Home > Consumer Reviews > HP Colour Laserjet Printer 2605dn

Excellent! Waits silently until I want printouts, then 0sec wakeup time and straight into action! Word to the wise, if you want to print card then set the paper type to card because this changes temperatures, print speeds etc - and of course it won't print card both sides because the corners are too tight (but you can use FinePrint to do this). Absolutely brilliant printer for almost no money!

I bought this for home use only which might be seen as a bit of an indulgence. And, of course, it's not a Multi-Function-Device (MFD) so, on paper, value seems even worse for the home user.
My reason for purchase was simple; I had an old HP Laserjet 4 which was colossal but ULTRA-RELIABLE and an expensive Epson Inkjet Printer. These were used for text and photo printing respectively. The Laserjet 4 was fast and a high quality item but too damn big (and 10 years old) and the Epson was the least reliable item I have ever owned.
Buying this printer meant I had a sort of MFD which could do everything my other printers could do. Brand was important - I work in the industry and I find HP printers ultra-reliable.
Print quality on the right quality paper is as good in B&W or colour as either of my old printers which shows how far Laser Printers have come.
I'm very pleased.
My only reservations (for home use)are that it still is rather big and running costs, while lower than an inkjet, are high. The slow start-up time (20 seconds before first print) are not a problem in the home.
I just know this item is not going to give me any trouble at all and that gives me no end of satisfaction and happiness.
Recommended.

Fantastic quality, great speed and a simply brilliant device. The cartridges are expensive but you can buy genuine HP ones from the USA for 2/3 of the cost shipped and VAT paid.

Also HPs service is first class. I now have two of these and one broke down (lines appeared on all the pages). HP diagnosed it over telephone and I shipped it to France for repair at their cost (they collected next day). On arrival they decided it wasnt fit for repair and within 4 days I had a brand new printer + free full set of cartridges. Totally faultless service.

Having had a Canon colour ink jet die after virtually no use and the toner cartridge expire on a 15 year old HP Laserjet 4L in the same weekend I thought it was time to have a look at colour lasers again. Although the cartridges for this printer are expensive, they are no more so than other HP cartridges and with 2000 sheets quoted for home use should last a reasonable length of time (just got to keep the children under control). The printer itself was delivered by Amazon by 0900 hrs on a Monday having ordered it on a Saturday afternoon! In 15 minutes it was set up and connected to my router as part of my home network - the installation of the printer bloatware on all connected PCs took longer but all PCs printed to it first time. Its speed of printing, quality of print (especially on gloss laser paper), quietness all make me wish I had done this long ago - the family no longer complain that the network printers connected through other PCs are down and I can go away knowing that the HP is just sat in the corner of my study waiting for a task. Now if it will just last as long as the HP 4L its purchase price will just become a memory.

I bought this printer to run from Ubuntu Linux (7.10 Gusty) via the network connection. It works great and it's really simple to setup on Linux !! Just System->Printing -- add printer, follow the wizard selecting the defaults. One gotch you need to set Tray 2 as default. Tray one is the manual single sheet feeder meaning you have to press the green button every time you print something.

This printer does not work on Vista with the drivers supplied by HP on the CD that comes with the printer or with the downloaded drivers from the HP web site specifically for Vista 64bit.

The phone number for HP support on their web site si also wrong :-( For this printer use 0870 8422 339 and a nice young lady will talk you through using the default MICROSOFT drivers in Windows. So much for using up to date drivers.

btw. On Linux the quality of mono and colour printing is very good. Even from apps running under Wine.