Has HP printers always been this bad?
Has HP printers always been this bad?
So my mother recently bought an ET-2800, By HP we had an HP printer before and we got a new one because the old one would not work with my sister's Windows 11 Laptop. So I had to set it up for my mother, the manual said you can use it without the app. But there was no way to physically do that. Anyway, I downloaded the app on my phone (android) and the app would not connect to the printer. So I used my mother's iPhone and it would connect. The setup process was stupid proof. And after I got it all full of ink, it was very painless. However, this is where the H in HP should stand for HELL. Because a few months go by and my sister and my mother need some papers printed. No problem. I thought to myself, so my sister tried to print it wirelessly. Couldn't find the printer, I said ok maybe it's a dumb driver, USB didn't work either. I asked my sister to send it to me, so I can print it on my w540 running rocky 9. Rocky picked up that I needed drivers and installed them. Wireless didn't work but wired showed up, I thought sweet I can just print the paper and get back to what I was doing. However, when I clicked print, the printer would grab the paper and run it though but not put ink on the paper. My mother asks me to forward the email to her to try to print it on her phone. I send it, and it prints, and the paper come out how it should with ink and the paper is finally printed.
After this experience with this printer, it makes me rather aggravated at this purchase, and no longer want to buy from HP. I have looked at Brother printers and there are no Proprietary ink cartage, and or laser printers. I purely wanted to talk about my experience with HP printers and would like to know what others have for a printer for recommendations, for when eventually HP kills support and makes it a paper weight, I've read many negative experiences with HP printer, specially from Lois Ross man and their anti consumer products.
15 years ago HP was among the best in the business. They made workhorse products that did millions of pages (and those old models continue to)
Today HP is a malware and telemetry company who won't let the average consumer use their printer without a logged-in HP account slurping telemetry about every aspect of their lives. Any consumer who buys a printer with the letter "e" in the model number is paying money to be spied on. Anyone who buys a non-"e" model is still doing so, but in a less VISUALLY obvious, and obnoxious way.
This is not random assumption. I'm a tech. Anyone who buys an HP Printer today and asks me to install them gets a fast education on why they shouldn't cut the packing tape on that box.
Buy Brother.
Richard Stallman was radicalized into forming the Free Software Foundation after fighting with printer drivers.
HP use to be good and reliable. Then it all went to hell for some reason. These days just buy that one Brother laser printer everyone has and you are good to go.
No, but they worked hard for it.
Once upon a time there was a company called Hewllet-Packard that made the best programmable calculators, vendors made the best demonstration: hitting the calc against the floor, picked up the pieces, assembled it and it worked again! (almost beat Texas Instrument). The same for printers, pcs, laptops, good mainframes (i learned fortran in a hp3000), almost any Hewlet-Packard electronic product was among the best. In 90s became HP, since then everything they made is a shame.
I will never buy a home printer at this point, especially not from HP. It's significantly cheaper and more convenient for me to go to a printing center next-door and get everything done for pennies.
If somehow I had to start printing things in mass quantities, the only option I would consider is something like the Epson EcoTank. You can clearly see how much ink is left, and you can refill it yourself too. They can't randomly just tell you that your cartridges are faulty, brick your device, or ship you a cartridge that has less than 5ml of liquid inside, but one that costs upwards of 50$ a piece
HP sucks donkey balls. Printer, computer, laptop, all-in-one, doesn't matter. Friends don't let friends by an HP.
That said, ET-2800 is an Epson brand printer, specifically the base-model "Eco-Tank" printer that uses bottles of ink instead of cartridges. HP makes a few under the "Super Tank" line. If that's the right model number, that might help explain driver issues if you have an Epson printer being controlled by HP drivers.
If you plan on keeping it, make sure to set a calendar reminder or set up a task to print at least one color page every month to keep the ink from drying out in the print head. If you decide to replace it, consider a brother laser, especially the black-and-white only models. They are tanks
OK, I know this post is pretty anti-HP which is totally fair, but honestly just stop buying the cheap inkjet printers. I discovered ink tank printers and they are a game changer.
In all seriousness, you might want to try out the HP Smart Tank printers. Almost exactly 2 years ago I bought a HP Smart Tank 7000. It is awesome, and not at all like you describe.
