HP Colour Laserjet 2605DN - any horror stories?

[ffutures]

The colour laser (Xerox Phaser 6100DN) I bought a few years ago has started to give problems - I'm getting some repetitive marks that only seem to affect colour printing, and don't seem to be the toner cartridges, which I suspect means that the transfer belt is on its way out, and that's a majorly expensive part. If I were 100% sure that that's the problem I'd buy one, but they're no longer made and difficult to find, and I don't want to spend £60 or so then find that it's something else. There are a couple of ideas for repairing it that I want to try, such as cleaning the belt if I can do so safely, but given that you can get new colour lasers for not much more I think I need to start thinking in terms of replacing the printer rather than repairing it.

For the moment I can manage with mono printing, but the phaser is a duplexing colour network printer, and all of those features are useful, so sooner or later I'll want to replace it.

The printer I keep coming back to on this is the HP Colour Laserjet 2605DN, which has the same general features, but it costs £280 plus delivery and the toner is about £50 a cartridge. On the other hand I can be fairly sure that the consumables won't be discontinued any time soon, which is always a plus. Does anyone know anything about it?

Comments

[pauldrye.livejournal.com]

I use its "little cousin", the 1600, and -- apart from the cost of the toner cartridges -- like it quite a lot. I've no idea how closely related they are in their internal workings, mind you.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[draconin.livejournal.com]

I have the B/W little cousin the Laserjet 1010. Highly reliable, no problems installing and the cartridge has lasted *forever*.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that's helpful.

[armb.livejournal.com]

I have a 2600N, which was cheaper but isn't duplex. I'm happy enough with it.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

How is it on things like CD labels?

[armb.livejournal.com]

I've never tried printing labels. Sorry.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I like my 2605dn, but I think I need to clean it to make the little ghost image go away in my black and white copies. Very annoying to me. We haven't had to change any toner yet, so haven't faced that bite.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Ghost image? That doesn't sound too good...

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

It doesn't look too good, either. Usually it's down near the bottom of a page, and it looks like something from the top of the page printed off onto a roller and came back as a screen of itself.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

OK, that sounds like a fairly common laser printer thing, not a defect of the particular model. You might want to get into the maintenance menus and print a cleaning page, it could help.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'll have you know I was in charge of the system that printed thousands of copies a week for ten years, and that I've worked for a quick printer where I was responsible for clean, well-maintained copiers, and, well, thanks for the suggestion. I'm printing a cleaning page now.