Customer Reviews

Hewlett Packard 3050A Wireless All-in-One Color Photo Printer

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I have been a Cannon Inkjet printer user for the last 10 years. For my light duty needs they performed fine until the last two purchases. The last two printers failed a couple of months after the warranty expired. That was the last straw with Cannon.

I have not looked into the line of HP DeskJet printers for more than a decade. I was very pleasantly surprised by the selection and prices. After reading as many reviews from every online source I could fine, it appeared that the recently discontinued HP DeskJet 3050 had good reviews and the new HP DeskJet 3050A model was starting to get good reviews also. After using my new printer for a while, I love it.

I was a little worried about setting up the wireless access part but the process could not have been any easier. In fact, the directions to set everything up was so short and simple, I thought HP forgot to include the full directions. But I followed the steps and Bingo; the printer was online and was working.

The printer has a small footprint, is quiet and it prints fast and with very good quality. The scanner works well but is a little slow scanning at higher DPI.

I do have one instillation note I wish to pass on...

My system is a HP notebook, Windows 7 64-bit, AMD processor, ATI discreet graphics, 4 GB RAM and it is wirelessly connected to my DSL modem. Even though the printer will start to work after you follow the steps to set it up, I had to restart my notebook after all of the drivers and software was installed to get full functionality. The restart step was not covered in the directions and not suggested during the installation of the software. However, since completing the installation, the printer has always connected to the network and has never dropped the connection.

Bought it at Walmart because I needed it today (sorry, Amazon). Setup on a MacBook Pro is brain-dead simple. Insert the CD, start the install and plug in the enclosed USB cable, all according to the instructions. Went through the setup routine, which included wireless. Disconnected the USB cable and voila, I'm printing wirelessly. Changed the IP configuration from DHCP to static to prevent later problems, simple using the web management app. Scans JPG or PDF, also through a web app. Text isn't as black as I would like, but it's a $50.00 printer (at Walmart...) and I can live with that. The perfect printer for any student. Print, scan or copy. Since it's new, I have no experience with the ink cartridge life, which other reviewers have complained about. I was apprehensive on buying it based on what I read in other reviews, but I thought that HP makes tens of thousands of this printer and my experience has been that HP is alalogous with printers. I still use a HP 990C that I have had for years and have no complaints about it. While your experience may vary, I do not think you will go wrong with this printer.

I was looking for a reasonably priced printer that could also scan & copy but one that was NOT a L*xmark because I had given up on that brand. I've always been a fan of HP so I decided to give this one a shot.

Right out of the box, it looked great. Not too big/bulky but big enough to handle a standard sized sheet of paper for both printing and scanning.

The set up: Simple. I gave the box to my 13 year old and said "Ok, take this, install it on our network and make sure everyone in the house can print to it" It took him about 15 minutes to install the printer to our home network through our router and then fix it so seven of us with varying types of computers (Dell, HP, Toshiba, Acer, Asus) were connected and able to send and complete a print job from our various machines. In the past, we've not had a lot of luck getting wireless printers to work in our house so this was a huge bonus.

I was also able to download an app to my android phone and print documents from my phone wirelessly, which is a neat feature as well.

The lid works the same as any home copier/scanner so it was no problem to scan in a magazine, page from a book or a photo. The entire process was very simple which is a nice change from my previous experience with scanning. The images came out exactly as I had hope and look great online and I was able to save them in several different formats and it comes with a software that has basic editing features which is simple to use as well.

The cartridges are about the same price as competitors refills, maybe a little cheaper but seem to last longer (this is from my previous experience with an HP printer). I have been able to successfully refill my own ink cartridges at home with my previous HP printer, it's a little tricky, but it can be done and I plan to give it a try with this one and will come back to edit this review to report if I was successful or not. I wish manufacturers would just make it simple and easy for customers to refill their own ink cartridges instead of the game they are playing now....they would find themselves with very loyal customers if they did.

All in all, I'd definitely recommend this printer if you're looking for a good-priced, basic home printer/scanner/copier that is wireless and easy to connect and use that prints good quality documents and is fairly quiet and fast enough for home use.

Installation was easy and successful. Followed the instructions and used the install disk. Prints from ipad and pc's throughout the house. After the first pc was installed, using the install disk, the other pc's installed by just clicking on "add a printer."

