Customer Reviews
terrible printer 
2005-07-08
Lots of problems installing (Windows 2000 Pro) - eventually paid for an in-home service call. Technician managed to get it to work, but could not get it (HP software) from trying to reload each and every time the computer started.
Noisy - clangs and bangs. Slow. Eats lots of ink. Poor quality photos - lines visible, bad color.
Finally gave up, and have bought a Canon. Love it! Staying away from HP now (have tried other products in past, very disappointed with every one).
What next? 2005-06-03
About 1-1/2 years ago my not-so-old Epson stylus stopped printing, clogged inkheads=garbage.
So, I purchased an HP printer, which began giving me problems within the first three weeks. I contacted HP tech for help, but alas, after hours of trying this and that (you know the drill) it was determined that I needed to return my printer to Best Buy, a mere five miles from my house. I still had a week for a simple exchange...but NOOOOO, the man (from another country, probably India) insisted that they didn't want me to go through the trouble! Please let us send you a replacement via ups. I thought that was silly but he insisted. I told him that I could exchange this printer in less than an hour, but I caved and allowed him to send it to me
I did have another printer I could use in the meantime (my ancient Canon...it's still ticking after seven years...) so it was no huge deal.
About one week later, UPS drops an HP box off on my porch.
The first thing that I notice is that it has a large sticker on it that says, "REFURBISHED IN MEXICO"
My thoughts were "WHAT THE ****!" REFURBISHED?
I refused the package (never opened it) and UPS picked it up a few days later.
I contacted HP and spoke to a rep who kept insisting that it was a good as new. (scripting, scripting, AAARGH!) I DIDN'T WANT as GOOD as NEW! I wanted NEW since that was what I had!! I was not happy and went in circles with them, reminding them that it was over the 30 days now in which I could have EASILY exchanged my HP at Best Buy. I was hugely insulted and felt very deceived.
I went to BB and explained the situation, giving them a copy of my online chat text with the rep. They were very cool about it and exchanged my printer for me, as a matter of fact I upgraded to an HP5650. In hindsight, I should have gone with another manufacturer altogether.
I contacted HP again and spoke to some higher up rep about this situation...and mind you, I don't swear at people and was polite but assertive with my complaint to this woman...she was witch from the get-go...I told her that I thought the service was deceptive and I had to spend an awful lot of time on the phone, calling them, UPS, calling them again, and exchanging my unit because of what they had sent me. I could have simply exchanged the unit on the first day and it would have been done.
She said, "Well, what do you WANT from us?" very very curtly,
All I wanted was to be heard, have them admit their error and to have the two new ink cartridges that I was told to open(by their rep) for testing in my printer replaced. She finally agreed.
They sent me only one of the cartridges. Losers.
So, here I am with my HP5650, which has a history of being temperamental, getting hung up (turn it off, wait an hour, try again) but printed text and graphics very well otherwise.
Yesterday evening the carriage froze up. I could barely get the ink cartriges out, obviously, things are messed up. I can't get the ink cartridges back in because the whole set-up in the carriage area is stuck. I've got two expensive ink cartridges left and this thing is now a piece of garbage. We even resorted to pounding on it. I am weary.
Never again will HP and I be associated in any way.
HP Has Missed the Quality Mark on This One 2005-05-10
I have been an HP printer fan for 15+ years, both personally and professionally. Because my company has an HP standard printer selection, the 5650 was my only choice to replace an older HP 895CXI, which by the way, I LOVED. My initial 5650 had to be replaced as the IT folks experienced quality problems at setup. This 5650 is less than 4 months old, yet jams OFTEN, makes clunking noises, and I suspect it won't last but another few months, if I'm lucky.
I am so disappointed in HP over this printer, that I recently purchased 2 new printers for my home, both replacing old HP 800 series, and I purchased 2 Canons. Both have been working like a charm for 3 months.
Wake up HP - especially if you're making deals with corporations on low end models. We're the professionals who leave the corporate world and equipment and make purchases for our homes.
Not a good printer for students 
2005-02-20
I am a college student, and I haven't had a good experience with this printer. I had a Lexmark for about a year, which was fast, but low quality and unreliable. When the cartridge ran out on that, I bought the HP 5650 instead. I've had it for about a month, and although setup was easy and the quality is very high, this is NOT A GOOD PRINTER FOR STUDENTS! Even on fast draft printing quality, it takes at least a minute to print a full page of text. The quality of the printing is very good, but it is EXTREMELY slow, even compared to most cheaper printers. The claim of 21 ppm is laughable. I think you'd need about 30 of these to get 21 pages in a minute.
