HP Laserjet 5P: My Old Reliable Workhorse!

My Hewlett Packard Laserjet 5P gets a lot of use and has never failed me yet. I use the printer for both business and personal purposes, and have never been disappointed in the print quality or the reliability of the hardware. After 7 years of consistent use, the printer is still going strong, producing quality output.

PRINT QUALITY

This printer is designed for black printing. The print is consistently crisp and clear enough to use for business letters, brochures, and manuscripts. I’ve used the HP 5P to print labels, envelopes, instruction manuals, and copies of PowerPoint presentations for distribution to seminar participants. When printing the latter, the transformation from color to black print produces a perfectly acceptable print quality. A real test for me is how a printer reproduces on transparencies for overhead projectors, since many printers seem to blur on those. The HP 5P passes the test quite well, delivering clear print that looks just as good projected on a screen as on paper.

SPEED

Though not as fast as more recent additions to the Hewlett Packard laserjet family, the printer’s speed is adequate. HP advertises 6 pages per minute. When printing clipart or photos, it might hesitate for a few seconds when the signal is first sent to the printer, but then it prints quickly and smoothly, not hanging up the computer or hesitating any further, even when doing multiple copies.

PAPER HANDLING

The 5P has two printer trays. The first is for standard letter-sized paper. This tray can hold in excess of 300 sheets of paper without pulling through double sheets or getting jammed. The tray slides in and out and fills easily.

The second tray is a drop-down in the front of the printer that accommodates legal paper, envelopes, labels, and other odd-sized formats. An adjustable guide allows for sizing of the paper or envelopes. I also use the drop-down tray to print 2nd sides of two-sided pages. When doing this, the printer works fine if 20 pages are inserted, but might jam or pull two pages at once with more than that. This is the only drawback that I have experienced.

The output tray, on top of the printer, can handle about 150 sheets before the paper starts to fly out of the tray.

Jams are infrequent. When one does occur, extrication of the paper is fairly easy. A button on the right side of the printer flips the top up, and a flap in back folds down. With these two openings, one has access to the moving parts of the printer and the areas where paper is likely to jam.


TONER

Likewise, inserting and removing the toner cartridge is simple via the flip top opening. The cartridge slides in with little effort, and it’s easy to tell whether it’s in place, because the printer top won’t close if the cartridge isn’t correctly inserted.

Toner cartridges run anywhere from $65 to $75. I’ve used refurbished cartridges, which result in a fairly good quality; however, the never-used cartridges provide consistently darker print, so I prefer those. I’ve never measured the life of a cartridge, but I can go months with moderate usage before the need to replace one arises.


SERVICE AND UPKEEP

In the 7 years that I’ve owned the printer, I’ve never had to have it professionally serviced. I occasionally brush out any accumulations of paper dust and toner specks, and that seems to have kept the equipment in good working order. Because this is an older model, it might require shipping back to HP for service.


DURABILITY

In addition to a lot of use, my 5P has gotten a lot of abuse as well. Several years ago, I used to lug it with me on weekends to craft fairs. The constant jostling, hooking and unhooking, and occasional thud onto a floor or table never affected its performance or reliability. I’ve also moved it around quite a bit in my home.

HP advertises that the 5P can handle between 10,000 and 20,000 copies per month, so it's a printer that is ideal for small business or personal use.


FINAL RECOMMENDATION

I don’t think I’ve left any doubt as to my opinion of the HP Laserjet 5P. It’s a workhorse with high reliability, above average quality, and consistency.

I’m going to miss it when it dies.