HP Color LaserJet 3800dn Printer ( Q5983A#ABA )

 (4 customer reviews)

First, let me explain that I am a casual home user. Not being expert in networked printers, I'd not be posting this review except for the fact that in researching this printer I found almost no posted reviews anywhere online. I figured my observations were better than none.

Although I am a novice at installing and configuring a printer on a wired network, I followed the instructions (which were straightforward) and was able to set it up and get it working in under 20 minutes, with no problems at all.

Print quality looks good, but (of course) pictures don't look nearly as good as on a photo inkjet printer. My tests in printing photos on the 3800dn, however, have been very simple -- printing at default settings on plain paper. Tweaking the paper or the settings might make the output more impressive. That said, the pictures showed no banding or streaking -- that is, no terrible flaws. Compared to a photo inkjet, they were pretty flat however (the use of plain papers...Read more

This printer works great, the sleep mode helps save power by only consuming 15W when asleep. And it wakes up whenever a print job is sent to it within 12 seconds. The only issues I have with the printer is the cost of toner. To replace all 4 toner carts, you will end up having to spend at least 600.00 The good part about the toner is each cart is rated @6000 pages, so they last awhile. Networking works like a charm, and the duplex function is flawless. The printer changes from last year are a straight line thru for printing, and support of PCL6/5 as well as Postscript 3, which the 3600 and the 3550 do not support. Also 288MB of RAM also helps. My only grip about this printer is that the paper tray requires you push down on it while you are sliding it in, else it won't detect there is any paper. Color wise the print jobs are good, but not as great as a high end ink Jet, but on the bright side, you don't have to worry about the ink drying up nor fading, or smuding when wet.

I have had this printer for just over a year. I've found it very expensive to print in color, we used to use it to print handouts. We have to replace the print cartridges about every 1000-1200 pages. At over $100 per cartridge X4 that's too expensive for us.

Also the support is something that I hope that you never need. I've spent hours attempting to get the ability to select printing in color of grey scale back to the printing prefs tab. There is supposed to be a color tab, but the drivers (even the ones directly from HP Support) are lacking this tab and/or button. So I have to install re-install a different driver every time I desire to switch between Grey Scale and Color printing.