HP Color LaserJet 5500dn Toner Review

The HP Color LaserJet 5500dn is large, nonetheless not as large as various other colour laser printers. It is quick, rated at 21 pages per minute, however some others happen to be quicker. And it's less expensive as compared to some other colour models. Whilst it comes with a small number of disadvantages, the HP printer nonetheless offers several capabilities making it attractive for network colour printing.

Just like a great many other colour printers, the engine in the 5500dn uses a single-pass pattern, allowing the unit to print colour pages roughly as rapidly as black-and-white pages. The toner cartridges and imaging drums are arranged in a vertical stack, lending the machine a more compact footprint in comparison with the majority of colour laser printers: merely 27.7 by 43 inches. However at 132 pounds, the 5500dn still needs two people to maneuver it round the office.

The setup procedure is actually simple not to mention nicely discussed in the manual. The delivery box may well be disassembled around the machine, which makes it simple to lift up the device in to place. And contrary to the majority of machines, that can fit just one or two lines of text on the front-panel Liquid crystal displays, the 5500dn features a graphic display that exhibits animated illustrations of the actions needed to clear a paper jam, bar charts of toner levels, as well as other graphic data, in addition to traditional text messages.

The network features of the 5500dn are equivalent to those in the monochrome HP LaserJet 4200dtn. The unit is simple to manage for the purpose of shared usage on a network, including IPP printing through the Internet. The driver gives entry to the printer's numerous features as well as simplifies tasks as complicated as printing an extended document as a properly paginated booklet while using the duplex element.

In terms of performance, the 5500dn was in third place on the list of colour printers in the speed tests, consistent with its third-place engine speed rankings. Yet when we printed the CorelDraw and also Photoshop documents for the quality assessments, it finished the job in the quickest time. (Since speed is actually not so relevant any time examining quality, we didn't post these results.)

The 5500dn is a great model in comparison with others from only a few years before, but it does not quite fit with the current best of breed. On our tests, text was razor-sharp, but faint vertical banding was visible upon a number of pages while using HP Color LaserJet 5500dn toner cartridges. This became particularly obvious on big regions of graduated colours as well as solid black. Details like fine lines printed over black backgrounds were sometimes gone. Conversely, pictures appeared good, without any signs of posterization inside delicate shade alterations.

The Color LaserJet 5500dn is undoubtedly an interesting performer which delivers a very good balance of speed and quality for the cost. It is a nice answer for many applications, yet others could be more suitable if you want the most impressive image quality or perhaps the quickest print speeds.

HP toner cartridges are available here.