HP K5400 Officejet Pro Color Printer by Hewlett Packard
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Our Price: $449.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more digital camera details and other models |
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Digital camera reviews of HP K5400 Officejet Pro Color Printer
Digital camera Review: best ink jet out there, but still issues
Summary: 4 Stars
I've run 8200+ pages through this printer, with no problems. It's all been black only text, in draft mode. However, it ran out of Yellow, and refuses to print, even though I don't print color. Its also running low on Cyan and Magenta. HP support said that the printer cleans its print heads on occasion, and over time will consume the color, even if not printing in it. I'm not sure if its possible to turn off auto-clean, or tweak some other setting, but having to replace the colors every 6mos even though I don't use them is a bit annoying.
My printer came with Ethernet, and duplexer. The Ethernet is great, and is helpful for those with more than one PC, or wireless. The duplexer doesn't work as good as that of my old laser. The HP Tech said the duplexer works best with a heavier paper (24#) and printing in Normal instead of Draft, in order to slow down the paper. That makes sense, as this printer is fast, and really cranks though a print job at laser speed, at least with text.
I went with this ink jet because I got tired of the smell from my old laser. For that, it gets the job done.
Digital camera Review: great if you leave it on all of the time
Summary: 2 Stars
The printer is fine if it is left on all of the time. If not, then be prepared for a lengthy and really noisy start up sequence, lasting for minutes upon minutes and then a couple of misprinted pages until it begins to work. In its favor are the individual ink supplies, but on the other hand, if you only want to print black ink on a page, as for text, it will not function unless all colors are in adequate supply.Digital camera Review: if print heads go you just buy a new printer
Summary: 1 Stars
We use this printer for home/small office use and go through 20-30 pages in a week of text, maybe a little color. I bought this printer due to the large capacity ink carts and the promise of decreased per-page cost of a print. The speed is nice and the networking has not given us any trouble, however we connected to one printer on our network with USB and just shared it from there. I haven't tried connecting just to the hub.
As far as color goes, I am no art critic but it does OK on the few times we have used it.
We have had the printer now for 14 montbs and have only gone through two sets of ink carts (as I recall) due to our low use and the fact we do mostly black. But now the print heads are out. If you re-boot everything and re-set the head firmly you can get one of them to quit flashing on the control panel, but not both.
So I thought to myself I'll just buy new heads. HA! Depending on where you get them you have the price of a new printer if you buy both. And after reading all the reviews about this printer on the net it is clear this is a design issue with these printers and their print heads. Reading the reviews before I bought one is what I should have done before I bought it. My second mistake was thinking that HP would put the name OFFICEJET on a more durable printer, and that is why I was willing to pay more to get a better product. "You get what you pay for" didn't work in this case.
This would be a 5 star printer if it wasn't for the defective print head design (or print head detection, see below). BUT Do yourself a favor and don't buy this printer. If a consumable like the print heads can't be replaced at reasonable cost, i.e. less than a new printer cost, and they go out frequently, then you are going to buy a new printer every year, maybe sooner. And yes I went through all of the manual cleaning of the printer and heads as suggested.
I should mention that I took the printer down to the local printer shop because they had a k5400 that was working. We swapped out the print heads to see if it was just the print heads. Nope. Still wouldn't work. This may be similar those reviews where new print heads were put in and they still wouldn't work. The printer itself decides if the print heads are dead or not, regardless of whether or not the print heads need replacement. Either way you are dead in the water. Save the hassle. Don't buy this printer.
Digital camera Review: nice printer
Summary: 4 Stars
I have my K5400 for over a year and it has been a dependable printer execpt for a time when I had the "door open" issue. It stopped doing it after placing something of weight on top of the printer and now it doesn't do it at all and I don't have to put anything on top. It must have been a software issue that HP must have cleared up with an update.
The ink is expensive and I asked before I bought it at Staples what other expenses would be incurred. The person at Staples told me that the print heads would wear out and have to be replaced. He also gave me the price to replace and realizing the future cost, I still went ahead and made the purchase after examining the total cost to run the printer for business for the next couple of years, compared to the price of a color laser printer. Buy the ink cartridges that are marked XL as they have more ink in them (although they cost more- better value).
I am pleased with the two-sided feature which works great and saves me $$ on paper as I can print on both sides. It prints labels and envelopes with good quality and ease.
I would recommend this printer.
Digital camera Review: too new to tell . but so far so good
Summary: 4 Stars
It is too new to tell. However, everything appears to be working to the product's specifications and it is easy to use . I am still learning about it.