HP rocks 
2005-02-09
I bought this printer for four reasons: affordability, quality, simplicity, and ability to plug in to my Apple Airport Extreme.
In version 10.2, it worked great. However, when I upgraded to version 10.3.7, the printer would not work at all. I called Apple support (Apple care) and although they were very helpful, were stumped.
I sent an e-mail to HP support and within a day got an e-mail directing me to this link: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107054. Now, the printer is once again working great!
All I wanted was a simple, basic, and moderately fast color printer and the deskjet 5650 delivers. But the fact that HP support was so great easily doubles the value of this product. I highly recommend it.
Great Printer! 2007-08-10
I have used this printer for years and it is very reliable. HP makes a great product that gives you excellent results.
This printer is a work horse! A+ 
2007-05-08
I found this printer in "storage" at my work, and decided to hook it up to my PC. I couldn't tell you how old it was when I started using it, and it didn't even have a CD to install when I found it, but I just went online and downloaded an install driver package called "HP Deskjet 5600 Series" and it works perfectly.
This printer is FAST, on "FastDraft" it prints very quickly (for example, 60 page PDF documents in just a couple of minutes), and has very user-friendly settings to adjust print quality (from "FastDraft" to "Maximum DPI"), though I would never use the Maximum DPI setting because it's a waste of ink and is pretty slow (use the next best setting, called "Best," instead, if printing high quality photos or color documents).
I've never had problems running it with WinXP, unlike some other reviewers, but again, I used the software downloaded from HP's website rather than an install CD. I've used this printer to make labels of all sorts, print onto envelopes, make two sided print outs of large PDFs to save on paper, and even make a book layout using the accompanying print wizard. All have worked pretty well.
The only weird things about this printer? For one, while printing larger documents, it will occasionally spit out blank sheets of paper...I haven't a clue why. Second, the top printer cover won't close properly all the time. Since it won't print if the cover isn't fully closed, I find it annoying to have to open and close it repeatedly until it's finally shut correctly.
Besides those two mysterious issues, this printer is a work horse! It's been going strong for some time now and I don't foresee any problems with it in the future...hopefully :)
Very Good Printer 2006-12-27
This is an awesome printer at a very cheap price. I've had this for a couple of years and it works great. My daughters use it constantly for school and we've never had a problem . It prints very quickly and doesn't smudge, looks as good as a laser printer. Images are crystal clear too. I was going to go out and buy a new photo printer to print from our digital kodak camera but when I loaded it with 4x6" hp premium plus photo paper, high gloss, they looked as good or better as anything I've ever gotten developed. Anyone who gives this a bad review must have no clue as to what they're doing.
problematic right out of the box 2006-06-25
Followed the printed instructions for the setup of this printer. Seemed straight-forward, but was not impressed with some flimsy plastics and the retention "clips" for the ink cartridges... Well, try as I might, this unit seemed insistent on not recognizing the black ink cartridge. At least the software with the unit identified the black cartridge as the culprit. But this was the brand new cartridge that came with the printer... and the expiration date on it was within spec... And, yes, I did remember to remove the protective tape. So is the problem actually the cartridge or the bay that it goes into (in other words, is the problem with the printer itself?) Do I waste $19 on a new cartidge possible to only find out that isn't the problem? Or do I give this printer back and buy a Canon? For the record, I wasn't impressed with the old days of Canon BubbleJets, but lately have been happy with the Canon's I've set up for others. Sorry, but I cannot recommend this unit.
Regional Coding 2005-10-23
I cannot recommend HP to anybody anymore. The company introduced regional coding, which means printer cartridges from one region cannot be used in another. For most this is probably not an issue, for those busily traveling around it is. Also, it is an issue of principle, its bad enough for DVD, but printer cartridges? HP has introduced this rather secretely and if you don't read the box cover etc very carefully, you may not notice. The main issue is in Europe. I got caught out. I bought a 3 catridges overseas - I could not use them on my HP printer. I asked for a refund, HP Email Support (US) was nice but ineffective. HP Customer Support (Europe) was snotty and very rude. I think HP does not care about its customers and this cost me over US$75, almost 50% of my printer (my sixth and last HP). Don't buy HP.
