HP Laserjet Enterprise 500 Color M551n, (CF081A)

I use this printer at home. It produces excellent quality black and white and color prints, and produces them very quickly. Often friends come over when they want color printing for something special.This is an office grade printer. At home it will last almost forever.The printer uses large toner cartridges with long lives and low cost. For black and white printing it only uses the black toner cartridge which is available is a huge capacity at very low cost.I use Hammermill Laser Print Office Paper, 11 inch x 17 inch, 24lb, 98-Bright, 500ct HAM 104620. While regular paper works very well, a premium paper like this produces a superior result. Everyone is struck by the quality of the output on this paper.I would advise anyone who has children who are moving into computers to get a color laser printer such as this one for home use. The high initial cost versus an inkjet is very soon recovered due to the much lower costs of consumable such as ink. These printers aren't promoted for home use. In my opinion this is because the cost of the printer is lower than it might be because the manufacturer anticipates businesses will buy lots of toner when the printer is used in a business environment.

I moved my M551n which had the wifi accessory installed from my office to my home. I had been printing successfully over wifi for years. Trying to change or reset the wifi settings on the printer I found IMPOSSIBLE. I couldn't do it via the printers archaic menu system, couldn't do it by connecting the printer via USB to my Mac, couldn't do it by connecting the printer via USB to my Windows 10 laptop.HP informed me they would allow me to use their support team although the printer was no longer under warranty. THAT'S INSULTING. Write software that works and I won't need support. The printer worked fine a week ago and the simple task of changing the wifi settings over a USB connection seems to be impossible.

This printer arrived two days ago, so I haven't had it very long, but I have to say I'm very impressed with the features and graphics and text output. The only qualm I have at this point is photo output. The colors of photos can be a bit overly saturated in the vivid/Adobe RGB color settings and not vivid enough if configured for a default or photo RGB setting (when allowing the printer to manage the color). The photos also come out quite dark, although I have managed to fix this to a degree by disabling HP EasyColor in the printer preferences. With HP EasyColor disabled, you can also change the RGB settings (color themes) for the various printer shortcuts. Of course, advanced users will know how to adjust all the settings to get what they want out of it, but I am just talking about a typical user who wants to print some quick photos.We have also set up the ePrint feature and can print from our Android tablets using the HP app or from anywhere by sending an e-mail with an attachment to the printer e-mail address. This has already been handy when I wanted to print one page of a large PDF from my tablet.I like the fact that you can set the printer to use only the black cartridge without the color cartridges, since I don't use color as often and would like to save on that expense, but I'm also looking forward to taking advantage of all the printer's features as often as I can. I hope it will prove to be the workhorse my last HP printer was.One word of caution: this printer is very heavy (around 75 lbs). They recommend two people lifting it, although I did it alone and it is a little more than half my weight. I don't plan on lifting it again!

Spent $700 on this printer used lightly at home (maybe 5-10 pgs printed per day). Completely went out and died after a little more than 24 months of use.

This "top of the line" printer will not handle the heavy weight stock that it is advertised to print on. On stock up to 28 lb. paper, it does a good job, Above that, after printing five or six impressions, it begins to smear. Since it cost over $700.000, we are disappointed in the result. From additional internet searches, it looks like the ability to do what we want will require a printer that costs twice as much. Still undecided what to do.