HP Color LaserJet 1600 Review

Overall Rating

Inexpensive, entry level colour laserjet printer, with good all round page performance and clarity. The color sphere toners, with image ret technology do create very impressive press-quality documents.

Unbelievably expensive toner cartridges, 'intelligent management' not very intelligent at all. Seems to only accept 3-4 spooled jobs a time, any more than that and the print jobs get lost/frozen. I put this down to the very limited 16Mb memory, although the software actually only makes 13Mb available, which is even more terrible!

Time, once again to replace my printer

I had a Cannon Inkjet i250 printer for about a year, before it packed up on me in April of 2006. I decided that I had enough of inkjet printers, as they only seemed to last me 12 months or so, no matter how expensive the brand was. Indeed, before that I had a HP combined fax, copier, and scanner inkjet that packed up just outside its warranty (I am sure they are designed to pack up like that).

So I had enough, and decided that I would plump for a colour laserjet, thinking that it would be less expensive to run, and more reliable.

HP to the rescue
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I didn't want to spend more than £200, as frankly it's just a printer and I have better things to spend my hard earned money on. I saw just the one, a HP 1600 for £169.00 at Comet. I asked the attendant to talk me through the printer, and he told me that the 1600 is taking the printer market by storm. I asked him why, and he said that it's the first sub-£200 printer that can give you high quality colour printing, matching printers 3 or 4 times its price range. He explained HP's image ret technology was responsible for this, and it wouldn't be long before toner colour printers would take over the expensive to run inkjets.

Subsequently, I purchased the printer for £169.00, with an extra £30 three year extended warranty, so I was quite chuffed about being a penny under budget with a 3 year warranty colour laserjet. :)

Getting Expensive
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The printer was bought through my own company, StockClean. I print off a lot of invoices, as my company manage window cleaning contracts across the UK. I was sure that not only would it print out the invoices faster, but they would be higher quality and superior looking. Indeed, I was not disappointed, and for the next 3 months we printed 900, full colour invoices off the machine, and used it for general admin, like contracts, and letters to customers.

What I found particularly impressive was the way the machine 'knows' how much toner is left in the cartridge. Even on the supplied limited toner cartridges, it said that we had another 600 pages left of black toner. Then, all of a sudden that figure dropped dramatically to 200, like literally overnight. Surprised, I thought, well 200 isn't bad, it should see us through over the next couple of weeks, and I prepared to place an order with my supplier for toner in the middle of the month. Then after printing only 30 or so pages of invoices, the machine stopped, and the screen said that supplies were empty. I had another 10 invoices to print, plus two new contracts to get out of the door. And no working printer!

I ended up going to PC World in Staines to get a replacement toner cartridge. They didn't have any, and they rang Hays, who were showing two in stock. So I drove over to Hays, only to discover that they didn't have any. I eventually got to Staples, and they had 5. So I purchased one, at the whacking price of £65 + VAT (ouch)!

Nearly three quarters of a wasted day later, and £65 lighter, I got back to the office and installed the toner. The printer did a lot of whirring and fumbling for the next 10 minutes, and then continued the printing. At least Yellow, Cyan, and Magenta were all above 50%, so at least no more expenses like that, well that's what I thought.

Literally, the next day, Magenta and Cyan had shot down to something like 10%, so now I'm going to have to spend an additional £140 + VAT to replace these as well. I might as well have bought another new 1600, as it would have been 20 quid cheaper!

What adds insult to injury is that in total I have printed about 1300 pages in three months, and so far it's going to cost me £374.00. That's an unacceptable £0.29 per page! Originally the printer stated that I would get 2900 pages from the supplies, costing me a more acceptable £0.12 per page.

Members' Comments onmacman's Review

• Partridges 200 on 16th Nov 2006

  Firstly, great review on the HP Laserjet 1600. I have had the same experiences as you, with a number of different printer models and manufacturers over the years. I've come to the conclusion that printers just aren't built to last. I've had a HP PSC 1215 for the last 2 years, and touch wood, it's still hanging in there after a number of problems, but I just avoid using it now, and it's only really there for emergencies.