HP review: printer is hopeless! 49

The Office Jet Pro K550 is not , by any means, a brainless design. I personally service these printers and the design is flawless. The only problem that the K550 ever encounters is a short printhead life, which can be fixed quickly by simply cleaning the nozzles on the printheads. The author of the complaint obviously knows nothing about the printer and needs to take more of an in-depth look at it before they decide to trash talk a quality HP product.
Please think before you decide to give a poor report to a product that has created ease in the work place of thousands.

Sean...HP Certified.

Brand new HP Officejet Pro K550dtwn printer, took out of box, assembled as per manual, put paper in it, turned it on, the paper jam light turns on. The software for the printer says that the printer has a paper jam. The paper has never left the tray and the print head does not move back and forth by itself when the motor makes noise. Removed and reassembled everything with no change. Followed all steps listed for troubleshooting in manual and online on HP.com webpage titled: Identifying a Hardware Issue - Quick Check for the HP Officejet Pro K550 Printers Series. Unit was purchased new online so I can't take it back to a local store. Shipping was $35. Any suggestions from the guy who services these all the time? Is there a known connection that someone forgot to plug in during assembly? Thanks.

I regret the purchase of this printer. I have more paper jambs on this printer than 15 or 20 other printers I have owned. When a page is printed, a load "KLUNK" is heard throughout the office. Then it prints. With Windows XP Professional, and Word, when the print button is pressed, it takes 5 to 7 seconds before the "KLUNK" and then it starts. Don't try to tell me this is "state of the art", it is poor performance, time wise, poor paper handling, and I believe I have to change the ink cartridges more often. Also, I know that the industry stops the printers when the ink get low, but there should be a way to print with a low ink cartridge. In a pinch, I know there are a few pages left in the cartridge.

This is, by far, the worst printer I have ever had.

Sean,

The officejet k550 SUCKS! I don't care if you work on them or not. I partially agree with K Pani. The design is ok but the operation SUCKS. These models are always jamming up and they go through ink like crazy.

I agree - Printer is a month old, Jams and now is useless as it only prints on half of a page, tried this on multiple computers, same issue. Flashed the firmware, same issue - Must have bad paper sensors .

I have a case open with Hp right now!

Purchased the Pro K550 online. Stopped printing black quite quickly. Tried cleaning printhead first, but did not solve. Changed cartridge, but still same problem. Further, it does not help that the instruction manual tells how to install the printhead when printer is first received, but not how to install new, replacement printheads - the printhead carrier is in installation position when new, but needs to be repositioned to install a replacement printhead - and there is no guide how to do this.

Wow, I have a list of complaints a mile long about the K550 - and more visits to HP support than I can even count. When the K550 works, it's just fine - but numerous paper jams and terrible print head issues do make it a "brain-dead" design. A zillion firmware updates is a sign that something has gone terrible wrong in design.

I have received over 10 replacement print heads from HP and 2 or 3 new K550 printers, all under warranty. How does HP make any money on this? Now they are telling me to flash the firware again, and the utility refuses to work on either of my computers. So they are offering to send me another free printer. I just want one that works!

By the way, Mark Busby, I discovered that the secret to getting access to the printheads is to 1) open the lid 2) press and hold the paper feed button for about 10-15 seconds. The printheads will move to the left where you can remove them. I recommend a manual cleaning with a good cleaning solution, not just the "clean printhead" option from the dialog.

Bottom line - this printer is like your dream date, only with an IQ of 15...

Update!

I just spoke with a technician at HP (a person who spoke English and was very easy to understand - from now on, I'm through with first-level, poor-English tech support ...) He said that yes, there are issues with the K550 printhead design.

Apparently the wrong algorithm was used in the K550 printhead design - the black ink, which dries faster than color inks, was supposed to be handled differently by the printer, but was not. This means that unless you print frequently, there is a good chance that your black/yellow printhead may clog up with black ink and stop working. (That's exactly what happened to me recently - I got a replacement printhead from HP 2 weeks ago, used it infrequently, and it was toast, as of 2 days ago.)

He said the new HP 5400 inkjets, which are the successor to the K550, have a different design, where the ink is kept flowing through the printhead. That eliminates the clog-up issue. The latest firmware update to the K550 may help with that issue, but it may not...

Word to the wise: skip the K550 and go for the 5400. It has a cheaper duplexing solution as well, which for any serious printing is a must-have.