Easy to print photos from ipad or pc.

Very nice printer for the price.

The early version of this printer was not AirPrint enabled. To print from your iOS device (iPhone, iPad, IPod Touch) you needed an app like Print n Share. I suppose the "A" in 3050 means AirPrint because it makes all the difference.

With AirPrint you do not need to load something into iTunes. If your printer is on the same network, you just press the "print" button and out comes your document. We have put it in our office which lets two iPad using attorneys produced documents edited on iPads with ease.

As to the printer itself, it is called an "All In One" but it has no fax capability. Anyway that is not a major concern of mine since we use an Internet fax server, and if one wanted to fax, the flatbed scanner produces PDFs which can be used to send to the fax server.

For a low priced printer scanner copier there is a lot to like. It sets up easily. Print quality is excellent. It is quiet. AirPrint seals the deal however.

I have had several HP printers in the past, all of them lasting and performing very well for several years with next to no problems.

I have had the HP3050 deskjet about 3-5 months and am basically decommissioning it, ie taking it out of service.

HP has somehow in software and cartridge build eliminated the ability owners had in the past to often refill the cartridges rather than simply discard and buy new expensive cartridge as first emptying of the ink. This is a mini-cartridge in terms of ink capacity (altho not a trial one) and I have 2 problems.

We have been unable to refill the cartridge and get the machine to operate properly; software-generated messages indicate this is a deliberate design feature by HP to force machine owners to buy the maximum number of new cartridges in lieu of being able to refill themselves.

Problem 2 is that the machine does not print the number of sheets per cartridge that HP indicates the average user could expect to get from a cartridge.

We has also sometimes experienced the frequent complaint that it does not print the bottom 1" of the page.

Do not buy this machine. Wish I could recommend a good replacement. I am of the mind to stop purchasing HP machines because of small ink supply cartridge, inability to refill(which I assume they will be doing on all future models).

I've had a lot of printers over the years, and I'll be honest-- I was skeptical at first. The plastic seemed a little thin, the pop up display is super low quality, and I was prepared to be disappointed. I wasn't. Clearly HP put their money in the printing and not the shell or the pop up screen.

Install was easy for me on my Windows 7 64 bit computer. To set up the wireless though, wasn't what I'd expected and was different from previous HP's-- you have to plug the printer in to a PC with a USB cable to program the wireless settings. This worked fine, but if you are in a tablet-only household, this could be a problem.

Setup was easy.

Printing is quite high quality for a printer in this price range (see attached photo and text prints that I've scanned), and at that they were all done on low quality plain paper. The printer seems to be good at optimizing for plain paper.

It doesn't have an SD card reader, but does have wireless, so if you have an entry level printer today, this is probably going to be the one feature that you're looking for, and it works well.

The printer is fast, does a clean job on plain paper, and while it's missing an SD card reader, the scanner also does work well, as does the copy feature in both color & B&W. It also has several pre-programmed print jobs in there including some games, graph paper, and other things that could be helpful depending on your household needs.

I can see this printer being a perfect printer for a household or college dorm that will be doing low volume printing, some light scanning & copying, or maybe some light photo printing. It's definitely not a PhotoSmart printer, but overall, it could meet the needs of many users and at quite an affordable price.

Overall, I can recommend this printer.

I've had this printer for about three weeks and I'm happy with it. The wifi setup was extremely easy, it prints well, and it's fairly compact (not huge and bulky like some printers). It isn't the fastest printer on earth, so if you need to print huge jobs quickly, it would work but probably not be the best choice.

I hesitated getting this printer because it was SO cheap. Much to my surprise, it was easy to set up and has performed flawlessly while printing, scanning, copying. Ink is a little pricy, but you can shop around for deals.

I have an IMAC, a laptop PC running windos 7 an an Ipad. I got home from work at 6:PM ate dinner and by 7:30PM I was printing on all three. I also sighned up for eprint that also was extremely easy. The print quality is good for an $80 printer. I replaced a wireless epson that died after 18 months, of course it is too early to comment on the longjevity my new hp printer. I cannot say too much about the ease of setting up this printer, that alone made it worth the price.