HP Officejet Pro L7680 Color All-in-One Printer Review

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(More customer reviews)I've had the HP L7680 for slightly over three months. I've been a pretty heavy user, having printed (according to the self-test page) almost 4000 pages during that time. Unlike some of the others mentioned here, my unit has been completely reliable.
Print Quality - Printing is very sharp and closely approaches laser quality...it's certainly above the threshold for business correspondence and presentations. The color output is solid, with almost no visible banding. I have not used it to print many photos, but those that I have have been also acceptable, given the constraints of a four color ink system. If photography printing is your primary usage, you should buy a printer with more ink colors.
Ink consumption - Over the span of 4000 pages, I went through the initial set of ink cartridges and am now on the third black cartridge...the second cartridge was a standard capacity one, while the third is the XL version. It's still 2/3 full. A second set of color cartridges were also the standard capacity versions. They're still 3/4 full. When they go empty, they'll also be replaced with the XL versions. Most of my printing is obviously black with a minor amount of spot color.
Faxing - It works. Faxes seem to get there.
Copying - The internal memory is inadequate to allow more than 5-6 pages of a document to be scanned and stored for collated printing. This flaw was obviously anticipated by the printer's firmware designers...the page
that causes the memory to overflow is returned to the scanning input tray so it can be scanned in the next five page batch. Unfortunately this flaw requires manual intervention...you have to remove the five printed pages from the output tray, set them aside and then place them on top of the next batch out. This is an absolute pain...The leader of the copier design team should be required to make fifteen copies of Tolstoy's War and Peace as atonement.
Scanning - The HP software works, but is awkward. I have yet to discover where the defaults are set...and the preset ones aren't optimal for my office. I'd like to be able to set it to scan an 8x11.5 letter size by default, rather than have the software guess the paper size based upon the image. It's NEVER guessed correctly. And, after scanning something into Adobe Acrobat, I need to click on "cancel" three more times before the image is finally transferred...it's like a Japanese monster movie...The Software That Wouldn't Die. There's other annoyances. The bottom line, though, is that it works. It's just doesn't work nicely.
So...the copying and scanning issues dropped this printer from a strong five stars down to three. It prints great and if there was a socket where I could add in more memory, the copying problem would go away. But there isn't. And while the scanning stuff is just annoying, the copying problem is a real time-waster.
Update: Since I've had the printer for a year and a half, I thought I'd add in a quick update and note that it's still going strong. I've gone through 500cc of black ink, 50-60cc of cyan and yellow, and 36cc of magenta. There has been some drift in the alignment, resulting in some slight banding while printing, but I suspect that that could be calibrated out. The only major problem has been wear in the automatic page feed mechanism in the document feeder, which causes misfeeds while faxing or copying. Cleaning the rollers and pads helped, but they should be replaced. The purchase of a high speed scanner (Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 Sheet-fed Scanner) has pretty much eliminated my use of the automatic document feeder, otherwise this problem would be a serious hassle.
Update - 6/20/11 - The price of ink cartridges for this printer has climbed to insane heights. While it used to be fairly economical to use, it's now too expensive to keep. Although it bothers me to scrap something that's still printing beautifully, out it goes...

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HP OFFICEJET PRO L7680 Color All In One Printer/ Fax/ Scanner/ Copier. It is the worlds fastest desktop AiO for business color with up to 25 percent lower cost per page. It produces laser quality prints faster than most color laser all in ones up to 12 ppm black/10 ppm color. It contains a breakthrough inkjet draft mode with speeds up to 35 ppm black and up to 34 ppm color. The built in wired networking allows user to share powerful all in one capabilities. Features outstanding scanning with up to 2400 dpi CCD optical scanning for documents, photos, projects and more. Scan and store documents and photos directly to a network folder with Direct Digital Filing. Quickly and conveniently copy, scan, and fax multiple page documents using 50 sheet auto document feeder. Never miss a fax even without power, faxes store in memory when device is on or off. Enjoy efficient high volume printing with optional 350 sheet paper tray for a total of 600 sheets. Archived documents retain laser quality black text and lab quality photos for decades without fading. Do more without a PC using the large 2.4 inch color graphics display and intuitive control panel. Easily preview, select and print photos from memory cards using HP Photo Proof Sheet.

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