The HP Certified obviously You either did not test this product or may have been the lucky guy who got one that worked? 6 months of paper jams especially with thinner paper or two side printing is no coincidence the manual says you must do many things to even get this printer to work fan paper, align perfectly,a sticky tray and don't push tray in too hard? Drivers are outdated however there is and update, and malfunction. Instructions on toolbox are very complex and non user friendly. I fell for the discounted price now I know why it was discounted. Also the large ink wells was what I needed however Office Depot does not that them for recycling! Fast isn't fast if you spend most of your times clearing jams and try to get the paper out have fun if you don't loss it in the process.

K550 is now an anchor as the printer will not work with my new OS Windows XP 64. There drivers do not load. There is no tech help, just some poor sap who will send your call into limbo. I will certainly purchase some other brand for work or home. I am finished with the HP crap. This is really sad!

I get caught by the promise of a reliable, fast and economic printer. I bought a set of six printers for my company. Now I have to look for non critical task to use them as they are useless with preprinted forms. They break the paper all the time. I cannot use them for billing. They also cannot print on thin paper but just 80 grams or more.

This printer absolute rubbish. NEW PRINTER straight out of box... does not work. Bumps, whizzes and whirs. The network access works. But will it print? No. Not even a configuration page. Just get a few weird boxes in yellow, red and blue.

Awful waste of EUR 180 and 3 hours work.

This printer model sucks. I have seen about 3-4 of them in the last few months and guess what. All of them have had some sort of problem thus the reason for my looking at them. I had HP replace one under warranty and they shipped the wrong model (without network) Another user decided to replace the unit entirely with a different printer although I did get it up and running.

ANOTHER THING...

How about when you open the cover the print heads don't move to where you can get them out. I am having trouble with the new unit they just replaced (using the old print heads) to get them out. I stumbled on this forum because I was looking for a fast way to clean them without having to install the drivers on my machine as it is someone else's printer.

OK so pictures don't work on this page... but sure enough it jammed... twice.

http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i41/richii_photos/08-20-07_1512.jpg

Thanks for the heads up... the print heads were all fu***ng clogged. Swapped them out... all is good. Tanks!

I totally agree with the people complaining about this printer. Mine is brand new, and worked well for about a week. After that, things have gone in the ditch. Tonight I sit here trying to finish a project, but the damn thing jams on every single page, feeds extra sheets between pages, prints partial pages (if I hold the release paper button down enough)... I bought this printer to replace my last HP printer, which also sucked! That one had big time problems with paper-feed as well, but I was assured this new HP would solve that problem! I will never ever ever buy an HP Printer again! I can't believe how much money I've thrown away on HP products... not to mention the time, aggravation, and missed deadlines due to unbelievably bad performance (and I DO use the term performance quite loosely in this context!)

I was just browsing for so HP help and opened quite by accident this complaint page. wow! everything I've read I have experience. I hate to go buy another hp I was using the 7130 but wanted more speed. Big mistake!

I work on printers all day long, every type and make and at only £87 (ciao.co.uk), I don’t think you can really complain ok a few simple truths you buy cheap you get cheap for not much more money you can get a HP Colour LaserJet 2600n £135.81 ok so they do cost more in consumables but that’s life. Printers are not pc's a very simple truth, printers have moving parts unlike most parts of pc's, so do wear out and are easy to make go wrong, paper travels through them so any obstruction will cause problems, paper should always be good quality and correct specification not the cheap thin stuff, you will always get paper jams with that rubbish and the printer is designed to print on paper in the manufacturers specification, this is to do with weight of paper roughness of surface etc use the correct stuff your only robbing yourself with using cheap paper (time, stress, lost man hours, etc). If you don’t print often and when you do the print is streaky clean the printhead using the software if this does not work take out the printhead and soak them in boiling water for 10 minutes and use software again, this will often clear the dry ink from the printhead. And just so you know there are worse printers out there that cost a lot more than £87. Slow printing is often more to do with software than hardware so you need to look at the spec of the pc, network card type is it a 10 or a 100 mbps, length of cable etc and size of the print being sent to the printer. Complaining about a printer not working with windows xp64 is a waste of time you should be complaining about window xp 64 and not the printer chances are you need to look into the install of the driver you don’t need to install the whole package just install the driver with the add printer option and the base driver. All in all so far Ive not had much trouble sorting these officejets out general maintenance really. And one last thing if an inkjet last over a year thank your lucky stars and just fork out for a good colour laserjet.

