Home > Consumer Reviews > HP DeskJet 5550

I bought this printer, mainly for printing photos taken with my digital camera. And with the HP glossy photo paper it does a stunningly good job of that. If you shop around for photo quality paper, you can end up with a good alternative to high-street photo developing and printing.

The surprising thing is that the printer does a rather good job on day-to-day printing like emailed receipts, the odd word processed document and PDF. It is very quick and I couldn't ask for better quality printing, even on cheap photocopier paper.

It was very quick and easy to set up, even with my own complication of having to make it available over the network. The HP Printer Assistant also makes updating the printer drivers very simple, so keeping up to date with the best possible quality from the printer is no hassle at all.

I'd certainly recommend this printer for anyone who wants to print their digital photos, or just have a quick colour printer in the house/office. The real bonus is that it does both jobs very well.

I've bought this printer recently and I was impressed. It took 60 seconds to install the drivers on my Powerbook and it was ready to go. I tried printing on matt and glossy paper and the quality of the photographs is stunning.

This printer has an option to replace the black cartridge to a special photo printing cartridge, which makes the quality of the prints even better. This special cartridge is made of 3 smaller containers. Black, light magenta and light cyan. When you print with this cartridge, you rival the printing houses 4 color process printing with the special 6 color printing. This is especially a good feature with light images. With 4 color printing you will be able to see small dots of ink when you look close to the paper. Not with this baby.

It also prints regular documents on regular paper pretty fast and in nice quality.

I was a man with a problem. I needed a photo quality colour deskjet printer with a parallel conection. All the specific Photo printers I looked at were USB only. I was in trouble until Hewlett Packard recommended the 5550 to me. I took the plunge and paid out less than £150 for the printer. The choice has paid off, giving me superb quality colour prints from my digital camera images. Hewlett Packard told me that it's the HP photoret IV technology that gives the quality of print. I don't really mind what it is, but it works!
I found the set-up simple, with a CD ROM guiding me gently through the procedure. I was ready to print within 15 minutes of opening the delivery box. The same CD contains photo printing software to get the most from your printer.
My recomendation to any buyer would be to order the HP No. 6658 photo cartridge with the printer. It is the cartridge that gives that fantastic finish to the photo's, but for some reason does not come as standard.
If there is a deskjet printer out there that gives better prints, I would love to see it.

-Easy to install
-Parallel port and USB
-soooo quiet!
-Fast enough and amazing print quality
-Print-heads on the ink cartridge maintain great print quality
-Blue sensor for auto-paper recognition is handy, looks cool in the dark ;) and can be desabled if prefered.
-good size thanks to "bellow" paper tray.

After two bad printers, I finaly realise I should have gone for HP a long time ago!!!

I bought this printer over a year and a half ago, and have been very impressed. It still works like new. I'm a light to medium user of printers, yet I have only just bought my third B&W cartridge and my second colour one!

The print quality is very, very good. The software is simple to install and use.

This printer is one of the best things I have ever bought on Ebay, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone. A bargain!