I’m not a big fan of any of HP’s 900 series printers. I hope to find time to look at each one individually, but I’m starting with the worst: the 940. I could understand a lemon in the group, but of the 10 I have, all of them, except maybe a couple that are hardly used, are a pain. Oh, sure, picture quality and speed are what I would expect from it, but I’ll never buy another one because of the problems I’ve had.

If it weren’t for all the other problems I will discuss, I wouldn’t buy a 940 for one simple reason: you can’t get parts and service for them. I could get parts for 930’s and 950’s, just not the one I was actually working on. Did HP realize what a piece of crap they had made and decide to pretend like it doesn’t exist?

There’s a small gear way up in the inner workings of the left side (your left, not the printer’s). This gear is essential for moving the paper through its route. For absolutely no reason the teeth on this gear just fell off. I know what you’re thinking, “Teeth don’t just fall off a gear for no reason.” Don’t think I don’t know that. I’m responsible for nearly 250 printers, and I deal with some odd problems. I see all kinds of things happen to gears, but not their teeth falling off like they’re some toothpaste-phobic sugar addict.

As unlikely as it sounds it happened, and I ended up with a junk printer my boss expected me to fix. I tried for weeks to come up with a replacement gear. I checked our regular vendors, called new ones, searched Google and other engines, looked in other printers I had for something comparable, and anything else I could think of. I even got a coworker to help me look, and between the 2 of us we couldn’t come up with a part. The best we could do was get a 952 part and hope it worked, but because of the trouble it's caused we just retired it instead. It now sits on a shelf ready to be stripped of its inner workings to salvage any other printer that dies.

That’s good enough to make me not want another one, but there are more problems to discuss.

These are some of the worst printers for creating messes. Ink in the well on the right builds up and dries making the gears of the cleaning mechanism not work like they should. That can be cleaned out with a stick or something, but it’s hard to reach and very messy if you’re not careful. It’s not worth the pain when there are other printers out there that don’t have that much of a problem. If you go through one ink cartridge a year you might not have that problem, but if you print more than that go with a better printer!

Let me tell you what happens when that build-up gets bad. Ink starts spraying all over the inside of the printer sometimes so bad that it covers whatever surface it’s sitting on. Ink gets all over your hands, clothes, and furniture. Don’t get me wrong it won’t spray on you while you’re using it, it just gets all over the case then on the user when replacing the cartridges or working on it.

If all that weren’t enough I have problems with some of mine corrupting data. For no reason at all the printer will start spouting gibberish (hieroglyphics users often call them). It’s easy to fix, just cancel the print jobs, turn the printer off then back on, and resubmit the job, but it’s a pain and the only other printers I have that do that are other 900 series.

My last gripe is one that won’t affect the average user, but for the sake of being thorough I will mention it. I use a conditioner solution on my printer rollers to increase their lives. The physical design of the 900’s make it very difficult to get the rollers conditioned without taking the whole thing apart. Little of the roller is exposed, and the bar across the front makes it tough to position even my small hands so that I can clean like I need to.

So there’s my rip on the 940’s. 1 star for this monstrosity if for no other reason than because of the lack of parts availability. Even if you still get a 900 series of some kind, don’t get this one!


Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 140
Operating System: Windows