I fully agree with every post I've seen. HP has gone down hill big time and my K550 sucks too. Japan returned them to us because they thought they sucked. What burns me is when I spoke with HP about the junk they're making these days they sounded offended and very defensive, as if it were not true. The K550 reminds me of the model 9xx digital camera they made and I was dumb enough to buy... Believe me, this has become the standard for HP - JUNK!

Sorry all of you have had such bad experience. My K550 has been in service for over a year and has operated flawlessly, printing hundreds of color diagrams a day.

Like everyone else I was seduced by the price and the (at the time) favorable reviews and purchased one for our school. The first one we had lasted about a week before it started jamming - we use good quality paper and it was loaded correctly. HP eventually replaced this under warranty and we have had intermittent black ink problems ever since. Now it is out of warranty, it has finally decided that no matter what I do to the print heads it won't print black. The guy who "personally service these printers and the design is flawless" needs to get some experience in good design cos this ain't it.

It jams frequently, is noisy, but the biggest issue by far is that a printhead is lasting about 1000 pages. I am getting through printheads quicker than the ink.

This is not right. After 15 years I have decided its goodbye to HP.

Just purchased the K550 for our school. Right out of the box it wouldn't print black ink. I spent 2 1/2 hours talking with technical support at HP (in India) yesterday in order to resolve this issue. They are sending out a new black print head, but after reading these reviews, I have a feeling this is just the beginning of problems, not the end solution. I do appreciate the post on how to get the print heads to move over so you can remove or insert them.

This printer makes more noises and squeaks than you would ever believe. I thought I must have installed something incorrectly, but the HP tech guy said those are the normal noises! Plus, if you have this printer on anything but an extremely study table, you're going to have it shaking big time. Good luck to all of us that are using this printer. I feel that HP should replace all of them with a printer that works. I should have found these comments prior to having ordered this printer. Sheesh.

I hate it!

I bought a K550. Two weeks after purchasing, it started making a loud grinding noise. Got a replacement from HP because if you buy online from Office Deport you're pretty much SOL. HP sent me a printer that worked for about 6 pages and then I got the ominous Paper Jam error. I've cleaned and worked on it according to HP's service instructions to no avail. They wanted a ten touch test page, but I can't even get the printer through startup without the Paper Jam error occurring.

They'll graciously send a replacement. I offered to let them have this POS, give me credit and buy a 5400. Well, they can only give me $36 in for the K550. What! The printer has never worked, new or the replacement model. Does HP care what customers think?

I have several older laserjets and they're great. Their newer stuff, though, seems to have been 'self-destruct' engineered.

Printer has actually worked great since we got it, printer 50+ pagers/day in color & B&W. Only complaint is it won't let me select a single page to print. It gives me some sort of draw error. Any ideas anyone?

Hi

I read all these comments as I was trying to fix my K550 which had stopped printing black - wish I'd done that before forking out for a new catridge to no avail
However, I emailed HP supper via their webpage at http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/email?product=501369&lc=en&cc=uk&dlc=en&aoid=null&lang=en&cc=uk and had a reply within an hour (evening, UK time)
I'ts a shame the info they gave me (which worked fie) was not available on the website, but I can't fault their customer service.
I find the printer very fast, and gives good quality colour even on 'normal' paper - for the dreaded christmas letters!
Hopefully their fix and flash hardware update will solve the problem in the longer term too.

I will never buy HP Product again...

I've had lots of problems; also very good results. Steep learning curve. Also, lots in the manual and takes time to absorb it. Also, drivers upgrade helped. Finally: black/yellow printhead seems iffy. Black frequently dries out. Short term fix seems to be briefly dip nozzles in hot water, jog a bit, blot a bit, reinsert, print a page or two to get clear water and get to ink, and it's good to go ... for a while.

When working, and used constantly, seems even after 1-1/2 years, to go pretty well, so I'm not complaining. When I've something BIIIG to print I can pump out a few hundred pages in a jiff. If it's 2-sided, I just flip and refeed; so for big jobs, this is a good printer. But for time-intermittant and low-volume stuff, it's unreliable and too quirky. Just last evening, for example, I had a simple 2 page job and 1 page streaked the black; I just printed on my other computer's Epson R300, but I oughtn't have to do that.

