Good print quality but wouldn't buy another unless I had no better options
Pros:
Good print quality, relatively reliable paper feeding.
Cons:
Too expensive per page, questionable chip on consumables tactic, slow color printing.
The Bottom Line:
Good print quality of you don't mind the cost of consumables, otherwise look for another brand.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
I am a computer tech for a medium size company. I purchased an HP Color Laserjet 2550N for my company about eight months ago. Back then it was $699. I have seen it advertised lately for $399. I also bought a Brother HL-2700CN color laser printer that was a direct competitive model for the HP at a lower cost, something like $449 after a rebate.
The HP wins at print quality. Areas of a single color, such as bar charts, are more solidly filled with less variation that the Brother. The HP is much better at light color hues, especially with text on a colored background.
The HP loses big time in cost per page and really makes me mad at what they do... so much so that I think what they do is, or should, be illegal. Each toner cartridge and the drum have a chip that counts down to 0 and the printer refuses to work until you replace it. The toner could have 1,000 more pages left in it but you won't get it. The drum could last 10,000 more pages before the print quality starts to suffer but you won't get it. The Brother warns you when it thinks the consumables need replacing but won't suddenly refuse to print because of it.
The HP is also much slower in pages per minute when printing color as it has to multipass the paper for each of the colors, whereas the Brother does it in one pass.
The next time I need to buy a color laser I will look closely at what non-HP printers are available and if they will fill my need before buying an HP.
EXTRA NOTE: For anyone who has or buys a color laser printer (this applies to inkjets too), I suggest installing the printer twice in Windows, label one for color printing and the other for black only printing. Then for the black only one, dig around in the settings to turn off ALL options that might cause the printer to use or think it's using color for printing. I found out that printing what looks like a black only page to you will result in the printer counting it as a color page and subtracting 1 from the page life of all toner cartridges, not just the black toner. Also it will subtract 4 from the page count of the drum, not one. Such options would include disabling high quality shades of grey, which actually mix color with the black, rather than just varying the black dots.
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