I wanted to be done with junk printers for good, so I set out to buy a laser jet. I can't remember how I found out about these ink tank printers, but they have pretty much the same benefits of laser printers. They print reliably and quickly, the ink lasts forever, and is not only cheap to replace, but you can use 3rd party ink (sold by the bottle. No cartridge means no chip!). My wife is a teacher and prints stuff all the time, including in color. 3 kids use it for homework assignments. I literally refilled the tanks 4 days ago for the very first time. (And only 2 of the 4 tanks at that--black and yellow were down to about a quarter tank.)
I use Linux exclusively and the printer works in Ubuntu and Pop OS out of the box, and without having to install additional drivers or some proprietary app that runs in the tray all the time.
Only downside for me is that sometimes it will go to sleep and my computers don't see it and I have to go over and turn it on/off again. It's pretty rare, and I don't know if it's actually a printer issue as much as a Linux issue.
I liked the printer so much, I bought one for my Mom this year in May. She's got Windows, and I told her I'd come over and help her set it up some time because she is not at all good with computers. Turns out I didn't need to because she set it up herself! (I did help her with the Android app though later on).
I can't help but gush about this thing. Kind of dumb, I know, since in 2023 you'd think all printers should be able to work like this at a minimum.
Just wait till you run into one of the HP printers that will not work until you sign up for the HP subscription service, and only use HP subscription ink cartridges, and only if it’s allowed to access the internet to report back that it’s printing. The subscription actually set the number of pages per month you are allowed to print, on the hardware you have them money for.
And it only works for a device with the HP app installed. Total garbage.
Honestly, pretty much, yes. Their home printers have basically always been this bad. But then inkjets are universally bad anyway.
HP's Business class printers for offices and schools are actually pretty good, they make a decent laser printer and they make a decent copier. But their $50 home models have always been garbage.
As someone who ran a computer lab for years, my advice is this: Always always always buy a laser printer. And personally I've had only mixed success with all the major manufacturers HP/Lexmark/Canon. I always recommend Brother because they mostly market to offices and corporations, and nobody wants to upset corporate partners, so they're incentivized to actually make a good product.
IT person here. Avoiding HP is a good idea. But a better idea is don't buy shitty cheap consumer level inkjet printers from any brand. Most of them have this sort of bullshit, although not usually as bad as HP does. Instead I suggest buy it for life. Get a nice color laser machine, spend a few hundred bucks, and you will have a printer that lasts until you die. I like the Canon MF743CDw, it's a little on the pricier side but it scans both sides of the paper in one pass. Also does color duplex printing.
If you don't want the extra size or weight of a color laser, get a black and white laser. How often do you really need color? And if you must get something cheaper, get one of the newer inkjet printers that use refillable ink bottles rather than cartridges, like there is an actual ink tank on the printer and you refill it with a squeeze bottle rather than replacing the cartridge.
ET-2800, By HP
Uhh, you sure that's an HP? Do you have the wrong model?
The ET series are EcoTanks by Epson, (Shaq's Printer) HP almost always uses 4 numbers and sometimes a letter at the end for models. Or Mxxx for Laser
Don't get me wrong, HP = Horse Piss, but the shade should be thrown at who deserves it.
🌎👨🚀🔫👨🚀
It's pretty much always been this way with the HP ones. Years ago when wireless printers were not the standard, we used to connect a printer to the family Windows PC and then share it on the network. We got a new one set it up, and the printer refused to be shared. Turns out HP had explicitly blocked network sharing in their Windows software driver for that printer. Never purchased another one since. Brother isn't perfect, but I have multiple 8+ year old Brother laser printers still in service right now and they "Just Work."
HP printers have been anti-consumer garbage for at least 10 years. Anyone who's buying one these days just isn't doing any research into the brand. They are THE example that gets brought up when people talk about this kind of shit.
Laserjets up until generation 5 were amazing. There are laserjet 4s still trucking away churning out pages. I personally had a LaserJet 4MP that I sold when I got married due to its extremely low wife acceptance factor (it was huge, loud and ugly. We both regret that decision because 20 years later it would probably still be working.
Basically, what Brother lasers are now is what HP laserjets used to be up until ~2004. We can debate the exact switchover year ad nauseum, but you get the idea.
It was fine before Carly Fiorina took over and brought in the 1980s MBA style of management (the same that killed or nearly killed quit a lot of household names).
Think of it as the first wave of enshittification, back in the 00s.
Ever since then, HP consumer-grade products have generally been pretty bad, especially (but not only) their printers.
Interestingly, the business-grade stuff was still pretty decent, but I'm not up to date on whether that is still the case.
