printer and another guide

HP LaserJet P3005

Visit any medium-to-large office in this country and youll be able to see an HP printer somewhere in there. Hewlett Packard printers, specifically their lasers, are universally popular. And from the performance of the monochrome LaserJet P3005 its easy to see why.

The P3005 is the non networked version, without a duplexer. For those features you’ll need the P3005dn. USB is still fine though, and can be shared with multiple machines through the host computer.

The HP LaserJet P3005 is boxy, standing 16.7 x 16.1 x 12.2 inches, and weighs nearly 36 pounds. Its acceptably small for a mono laser printer, but may be on the large side for a small home office. It has a 500 sheet paper drawer that slots into the front below a 100 sheet multipurpose tray. The prints feed out to the output tray on the top of the printer.

There is a simple control panel, with a small backlit LCD screen and a decent menu system. Navigation is by the direction buttons which allows you to scroll through and select the options. One little quirk we found is the “Show me how” section. This is a great idea if you’re having problems, as it will print out an instruction page for you to follow to solve it. Except this isn’t much use if you’re having problems printing, which most issues are going to be with on a printer.

The P3005 managed to process our 24 page test document at a rate of 32 pages per minute, which is more than respectable. What it does print, it prints well. Text is well defined and clear, with exact edging and no blurring. Graphs and images were slight blurred, but nothing normal use would detect. The grayscale works well and translates colors effectively enough. There was no visible banding or artifacts or in fact anything that would detract from the finished article.

The LaserJet P3005 is a decent all round printer. Its cheap to run and decently fast. As befits its Hewlett Packard heritage its a solid, dependable printer. It’s ideally suited for small to medium workgroups with a decent print workload.