Good printer at a fair price for an HP that is
Written: Mar 06 '04
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Pros: HP is THE name in lasers, but the "price spread" between features/specs is too long.
Cons: Non-included accessories like ethernet/extra paper trays cost twice what they should.
The Bottom Line: HP makes the best laser printers so far, but the bang for the buck goes to others. Just no reason ethernet option should cost $300. when standard on competitors products.
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| pfc5's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Color LaserJet 2500 Laser Printer |
I have always bought HP LaserJets when ever I bought a laser printer in the past. I originally owned the LasetJet II. That lasted 7 years until it needed a new fuser roller, but I needed to print that day, so I bought the LaserJet 4 . The LJ4 lasted 9 years. You can see why I am a fan of HP LaserJets. I originally thought I would buy another Laserjet, until I looked at them in Staples. They didn't seem to be built to last like my prior models, and the consumables (which will cost many times more than the actual printer over the life of the unit) were higher than the Ricoh CL3000. In fact, much higher at my estimates of 2-3 times higher for black and 2 times higher for color. The HP 2500 is probably a good printer like all HP LaserJets, but feature for feature they cost more than most competitors, both in initial cost and in accessories/consumables. If you are a big fan of HP LaserJets like I am, you should check out the Ricoh CL3000 in a price/features comparison. The HP2500 which cost $1000.00 vs $825.00 for the Ricoh at pcConnection is not much more expensive, but it has many lower features than the Ricoh.
It didn't fair too well in the specs. The HP2500 prints at 16 ppm black, and only 4 ppm color (4 pass color). The CL3000 does 21 ppm black, and 17 ppm color (single pass color). Paper capacity fell short as well for the HP2500. It only has a 250 sheet cassette and a 125 sheet multi-purpose bypass tray. The Ricoh CL3000 has a 530 sheet cassette and a 100 multi-purpose bypass tray. The HP2500 has only USB and parallel connections, while the CL3000 also has Ethernet built-in standard. The HP2500N model adds ethernet, but it costs $300.00 more to add it. Ethernet might be a factor even if you were not thinking you need it if you share a broadband connection. It would allow you to easily share a printer between 2 or more computers. Given the consumables saved with a Color Laser over ALL inkjet printers why wouldn't you.
I also believe that a single pass color laser is less prone to break down simply because each page only has to go around once vs 4 times for a 4 pass printer (4 times the wear?).
There are benefits to the HP2500 though. For one, it has toner cartridges with the drum included, where the Ricoh CL3000 has separate drums (1 black and 1 tri-drum for the color) from the toner. This makes it easier to maintain the HP. I should say that replacing the drum units is only about a 2 minute process and shouldn't take any longer than opening & closing the front door of the HP2500 4 times to cycle thru each toner cartridge. The Ricoh needs to learn how to do a multi-purpose bypass tray like HP. It should AUTOMATICALLY take the paper from the bypass tray FIRST if there is paper in there, before going to the paper cassette. I print checks via the bypass tray and it is a pain to remember to change the paper source when printing checks. I have solved the problem by creating multiple "versions" of the printer labeled with the paper defaults. One called Ricoh Bypass and the other just Ricoh and changed the default in the program settings for forms printing. It also prints "face down" from the bypass tray which means if I load multple checks to print at once I have to re-sort in reverse the order of checks sequence.
I felt like I was taking a chance with the Ricoh given my excellent history with HP LaserJets, but I have printed over 2000 pages in the last 5 days since purchasing the CL3000, and it has worked great. Ricoh has a great name as well for quality and dependability so I felt the huge speed increase, lower price, better paper and connections options was worth the small risk. It can even duplex (print both sides automatically) with a $200.00 option.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 999.00
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
pfc5
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Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 0 members
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