Inkjet has been garbage since day one. Get a brother laser, use Noname toner from your local ink shop, be happy and never tinker with a paper printer again.
Eventually 2d printing with a 3d printer will be better than inkjets. Except not really. I'm kinda surprised I haven't heard of any open source paper printers.
Simple answer, ages ago there was a time when HP made okay printers. In the past decade or more, they have not. Stay away.
The bloatware and software stack is just abysmally bad.
They were actually taken to court over their machines breaking down and disabling functions that were ok. For example, your cartridge head is broken, but you can't use the scanner either because the software shuts down all functions.
The HP LaserJet 4MP was pretty decent, but that came out in 1993.
Well yeah, I mean not always but for probably 20 years their laser printers have been terrible, and their inkjets have been not consumer friendly for even longer than that.
For instance, I once had an HP color laser printer that was designed in a way that toner dust would build up on the prism and mirror, causing streaks and splotches to be printed on the page. The official recommendation was to buy a new printer, and the local repair shop said is it even though it’s a known issue and they’re capable of fixing it, getting it apart and putting all the pieces back together is such a time consuming hassle that it would be just as cheap to buy a new one. A $300 color laser printer. If I did it successfully, I would need to do it again in a year or two anyway. I now have a Brother; it’s black and white only but has been rock solid.
I did see on The Other Site a discussion from a year or two ago that Brother isn’t so great anymore, but the consensus seemed to be that they’re still better than anything other than maybe those Epson printers with the ink reservoirs.
I remember that my high school, college, and first couple of jobs had amazing HP laser printers, but sadly those days are gone and the company is a shell of what it used to be. I would not buy an HP printer at this point.
Sorry for your suffering but welcome to the club.
HP's inkjets have always been cantankerous, but the business printers they made in the late 90s were tanks.
I worked for HP for a while in college. HP Rep. It paid like 14 an hour when minimum wage was 6 and I just got to stand around in best buy or office max, etc, selling printers and training staff on features. It was retail but without all the bullshit like cleaning the bathrooms or running the register or needing to hit sales targets, etc. It was a real kushy job.
About halfway through my time there HP started pushing ePrint, or other cloud features, and ink subscriptions, etc. That was about the time I think their quality really started to nosedive. Printers have always been printers (brother notwithstanding, but now it's starting to slip with inclusion of more invasive drm and ink subscriptions) but before the onset of cloud based stuff, it seemed, I dunno, better? Not great, but better
I've only bought Brother laser printers for 15 years now, and have no intention of doing anything else. Never again, HP.
We have bought a HP printer about maybe 7-8 years ago(don't know the model) and it just works. No annoying drivers, no "can't do shit because of low ink" and you can even use non HP ink cartridges. The only problem is, that sometimes the scanner doesn't work properly so that the document is literally unreadable. After cleaning the scanner glass 7 times it may work. Luckyly this doesn't happens very often.
Yes.
Back when they were Hewlett-Packard, maybe not, but HP have basically always been shit.
Yup all HP printers are like this now. But so are all the others. I bought a Canon because it said it had support for Linux but about a month later they retracted support for Linux and it wouldn't print properly anymore. Only black and white.
So I've had to install windows 10 in a VM just so I can print in colour 😡
I think ALL the printers are now a scam. Like shaver cartridges.
In future I'd rather buy a dedicated scanner and use an external service for printing.
LaserJet 4 was a tank. Everything since has been various flavours of mediocre. Buy Brother.
They went to shit when they switched to a massive, bloated shitty software and driver package instead of just drivers. Wish I could remember what year that was, but it was like a 500MB download. I think remember I saw the package was over 1GB at one point. To run a f’n printer. And of course it was shitty. Connection problems, wouldn’t print when you sent the job, shitloads of useless tools that constantly wanted you to buy or subscribe to printer ink sales, etc. They made the driver harder and harder to find and pushed their bloatware.
Now you can find just the driver, 81MB or so, but they’re fucking with you over printer ink by trying to prevent you from refilling with 3rd party ink, using 3rd party cartridges, making it so you can’t print just black if you’re out of other colors, etc.
Cheetoh studios explains it all very clearly: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dgIAWko4QxU
I remember a needle printer from my work in the early 90s that worked endlessly. I think it was from the early 70s.
I have an HP Printer and it sucks. It deliberately decided not to print anymore if I don't pay them 3,99€ a month
HP inkjets are horrendous. I absolutely refuse to buy them because they are absolute junk. They have always worked, and I could connect to them with no problems with Android atleast. Windows finally could connect once I had assigned it a permanent local IP through the router. Though Linux had problems...
