The E-enabled HP Color LaserJet 4550 printer and HP 27A toner is the first generation of its kind offered by Hewlett-Packard. HP intends for this printer to be able to handle a wide range of in-house publishing print jobs, in fact, and at this it performs well. This color laser printer has been equipped by the manufacturer with what HP refers to as an Embedded Web Server that allows the IT staff to manage the printer through a standard web interface.
This printer is no lightweight, it must be admitted. At 112 pounds, it’ll take at least two people to move it about. It’s also nearly 16 inches wide, 20 inches deep and 23 inches high, making it a fairly large-sized printer that’ll take up a sizable corner of a printer workstation. When it comes to performance, though, the HP 4550 more than holds its own against its competitors.
The first indicator of solid performance is the fact that this Hewlett-Packard can put out 16 pages per minute of black-and-white product. It’s a bit slower when it comes to color print jobs, delivering product at about 4 pages per minute. It’s obvious that the printer – while capable of turning out excellent color product – is meant to be more of a speedy black-and-white unit.
In general, the HP 4550 connects with a networked workgroup via means of traditional wired technologies. Traditional, in this case, means an IT specialist hooking it up will be using an older style parallel port in addition to other methods. It’s certified for use with Windows Vista and it can be immediately set up to start operation through XP and other Microsoft OSs as well as Mac PCs via a plug and play interface.
Print resolution from the 4550 printer, with the HP LaserJet 4550 toner, is a standard 600 by 600 dots per inch (dpi), which is more than acceptable. With it, product that’s produced by the printer will look clear and sharp enough and there’ll be no evidence of any blurring and smearing, generally speaking. It’s also reasonably quick at producing product, making use of a 233 MHz processor along with 64 MB of RAM. That can be increased to a roomy 192 MB, if needed.
When it comes to the media stock types that can be used by the 4550, the list is long and diverse. Envelopes, labels, transparencies, semi-gloss photo paper and plain paper are all handled easily. The printer can also hold up to 400 sheets of paper in its paper trays, meaning that it’ll go for some time before needing replenishment.
The HP 4550 is also a durable printer and has a 35,000 sheets per month maximum duty cycle. This means that it can print out 35,000 pages before requiring anything other than printer cartridge replacement, generally. It requires 4 separate cartridges: one each of black, cyan, magenta and yellow. Color printing will deplete the cartridges, obviously, before straight black-and-white print tasks would.
The 4550 is the first of its kind offered by Hewlett-Packard, in that it’s been built to handle a variety of publishing printing tasks quickly and easily. Also, via use of an embedded Web server, its printer management needs can be handled via a standard Web interface, such as a company’s intranet page. The 4550 is a also speedy-enough printer, and models can still be found for less than $1,000.
The HP 4550 laser toner does everything you would expect from the standards of HP, extending right down to C4127A toner. This unit is such a workhorse you’ll want to have extra toner refills on hand so there’s no stopping when that important project is due.
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