HP LaserJet P2055d Laser Printer

Really long and detailed review for p2055d.

INTRO:
We do a couple hundred pages a week and with that much turnaround our inkjet printers kept clogging and needed loads of ink resets and cleaning cycles. Totally frustrating and I hate the hassle of refilling my inkjets all the time, and cleaning and cleaning and cleaning whenever these dreaded white streaks appeared on my printouts (EPSON I'M LOOKING AT YOU).
My conclusion: inkjets are not really designed for heavy duty use, are a downright pain to maintain, can be expensive to run depending if you use CISS (dirt cheap), compatibles or originals (ink more expensive than gold). Inkjets do print nice photos and graphics when they actually work. Do keep an inkjet around for colour work, it will always perform better than lasers.

Solution, get a cheap to run mono laser printer. The P2055d is a high volume small business laser printer, designed to run with minimal hassle. No cleaning cycles, no clogging, no out of colour blue/red/yellow ink resets. It just prints in boring black and white and does exactly what it was designed to do.

DESIGN AND BUILD:
Build quality is good, feels much sturdier than any inkjet out there. Good sturdy professional business design expected of HP, built like a brick with heavy solid plastics. The trays and doors open and close reassuringly well, no creaky cheap plastics here. Buy any cheap low price inkjet or laser and you will not get build quality like this. I guess you pay for what you get.

PRINT QUALITY:
Crisp and sharp mono prints with text that surpasses inkjets on standard media. Need I say more? Graphics in mono do not look exciting however, but I assume people don't buy this printer for pretty photos and art projects.

MEDIA & HANDLING:
Used it on card, envelopes, brown bags, plain paper. No fuss no problems. It has two trays, one main internal tray with a 250 cap, and a flip out tray for card, paper and envelopes.

SPEED:
Spits out pages fast enough for me. No complaints there. Suprisingly, its quieter than my epson inkjet.
Also, does auto DOUBLE SIDED PRINTING. Awesome! Only the D models of the p2055 have the duplexer: 2055d 2055dn.

SETUP WIN7/64:
Dig around the net for the correct Win 7/64 drivers. You need to find: P2055_default_install_v6.1_ww
I've heard the default drivers supplied don't work properly. Easy, no problems, no hassle.

DRIVERS:
Lets you save your own custom presets. Say you want to print a document double sided from tray one on card, just select your custom double sided preset and off you go. Easy. Have as many presets as you want.

PRINTER COST:
About 2-3X more costly than a standard consumer inkjet and about 2x the cost of a cheap personal laser. You pay more for a better build quality, more durability and ultimately, lower running costs in the long term.
Also compare to inkjets, which are designed to be thrown away after a year or two of average use, from permanently clogged heads or whatever reason. Consumer inkjets do not last long with heavy use. The print heads will always fail or irreversibly clog up at some point.

INK RUNNING COSTS:
HP originals are expensive and the XL cart is almost the price of the printer. However, get compatibles with a duty cycle of 6500 pages, at around £25-£30 each cartridge it's a steal. This is one advantage of paying a higher price for the printer; it can use higher cap cartridges which is crucial if you do a lot of printing.

Compare to a cheap £60 colour laser printer, which typically prints 500-2000 pages per cart. With 4 colour toner carts costing £50 each, it gets very expensive to run!! Even a cheap mono laser uses low cap carts. Cheap printers are fine if you don't do much printing.

OVERALL:
Its a workhorse printer. No fuss. Prints. 5/5.

I purchased this printer after reluctantly having to dispose of my 15 year old Apple Laserwriter. The HP is very quick and has double-sided, print capability. First impressions are print quality very good although print looks feint in comparison with my old Apple printer and inkjet printers. This may be due to the higher resolution output of the HP.

All in all very pleased with it and good value for money for a general purpose, cheap to run black and white office printer.

I love this printer - bought it for work and so much faster than my last one. Plus can print on both sides of paper - Excellent. Very good value I think