But the build quality of HP inkjets are absolute horrendous and I probably can only get 6 months out of them and probably spent more on ink cartridges in a year before the stupid printers suffer a complete hardware failure and need to be replaced.
The HP mfp 183fw colour LaserJet printer however... It is my second forray into HP laserjets since my dad's original black and white Hewlett Packard LaserJet beast from the early 90's.
But I feel like I got incredibly lucky after doing some research into it (plus only thing I could get locally at the time since I needed a new printer immediately.) It cost more than any of the inkjets I have owned in the past. The toner carts definitely cost more... But it is still going strong a year and a half after purchasing it and I have only had to replace the black toner cart only a week or two ago. Have not had to replace the colour toner carts yet. It also just works on Linux which I am happy about.
Like I said, I may have just gotten incredibly lucky though, I mean getting a year and a half out of it is still more than I expected and the money I saved because toner lasts much longer than ink.
When and if this printer gives up, I will probably get an Epson laserjet.
I have the same problem with mine. It literally never recognizes the printer wirelessly unless I turn it off and on, unplug, push the wifi button, and cancel and restart the print at least a few times.
I also found out that I'm being charged by the number of pages I print. When I signed up, I was under the impression that I would be charged for the printer ink. Apparently it's $4/month for 20 pages or some shit like that and then $1 per every ten pages after that? How the fuck can they charge per page? Aren't the ink cartridges what run out and need to be repurchased? But even though I get charged every month automatically, whether I use the pages or not, I don't get sent new ink until I request it. Or buy it? And I magically lost some discount I was supposed to get after purchasing through Amazon.
The whole thing has been a shit show. Plus the printer itself is the flimsiest piece of thin plastic that weighs nothing. I hope the FTC sues the shit out of them.
HP – Hell-Powered
HP printers are just bad. Their Linux drivers (HPLIP) are flimsy and sometimes break on updates. They come with GUI tools still stuck on Qt 4. Their hardware's quality is also pitiful and the marketing approarch is outirght evil. I got an Envy printer recently (not my choice). It came with instructions to set it up via cloud with an HP account. Why shouldn't I be able to use a damn printer without creating yet another useless account and giving out personal information is beyond me. At last I discovered the USB port (covered by a sticker which had the word USB crossed out) and managed to set up the printer after the fifth attempt or so, because CUPS didn't recognize it and so didn't the HPLIP setup tool. And then the next time I tried to use the printer it just refused... Then I gave it away because my patience had finally run out. Don't mess with HP if you value your time and nerves.
I'm not even going toreadd your post. Not to be rude, but becuase: 1) yes, HP is that bad. And 2) buy a Brother laser printer.
HP = "Have Problems" Stay away from that company's products, that includes everything, not just the printers.
https://youtu.be/ACX_VfsjkZA https://youtu.be/KGszSj0BLeg (and more)
If you want well articulated rage against the hp machines, do follow Louis Rossmann.
Right to repair matters!
No. They used to be extremely good
Yes
In my later years it was Lenovo old and new after trying to accommodate a flashy Asus laptop one of the office staff had to have. It didn't work with any of the desktop docks and there was no FN lock. After that I preferred even older off lease Lenovo over anything else. Tried to accommodate a Macbook for the same user later on and then said she was on her own for that. I said I hadn't used a Mac since they were in a lovely solid grey case with a monochrome screen and floppy drive built in and it's wasn't one of the M&M shaped ones from her youth either.
Thankfully I was one of the owners so I could at that stage 😇
Hi, I'm glad I came across this post! I have a super super old HP printer. They were the best. I have to say mine is at least 20 years old, pre-wireless. It's recently had problems and I'm not sure I can fix it. I need a new printer.
I have heard of Brother printers but not always been one of the top printers - everyone likes Canon, HP, Epson.
I think I'll look more into them because of the non-proprietary ink. The ink of these printers is sometimes more than getting a new printer itself. It does not make sense.
I'm mostly an HP person since the start, so I'll still be looking into these too. Hope you have better luck with yours.
To be honest, no, they weren't always this bad. I had an HP Deskjet 500 waaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy back in the day that was pretty much bulletproof. Can't remember what happened to it? Must have lost it in a move or something. :(
https://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=314
"The early DeskJet printers are still very reliable as of 2014. These printers have external power supplies, built in to the power cord. The museum has more than two dozen of these power supplies, and they all work fine. In the last ten years, we have seen over fifteen of these printers. All except one was fully functional."
