good purchase for my school. I will write another review after we have used it for several months, maybe after the first toner change so I can state the number of copies we got.

The bad reviews on this printer baffle me. I am an I.T. professional of over 20 years. Over the years I have installed and maintained hundreds of printers for our clients so I have real hands-on experience with printers from all makers. I chose this one for our small office with two network users. This printer has been running flawlessly for the last five years. The print quality remains outstanding. I honestly cannot recall any jams and we use it for plain paper, index stock, standard envelopes, large envelopes, postcards, and adhesive labels for mailing and Stamps.com USPS labels. It is just a little work horse.

I didn't buy my P3005dn from Amazon, but was just looking at this old listing and wanted to share.
As others have mentioned, these printers have had problem after problem. While this was a more expensive 'business class' printer, I bought mine for light use at home. It still came down with the dreaded formatter board problems. After 9 months of light use it wouldn't boot up. After hours of 'tech' support with people that claimed to have no knowledge of the easily searchable formatter problem, they finally said I could take it downtown to a authorized repair shop. Two weeks later and another trip downtown to find the repair shop decided to 'replace' my barely used fuser in addition to the formatter board.. I assumed they knew what they were doing (dumb of me). I plugged in the printer at their shop... the 'tech' seemed a little nervous, but it booted right up! I took the printer home and boom, it won't work again as soon as I turn in on. :O
This time I ask for and am given a replacement printer and I ship the dead one to them for a refurbished replacement.
Everything is fine for about three months. I assume they actually 'fixed' what was wrong with the printer at this point (again, dumb of me), and wham, dreaded stuck in sleep mode and unable to boot errors all over again.
I call and try to get them to help me, but it's about six weeks since the one year warranty ended and they do NOT want to help me. Finally after talking to a few different people and bemoaning the HP quality going downhill to the point that a lightly used 'business class' printer requires 3 replacements in the course of a year they finally cave and agree to replace it yes again, beyond the one year warranty.
While I'm happy I got a replacement, I know that I can't expect them to extend that offer to me again when the printer fails once more (as I expect). I mean seriously, you'd think it'd be worth it to them to actually fix what's wrong instead of just replacing the same failure ridden parts with more of the same. SO with this final replacement, I attach a heatsink to the main printer processor, as the main suspect for failure online is the chip solder joints failing due to overheating (and poor soldering to begin with). I'm happy to say after three replacements that must have cost HP about as much or more than I originally paid for the printer, with a secondhand $2 heatsink, my P3005dn still hasn't failed yet, two years later.
Despite all the problems with the poor manufacturing quality control, overall it's still a nice printer... as long as it's working! So giving it 3 stars as average of 1 star for product quality and 5 stars for printing quality.

I have used HP printers at home and at my workplaces for 20 years or more. Always found them to be rock-solid, consistent performers, even under very heavy use and rough conditions. I bought the P3005 about a year ago. It seemed more cheaply constructed than my old HP printer (which I had to toss because it didn't have a USB port, that's how old it was... it still worked fine). I just figured the plastic is how printers are made these days.

It performed well for about nine months under very gentle conditions and low use (at home). Then, black smudgy lines started to appear on every page. I cleaned the printer (per instructions I found on the Web). That didn't make a difference. I guess I'll try a new toner cartridge (even though I haven't printed nearly enough copies to run through a cartridge). This was a pretty expensive printer and I'm afraid that HP has let me down. So I'm looking at Canon printers to replace this one.

I would not recommend this printer to anyone.

We have serveral of these and they are only about a year old and they all requires or required fixes. I have older HP models that have never needed a fix at all. We are a heavy duty printing operations but still the older printer have handled it without issue.

Here's one tech's estimate to fix one printer

50679/HP LJ P3005
Fuser Unit $225.40
Gear Set $38.00
Tax $15.81
Total $279.21

50680/HP LJ P3005 (there's a little twist to this one, you have two choices)
Engine Control Unit (supplier #1 available now) $462.60
Paper Cassette 2 Refurbished $33.66
Tax $29.78
Total $526.04

Or
Engine Control Unit (supplier #2 on backorder-no date listed) $224.56
Paper Cassette 2 Refurbished $33.66
Tax $15.50
Total $273.72

As you can see it is cheaper to bu a new printer than to fix this.

Avoid this printer. Avoid this company like the plague. Avoid this line of printers. Save yourself some grief, buy a Canon. We bought this at work and I will make sure we never buy another HP product ever. This line of printers has a flaw involving the memory chip. HP is aware of this BUT they still don't mind having you jump through all the wrong hoops before you find this out. Then you have to remove/replace the chip (I understand there is some soldering involved) and whatever..... I am not a computer repairman. This printer is barely six months old. I don't feel as if the burden should be on me. However, typical HP fashion, it is. HP squirms out of more warranties than any company I know of. They did a similar thing to me about a $1500 desktop that died 3 weeks after I bought it. It is probably going to be cheaper for me to buy another printer. It won't be an HP.

This memory glitch is not the only problem with the printer. It also has to have the tray choices reset almost every single time it is used (when it worked). You set it, save the settings and then use it. It happens again.

Also, when you switch between this printer and another printer, the formatting does not change accordingly.

All in all, just a lemon of a printer.

I wish I had the option to rate this printer a zero.

I ordered this printer as it was the only one that would work
with my software package. It was to ship no later than May 20,2010.
On that date I still did not have this printer. I contacted Amazon
and they in turn contacted the company SoCalDeal. A man named Simon
responded back right away to say it had been delivered on May 5th. and
sent the delivery conformation number. I looked at it and it was signed
by a name that was not employeed at our business. So I contacted back
to inform him of this so he contacted FedEx to find out it had been
delivered to the wrong address. It was the High School down the street
and Simon called them many times and they were very difficult about giving
this printer up even though it had my company name and address all over it.
FedEx was not a lot of help with it either, but I talked with my FedEx driver
and he stopped by the High School a few days later and found the printer and
showed them who it was addressed to and brought it to us. But Simon kept in
touch through the whole ordeal. It is important to me that Amazon uses such
reliable suppliers as this was my first experience.

Before I bought this printer, I had a similar one (an HP2420) that began to mal-function after using it for about a year. I thought it was just a "bad egg among a bunch", so I bought another one: this is a HP P3005. I bought this printer because it is a low printer that fits in my shelf where I station it. After using it a few months it began to make a similar noise and problems as the previous one. After resetting it a couple of times it is still working, but I would be cautious to buy another one of these models.

This printer worked great for a year, then began having one problem after another.
All were expensive fixes too. As of today, it is on the blink (yet) again.
Will not buy another, and will not buy from HP again. A lemon if ever there were one.