HP manufactures all sorts of devices including computers, laptops, digital cameras and printers. You can safely say all of the above offer good quality and users are generally happy with buying HP. But the area in which Hewlett Packard seems to shine the most is color laser printers.




The company’s Laserjet line promises to offer fast, high-quality and high-volume laser printers in either the color or monochrome variety. The moment you set your eyes on the HP 5500dn color laser printer the only thing you’ll be thinking about is how big and boxy looking it is. While not the biggest of this type, it would be a wise idea to sit your 5500dn down in a specific corner and just leave it there for the whole period of use. Its 132 pounds will discourage anyone from lifting it up by themselves and a great idea is o bring along at least two people when handling this specific printer. The large size of this printer did happen for a reason though. It’s meant to be an ideal printer for small offices with high volume printing needs.

The engine in this printer uses a single-pass design which means that monochrome and color printing speeds are about the same. From this point of view, the 5500dn fits best in an office that needs color printing as much or more than black text. Setting the HP 5500dn color laser printer up is pretty easy. A graphical display provides animated illustration and helps the user understand what steps to take in order to do a specific task. Since it has networking features the 5500dn is pretty easy to configure and use on a network as well. The maximum resolution of the unit is 600dpi. What’s not so good about it is the printing speed of 22 pages per minute that’s pretty slow compared to newer printers on the market.

As many employees in small working environments know, there are days when the speed of the printer can make a whole lot of difference and boost or lower your productivity considerably. Bad points continue on to paper capacity. A total capacity of only 600 sheets means you’ll come to refill it with paper pretty often. It’s not a deal breaker but could become annoying at a point. Printing quality is worthy of a HP laser however. The text is perfectly black and crisp while details on photographs are pretty good.

Overall the HP Color LaserJet 5500dn is a bit old on the market and has lost its shine when competing against the new releases on the market. Still, it’s a good choice for small offices with more modest needs, looking for a more affordable solution for printing. It’s highly recommended however that you look somewhere else if you put a lot of value on good image quality of fast printing speeds.

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