I bought a couple of new HP laserjets M110, those are tiny laser printers and usually just do their job so I'm ok with HP.
But those M110... those are pain. After installing them with USB and printing fine for the first day, the second day they stopped working, at all. They still gladly take any print job fine, they communicate with Windows. But they do not print anything... until you connect them to the Wi-Fi and create an HP account so they can push to you their brand new monthly ink plan.
Never got rid of a printer so quickly.
I had a Deskjet 2500 some years ago. It lasted less than 2 years.
Catridges were expensive af and lasted about 20 pages. Maybe less.
In less than 2 years it started to print blank pages or pages with little ink on it. I didn't find a way to fix it, not even with new catridges. So I threw it away and promised to myself to never buy HP again.
Every HP printer I owned over the last two decades was a huge pile of crap. I hate printers now and will never buy one ever again. I go to the library to print.
For A4, I always recommend Brother printers.
If you can spend for a laser printer, it is SOO worth it.I had a fancy inkjet. The problem is I didnt use it often, so when I did use it I got really bad result.
It was also slow, and the ink was expensive.So, I thought about buying a new one.
Fresh ink and replacement print heads were going to be more than the cost of a new printer anyway.I looked into it and bought a brother A4 colour laser. A quick Google shows them to be currently ~£250.
I have had that printer for years. I rarely print anything. But when I do, the image is as good as when I bought it.Checking the printer stats, I've printed 430 pages. Wear and tear is at 98% (IE 2% used of drum/belt/fuser/feeder lifespan).
The black toner is 40%, and the colour toners are 80%.
3rd party toners are £30 per color, and apparently yield 2500 pages. So more expensive than 3rd part ink cartridges, but the yield is significantly more!
Overall more expensive. But the reliability is outstanding!Edit:
Well, all this printer talk, I thought I should update the firmware.
Brother only provide a dmg for OSX 10.7.
So, that's a pretty huge drawback!
Edit again:
Nope, I'm an idiot. Found the link for W10 update tool.
All updated, and over the network too!my HP's have been great, however I have a laser, I would never buy an ink jet. And yah They are so much better than brother,
I'll never buy HP again. They've made it their profession to get progressively shitter when it was a low bar to begin with. Even their other products are doing the same.
A year after we gave up our LJ4 - and just after its 20th birthday too! - we realized it was a mistake, and we bought a ln m404n.
The m404n is an Ethernet LaserJet monochrome printer.
It seems to work well so far, but I am concerned it'll act up if I find some alt-sourced toner.
I have an HP LaserJet 6L from like 1997. I recently managed to get it working reliably after decades of struggle and frustration that drove me to tears on occasion. So yes, as far as I can tell they've always been this bad.
HP=helvetin paska
In my experience, printers in general are terrible, but HP LasetJet Enterprise m series printers are excellent.
HP printers have always been shit nothing new.. smh..
Certainly YMMV. I have an HP 8720 and it works wirelessly perfectly, Windows finds it and installs it automatically. Including the scanner. Even works from my wife's Chromebook. I can print from my Android phone without any issue.
I do pay for the HP ink subscription, but it's only 99p per month, and that's 15 pages with rollover and that suits our need 99% of the time.
‘HAVE’ HP printers always been this bad?
Please.
HPITA
I knew an old guy, through a volunteer organization, he worked on the first printer made by HP, a chain printer, letters on like a bicycle chain. He also was one of the designers of the first laser printers that used toner and a laser to put a charge on a rotating drum. He still had a couple prototypes in his garage of some of those models he worked on and they still worked.
The obsolescence, them breaking and generally going to shit, that was all after him to drive revenue. He swore up and down how that shit had no reason to be so poorly designed and engineered. Putting an image on paper shouldn't be complicated. These problems were solved a long time ago.
My LaserJet III was the shit. $80 in 1998 for a cartridge that lasted almost a year and page after page of flawless prints.
Now I have a little portable 400 because it was free and I needed a portable battery powered printer. Still $40 for two cartridges that I hope last 6 months.
My Epson Ecotank rocks
Printers are just trash. A Laserjet b&w is the only thing worth getting for home use. There's no color home printers that can compete with a professional commercial printer, home office printers are more expensive and worse quality.
Huge Pain? Here they mean Why Cry translated.
Lois Ross man
Louis Rossmann