It has been more then a month since I have owned this printer.
Before this I had HP Laser Jet MFP126nw which l liked for its speed, low cost of printing and very fine quality of B&W prints. But I wanted a color printer as well. So I bought HP Desk Jet 2131, which was very expensive for color prints because of the high color cartridge cost(HP 803) with very low yield. So I finally bought this HP GT 5820 printer and I am so satisfied with HP GT 5820, that I sold my first laser printer MFP 126nw.
SPEED:
B&W-B&W print speed is fine for me, Takes around 10-12 seconds to print a page full of text. Coming from a
B&W laser printer, this time of 10 seconds is very slow, But my priority was low cost printing, which
this printer surely delivers.
Color-Printout of YouTube homepage with best quality setting in color mode took around a minute. Color
print speed is also not in my priority list as I don't require much color prints.
QUALITY:
B&W-B&W print quality is fine and acceptable(although very bad in comparison to Laser Jet 126nw), Make
sure you change the print setting to best quality.
Color-You will be very disappointed with the quality of the color prints. I took many color prints on generic photo paper and normal A4 Matt printing papers. Event with the highest quality print setting, Its no where close to print quality of the HP printer which cost around INR 2.5k to 4K. I guess that difference is due to the ink used in this printer. It means that the quality of the ink used in expensive cartridges(like HP 803, HP 802, HP 680) which are used in cheap HP printers like HP Desk Jet 2131 and HP Desk Jet 3835 is much better then ink used in HP GT 5820 system.
SCAN: Both color and B&W scanning is fine. Recently I got to know a bug in the Windows Software Utility for
scanning. It gave no scan output int the preview window, but gave fine preview of the scan with cover of the scanner open. It was a bit strange. But that error didn't occur after a few time. I am not sure weather it was fixed in any of the software update
WIFI CONNECTIVITY: Wi Fi driver for this printer are much better then that of the MFP 126nw. print commands given via Wi Fi connection on HP MFP 126nw didn't work 60% of the time for me. The wireless connection with MFP 126nw was very unreliable(due to bad software drivers maybe). However this GT 5820 has very good wireless connectivity. My printer is connected to my wireless modem+router and it is very easy for me to give print commands either via my laptop or desktop or even my smartphone. Printer starts printing the page within 7-10 seconds of giving the print command.
PAPER HANDLING: I would say paper goes well 95% of the time when I give print commands. So 5% error in paper intake is acceptable for me.
PRINT COST: 4 refill bottles(1 X GT51 Black, 3 X GT52 Yellow, Cyan, Magenta) will cost you around INR 1903(Data from official HP India website) which gives you around 5000 black pages or 8000 color page yield. Conclusion: This printer is for those who have bulk print work without any time constraint. Not suitable for photo printing good quality color photos at home or at office.
Again remember: Strictly not for quality print work
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