HP HP CLR INKJET CP1700 (HP-C8108A)

HP Color Inkjet Printer CP 1700

HP CLR INKJET CP1700 (HP-C8108A) Review, by Dan Littman July 23, 2002

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• Reviewed by: chucktr_9220799166

  Strengths: Still going strong after 6 years. Prints fast and impresses my friends. (Purchased in Feb of 2002)

  Weaknesses: My printer also developed that high squeal mentioned by another reviewer. Only it took almost a year. I should have but didn't take it to the HP shop. Other than that it is working great.

  Overall: This printer has produced fine documents and pictures for my family and friends. With the proper software pictures can be printed that are excellent. My family from back east sends e-mails with pics and we pick and choose which ones to print and place in our albums or on the refrig. It does get costly in the ink cartridge department. Four cartridges at $35 a piece can hurt. I have not experienced the "half" use mentioned by others. However, it is a problem when you want to print in black/white and an empty color cartridge prevents you from printing. Have done double sided manually, printed on the magnetic signs for cars, envelopes and other stuff. It is a pretty rugged printer. We live in dusty Arizona and I do not constantly dust my equipment... but it still works!

• Reviewed by: PscottN

  Strengths: Large format; relatively quick printing; Print utitlies

  Weaknesses: Poor paper handling, particularly from second tray; Defective LCD screen; Inaccurate ink level readings; Color gamut is not as large as anticipated

  Overall: This printer worked fine for moderate to light usage for about 2 years. After the first year, however, the printer's LCD screen started to fade to the point now, where any message there is illegible. Is not a problem as long as nothing goes wrong. But a few days ago, something did, inexplicably. Being out of warrenty I had to pay HP Support $40 in order to talk to a technician who informed me my least expensive repair option would cost $275 (more than half the cost of the printer!)I had higher hopes for this unit when I bought it. Two and half years of light to moderate use seems like a short life span for such a machine.Epson probably next time.

• Reviewed by: blouwagie

  Strengths: Great when it works, Great in handling multiple paper sizes.

  Weaknesses: Buggy hardware, buggy software.

  Overall: Our recently added HP color inkjet printer cp1700 worked fantastic in the beginning, great output, fast printing but slow first page. But after two months it started making loud high pitch noises with every head passing, HP support knows the issue, but it's not easy to resolve. The postscript option, which I bought as well, is not worth its money, since it keeps crashing on Windows XP. Then more recently the printer started complaining that printer cartridges are empty when in fact they are half full, really annoying when you want to print black only but the printer insist that you need to replace yellow. In short an ill behaved machine that works great, only when it feels like it.

• Reviewed by: earlfinn

  Strengths: FAST!!! Excellent print quality - color & b&w - oversized prints - 4 separate ink cartridges, very economical.

  Weaknesses: Occasionally feeds multiple pages while printing double sided in quantity.

  Overall: This is the printer I've dreamed of. Does a great job printing double sided color copies in quantity. I have printed over 1000 pages in 2 1/2 months, including: wedding invitations, wedding bulletins, shower invitations, church bulletins, oversized banners, posters, flyers, calendars, photographs, Word and Excel documents. Excellent color print quality and speed. I have not yet consumed an entire ink cartridge - much cheaper ink consumption than my previous inkjets. The only problem I have encountered is that it occasionally feeds multiple pages during volume double sided printing. (I did not purchase the duplex unit; I feel certain that this would eliminate the multiple feed problem.) I love this printer!!!

• Reviewed by: Altaira9

  Strengths: Wide format

  Weaknesses: doesn't work properly

  Overall: The original cp1700 was a disaster. Began indicating after only 75 copies that all ink cartridges needed replacing, then all printer heads needed replacing. Crashed constantly. Finally all lights began blinking rapidly and printer shut down totally. HP agreed to send me a new printer (not telling me it would be a refurb). Second printer had different problems. Wouldn't print envelopes properly. Wouldn't print properly at lower resolution settings. Was told by tech support that I had to use Word rather than Publisher. Now HP says it is out of warranty because it is a refurb (after less than 60 days). They offered me 25% of cost to return it & buy a more expensive machine from them (at list price). I would never again purchase a HP product.