HP Color LaserJet 8550n Printer – Put It Through Its Paces

by garrett on February 11, 2010

The HP Color LaserJet 8550n printer is a workhorse laser jet printer that seems designed for use within a medium-sized business or as the designated printer for a large workgroup within a business. It can print out in black-and-white at a nice speed and it’ll deliver color output at a decent speed as well. It’s also not badly priced. HP Color LaserJet 8550n cartridges is the best toner for this printer.

Print speed output in B&W comes in at a nice 24 pages in a minute and about 6 pages in a minute for a color print task. It’s clear that HP designed the printer to be a champion for black-and-white duties while throwing in the ability to print out a color job when needed. There’s nothing wrong with this intended mission; just keep print speed in mind when considering whether or not to purchase the 8550n.

The printer doesn’t come with a USB connection port, though it does come with a nice Ethernet 10/100 and older-style parallel connection port capability. These wired ports should be more than adequate for the needs of most any size workgroup and it’ll be a rare IT specialist who’ll have any difficulty whatsoever in getting the printer up and running in no time at all.

When it comes to how clear and clean the printed output will be, there’ll be no surprises, as the printer comes with 600 by 600 dots per inch resolution. This should be more than suitable for the print needs of almost any workgroup making use of a printer like this. Graphics-rich products will look equally as nice, as will any jobs containing photographs.

The 8550n can be ordered with an optional duplex (two-sided) printing capability, if that’s needed. As well, it also has 64MB of standard RAM, which can be upgraded to a full 512MB relatively easily. Check with the IT specialists to get an idea of what the memory needs might be before spending any money to upgrade to more memory than might be needed.

All print tasks are managed via use of a 200MHz microprocessor that’ll keep all incoming and outgoing print tasks prioritized and processed in short order. It also comes with 3.2 gigabytes of storage capacity on an internal hard disk drive (HDD). The printer’s also fairly hardy, with a 60,000 page per month monthly duty cycle. There’ll be little worry about durability when it comes to the printer.

The 8550n can also store 1100 sheet of paper within its various trays, and the variety of media stock it can print out on is truly impressive. Glossy paper, transparencies, envelopes, labels and plain paper all are processed through with no hiccups or other printing issues. Keep in mind that the printer will require 4 different-color print cartridges, 1 each of yellow, cyan, magenta and black.

In all, and at a price of from 720 to 1600 dollars (refurbished and new), there’s not much to dislike about the HP Color LaserJet 8550n printer. It handles a high workload and can print out up to 24 pages of product per minute. It can also do so quickly, with the first sheet emerging in less than 12 seconds, from time of tasking to product emergence. Make sure to always stay stocked on printer toner.  HP toner is found for the best prices online.  However, make sure to find HP Color LaserJet 8550n toner so that it is compatible.

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