You Are Here:HomePrintersHP Color LaserJet 3800 Review

Lookup By Ink & Toner

HP (46300)

KIP (33)

Kodak (244)

Konica Minolta (4184)

Texas Instruments (159)

HP Color LaserJet 3800 Review

Editor's Review
by Mel Meyers

(3.00/5)

Customer Reviews
based on 0 votes

(0.00/5)

Editor's Review
by Mel Meyers 10/12/2010

(3.00/5)

HP Color LaserJet 3800

OVERVIEW:

Similar in appearance and function as the Color LaserJet 3700, the HP LaserJet 3800 is a single-pass USB color laser printer that can print color prints as fast as black & white at 22 pages.

Editor's Pros & Cons

PROS:

Weighing in just under 60 pounds, 3800 will take up a 23” x 23” footprint on a sturdy table or printing kiosk. With a minimum height of 21” (taller with the extra paper tray), you want to have plenty of headspace.

The LaserJet 3800 comes standard with a 250-sheet cassette tray, capable of holding over a half-ream of letter or legal-size paper. The flip-door on the front of the printer reveals a 100-sheet multi-purpose tray that can handle transparencies, labels, 3 x 5” post cards, envelopes, and to 8½” x 14” legal paper of various bond weights. An optional 500-sheet tray can be attached for people with higher print demands.

Using an instant fuser-on technology, the LaserJet can go from sleep to print in 12 seconds. The LaserJet 3800 can print up to 22 pages per minute, be it B&W or color. Single-pass color printing allows color print speeds to be almost as fast as many monochrome laser printers in its time. To increase the native 600 x 600 dpi resolution of the LaserJet 3600, 3800, and 4700 series, HP developed a technology called ImageREt 3600. The result is prints with the professional quality resolution of 3600 dpi. At the maximum print resolution text is reasonably sharp, and photographs are very detailed with smooth color transitions.

The LaserJet 3800 comes with USB 2.0 for direct connection to a computer. The considerable noise that the 3800 makes (in standby or printing), you may not want in your office or cubicle. Fortunately, an Ethernet card is an available option and can be added to the back of the LaserJet with just a screwdriver. The impressive 96MB of printer memory can be expanded up to 544MB, allowing the LaserJet 3800 to easily handle your most demanding print workloads. Understanding the needs of graphic designers, PostScript 3 print emulation is included along with HP PCL5e and PCL6.

CONS:

Considering how big this printer is from the start, its size would have been more acceptable if could hold a ream of paper right from the start, rather than only 250 sheets. While printing demands on a color laser shouldn’t be as great (one would hope) as they are on the B&W printers, being able to dump an entire package of paper in a tray at least will reduce the time between refills.

Rather than develop a machine-specific drivers for Vista and Windows 7, HP has instead developed Universal Print Driver. The UPD is a lot like buying a hat that says “one size fits all”—and I’ll leave that conclusion to your own personal experiences. Owners of Apple computers running OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), HP does not offer any print drivers—you have to use the ones that come with OS 10.6.

There have been some issues of the LaserJet 3800 not being as reliable as HP’s other color laser printers. There have been complaints about the 3800 having frequent paper jamming, and color mis-registration.

Customer Reviews For HP Color LaserJet 3800

(0.00/5) based on 0 votes

Be the first to review this product [click]

Write a Review

INK/TONER NEEDS:

Toner and drum are both accessible from the front panel, eliminating the need to have to move the printer to replace consumables. While many color laser printers have a separate imaging drum, the LaserJet 3800’s drum is into the cartridge to keep replacing consumable simple.

Out of the box, HP includes standard 6,000-page yield toner cartridges. Of course those numbers are based on the official standard of “5% ink coverage per page”. To give you an idea of what that means to the real world, 5% is the amount of toner to print a business letter; a printout of a news webpage will need 10% ink coverage; a newsletter can use 30%; and a print with graphics, text, and photos can exceed 60% coverage. So when you look at those numbers, expect it to only last about half that amount.

These “no-shake” design cartridges can be purchased separately, especially since the black and yellow toners get depleted at a higher rate than the other colors. Combo-packages are available to save costs.

View all Products