HP Laserjet P2055d Business Printer Review

Let’s face it, generally speaking printing stuff isn’t green. I mean, c’mon! You’re using a moderately large electronics device that was shipped across the globe to print tiny pieces of chopped down trees in your home office. A lot of green bloggers out there could take aim at all printing companies for keeping us from moving to a paperless world (sorry Michael Scott). I’m sure one day we’ll get close but here at Green Gear we understand the importance of incremental movement toward eco-responsibility. That being said, it doesn’t take an un-ethical climatologist to conclude that there is some SERIOUS room for improvement when it comes to making home printing a little greener.

With that in mind Green Gear was pleased as punch to find the new HP LaserJet P2055d small business printer arrive a month ago! We wasted no time moving our Canon all-in-one to make way for this bad boy. Since that time we have started to use this nearly on a daily basis. The P2055D is a 35 page per minute laserjet printer designed for small businesses or home offices. It has a 300-page feeder and various trays for all types of paper and is capable of doing 2-sided duplex printing. The printer takes the HP 05A or 05X toner cartridges.

First, lets discuss our experience with the product. Mrs. Green Gear and I have probably put roughly 500 pages through the machine. Our biggest job was a 140 page cookbook. In terms of printing, the product has a high quality 1200×1200 resolution that prints wonderful black and white photos and crisp text. Our real world testing (using .doc files with text and graphics mixed) exhibited speed less than the 35 pages per minute, at roughly 12-15ppm. As i say in the video, I always take PPM figures with a grain of salt, kind of like EPA mileage figures. The different feeder trays worked fine with envelopes and printing paper.

The printer itself is quite small taking up about the same footprint as my canon inkjet printer. The noise coming from the laserjet was in line with what I’ve experienced with similar printers. If was given the ability to change the printer, I would have boosted the #2 high capacity tray to fit a full package of paper. Other than that I would keep it pretty much as-is.

Now, lets get to the green stuff. First off, HP wants you to KNOW they’re green. The box it comes in is adorned with bright green highlights, the model name on the printer is done in tasteful green font, and there is even a green sticker on the top promoting the printer’s eco features, which are:

Instant On Technology: Which keep the printer in eco mode and quickly prints out your first page in less than 6 seconds!
2-sided printing: duplex printing on both sides to save paper (and cost, and trees)
Energy Star Rating: Just like your washer and dryer!
HP Recycling Program: HP’s effort to recycle products and print cartridges.

So, what you really want to know is… is this all a bunch of bull or are they really moving to a greener product. Well, I’m happy to report it’s not a bunch of bull, but it could be better. First, the instant on technology cuts the power usage of the product to 8w during power save mode yet still spits out your first page fast. In all fairness though, we got our first page in 8 seconds, not six. The energy star rating is always something you should look for, some of the products we compared this with didn’t even have the rating. The rating is widely respected and well known, so it’s not like those gimmicky proprietary awards.

HP’s recycling program is one of those things that I’m immediately skeptical of. I discuss this in the video but after reading up on it i was VERY pleased that this seemed like a program where they were moving in the right direction and not just going through the green motions. If you have a printer of any type, or a print cartridge they will provide you with postage, a drop off location, or even a pick up and make certain it is reused. If you’re looking to be green, drop it off and keep it from traveling all by itself. This is wonderful to see and probably makes good business sense for HP anyway. Kudos!

Now, it’s not all glowing, right? I mean, I wouldn’t be doing my job if i didn’t find SOMETHING to complain about. Well, first, I was never able to get the duplex printing to work. I put about an hour longer into the process of figuring it out than I would have normally but even after following the instructions a couple of times it still wasn’t available as an option. I’m sure it does work, it just was not as easy to figure out as it should have been. My other issues are more pie-in-the-sky. The cardboard box and Styrofoam packaging were both recyclable, but not recycled. In the same vein, considering all of the plastic that HP receives in its recycling program, I would have expected a portion of the plastic used in this product to be non-virgin. But alas, it is not. They did do this with one of their models in the past.

So what do we have here? What we have is a quality product, going at a market price, that makes important strides in the movement to green printing. In addition, HP has been working to green itself and its internal operations and we appreciate that. Overall, it would be a good fit for an eco-minded business owner looking to handle some serious print jobs.