Totally agree with problems experienced. Why does it seem that HP certified so often means 'unable to comprehend customers legitimate complaints'? I had two of these printers, first one lasted 6 months - a ridiculous amount of money was spent on replacing cartridges/printheads to no avail. I experienced false readings of remaining ink levels, inability to print consistently without jamming (on branded IQ paper 80gsm), and noisy, clunky operation. I find it astonishing that someone has the audacity to call this a 'flawless design'. That's company loyalty (read: brainwashing) if ever I heard it. The second unit lasted three months, same problem of paper jams, but the printer really spat the dummy when printing on HP labels, and decided to wrap them around the print carriage to such a point that the printer was inoperable.

The low(ish) cost of the printer does not excuse this being a bad product. We are all very much aware that printers are produced with a view to profit being made from consumables (ink/printheads/paper/toner/etc.) A previous comment of 'what do you expect for such a low price' is utter nonsense.

Incidentally, I have now changed to a HP Officejet K5400, hoping the teething troubles of the K550 may have been ironed out. Wrong! It is sat near to me with an amber light flashing (suggesting that there is a problem with the magenta colour cartridge). Guess what - I have replaced the cartridge with 2 different brand new HP colour magenta cartridges and the problem persists.

The ink level indicator told me yesterday that the magenta cartridge was half full. Today, after printing fewer than twenty sheets in draft black, it now tells me that the magenta cartridge is empty.

Half a day's work was lost trying to solve the problem, including a call to HP technical, only to be asked 'have I been to the website to try and solve the problem myself? The answer was 'yes' so I was put on hold. Eventually I was transferred to another 'techie' (again a lady with a very poor grasp of the English language) and was put on hold again. After listening to 'Love Is All Around' (Wet Wet Wet), 'Just The Way You Are' (Barry White), 'Wonderful Life' (Black) and 'I'll Make Love To You' (Boyz 2 Men) it was eventually decided that the printer may be 'broke'. Top of the detective class for that one.

This would not be such a problem as I know the ink cartridge is full, but as if to rub salt in the wound, the machine will not let you print whilst the light is flashing so therefore all productivity stops. Not only that you are also unable to print a diagnostic page, test page or alignment page. Thanks HP.

I stick with them because the printers are great when they work - but at what cost?

I am to receive a replacement K5400 printer in a weeks time - don't know what I'm supposed to do in the meantime. Perhaps I'll buy in a large quantity of cartridges and printheads (just in case).

Steve.

My K550 worked great for a while, then the black printing problem appeared. I changed the printhead twice with only marginal improvement. I just installed the firmware flash available on the HP support site, however, and it worked like a charm. Try flashing the firmware so it's current (SPP0013H) if your K550 refuses to print in black. Worked for me.

Having read so many complaints I should say that I am lucky. I printed 2277 pages until yesterday and had no serious problems. In accordance with the configuration page "First installation date 2007-03-26. Printhead Health
Status all "fair". In the Event Log it shows 7 Firmware error and one paper jam. No errors since November 28 2007. Firmware version [protected] SPP0013H. I am very happy with my K550 printer. I believe that the habit of printing a purging test patter once a week helps to keep the printhead clean and also avoid the drying of ink.

I have owned about 24 HP printers in my computer lifetime. The K550 is the first HP I can honestly say is not up to expectations. Paper jams, skipping pages, and black printing problems began plaguing me after about 6 months of use. I would not buy an HP inkjet printer again.

I agree with the poster. This printer is absolute crap. We bought 10 of the them for our school. We've had an 80% failure rate in the first month! We've even had them "repaired, " and sent back and they still don't work.

To the first poster, I too am HP certified and I'm certifying this printer as a piece of junk.

I agree. This is the worst printer I've ever had. I have the duplex unit and have printed thousands of pages through this printer. After thousands of prints over the past 2 years, I can honestly say that this printer jams every 20 to 30 pages when using the duplex unit. When it begins to run out of ink, instead of politely stopping printing and flashing a warning light or some such thing as most modern printers do, it simply begins to negate that color on your prints. This is very frustrating, especially when you've queued up 50 prints, walked away, came back and found that your printer ran out of ink on the 5th print, rendering the remaining 45 useless. I can't tell you how many times this printer did this to me. I can honestly say that this printer, and the free replacement that HP sent me has cost me hundreds of man-hours. THE ONLY GOOD thing about this printer is that I got so sick of working on it that I went out and leased a $2, 500 color laser that works flawlessly and prints far nicer looking flyers. The next weekend that I have the time, I'll be taking this printer out into the desert and shooting holes in it with every weapon I can get my hands on. I truly hope that whoever designed and tested this printer before HP began selling it was strung up and keelhauled. They desperately need it.

I have worked with a great many printers in my life and the K550 is the biggest piece of trash HP has brought to market. I can understand those that work for HP sticking to their guns saying this is a good machine, well. I have (7) seven of these and sorry to say that only (2) are in working order and that is basically due to their lack of use. The last unit purchased was DOA right out of the box, so I called HP and they walked me through testing the unit - the printers paper feed mechanisn that pulls paper from the first tray (our unit had the extra paper tray) would drop down and stay down, so when you pulled out the tray, inserted more paper and pushed it back in the mechanism would crunch the top sheet causing a paper jam on the next run and the only way to correct the problem for maybe one print job was to manually push the mechanish up, unplus the unit and cycle the power. So they sent me another unit, which was a refurbished unit even though mine was onely one day old, did the same thing, and the second one they send did the same thing. Now I have pulled all but two from service and replaced them with other HP printers but nothing that resembles the K550 as I was told by the reseller and the HP tech that they were discontinued for this and other technical reasons.

I still use HP printers but this model is the worst that I have seen in a long time. I will say that I do have one in service for over a year, but, that unit does not get the use that the others do, and for those that have had good luck with them, then it must be a change in production somewhere that is causing these issues.

I have to agree with those complaining about this model in particular and HP's quality in general. I had purchased many of the K550's for my company, they were not cheap but the quality certainly was. Little plastic pieces dropped out of God knows where on most of them, poor design quality of the tray causes many headaches because it jams up. The paper doesn't ever seem to fit right. Some of these printers will feed half of the page THEN starts printing the top of the page halfway down the paper. This is not the only monumentally screwed up HP printer I have dealt with this year either. We have several HP 1020's which are utter crap! Their duty cycle must be 5 pages per month then the damn things start squeaking and squealing, eventually it starts shedding a somewhat thin, plastic sheet which I assume is coming from one of the rollers. On top of that, the print spool service is now crashing when users attempt to print PDF files to it. It is well documented on the HP forums, but nobody other than the poor souls who are relying on these printers is helping. Not even a single HP tech. support person has chimed in or explained why the printer is incompatible with one of the most common file types out there. HP has lost my business and now Brother has a shot to impress me. HP, what has happened to you? I know your motives are shady! I have an HP 4Plus that has to be 15 years old and it is going strong (I have never had to replace any parts on that printer and it is a true work-horse). Now consumers are being forced to buy over-priced, plastic-filled, low-yield junk that has to be replaced in a year or less. What a scam.

i also bought a hp compaq--had a problem--they have had my new computer for a month and a half now--and now they say it will be that long again--

take my advice don't buy aa h-p product or compaq computer

I have had a k550 for about 18 months, during which time I have produced about 2600 prints mostly of black text. My observation is that there is a problem with these printers due to frequent poor feeding where additional sheets are drawn through the printer. This renders the duplex printing unreliable to the point of useless because it almost always occurs and destroys the duplexed page order. The machines are also excessively noise during start-up.

Additionally, although I don't do much colour printing the cyan cartridge has just failed. I regret purchasing this printer. My regret is increased by the fact that I have also owned a HP Designjet 100 A1 printer for about 5 years which was replaced as a complete unit about a year ago due to an electronics module failure, which cost me about $1, 000 including items wrongly purchased due to bad advice from HP technicians. The replacement unit has just failed due to a ink assembly failure, resulting in a $77 repair if I repair the unit myself, or minimum $280 repair if HP repair the machine. Fortunately I can repair it, but I don't expect this sort of failure rate from a printer costing initially more than $2, 200.

From my overall experience of HP products I am convinced that the quality of HP products has fallen considerably in recent years, and as a result, I will never buy another HP product.

Wow, I must be an unusual person. I have had this printer for about 2 years now and I have never had any problems with it at all- except an occasional paper jam if the paper is not seated correctly in the paper bin. Other than that, I have really been happy with it, and I use it constantly for printing school papers and business stuff.