HP DeskJet 2700 All-In-One Printer is making me humor getting an HP All-In printer subscription
When your ink costs more than your printer, libraries come in handy
I should have known something was up when I saw the listing price of $71.65 for an HP DeskJet 2700 printer-copier-scanner. For people who have never checked an answering machine or twirled the curly cord on a phone, this price may be considered too high. But for a consumer who can send a fax with her eyes closed (even without using FaxZero.com), this price was a steal from the rate printers used to cost.
I was going to miss my Brother MFC inkjet multi-function printer, but it completely fell apart all at once after several years. Heavy as two bowling balls in a bag, it would print forever — although the scanner left much to be desired.
When the HP DeskJet 2700 All-In-One printer arrived, it didn’t take me long to figure out why it was so cheap. Printer setup was an absolute nightmare:
The printer continuously prints instructions for setting up Wi-Fi.
The printer continuously prints test ink pages and pretty much anything that would normally be included in an instruction manual.
The printer constantly tries to talk users into ordering an ink subscription for auto-shipping.
Unlike my Brother MFC printer, when I want to print on both sides of the page, this printer blocks me from any computer activity until the print job is done. It also requires me to get up and flip even (or odd) pages to print on the other side.
The amount of scrambling that needs to be done to stop a print job in case of a duplicate or error is so chaotic (and hidden better than Waldo and Carmen San Diego) to the point where it’s easier to just take all the paper out and unplug the printer. There is no “cancel” button on the physical machine. Even if you click that “X” 20 times, it will stop printing momentarily, release the page and start printing again on a new page.
It took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out how to get the paper into the machine. Without a user manual, and no picture of printer paper on the box, this made it even more unnecessarily difficult.
The printer insists on its users downloading the mobile app instead of pointing out that the HP Smart desktop app works just as well.
The HP Instant Ink subscription costs far more than just buying these same ink cartridges on third-party platforms such as Amazon or ebay.
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But none of that bothers me more than the quadruple number of times I’ve had to buy ink for this printer. Whereas I could buy individual magenta, cyan, yellow and black cartridges for my Brothers printer, you’re out of luck with HP DeskJet 2700. You only get color ink and black ink. And with the amount of “accidental” reprints of the same page during a double-sided print, it doesn’t take long to drain the black ink cartridge.
Recommended Read: “$510 later, I wish I hadn't ignored signing up for HP Instant Ink ~ Environmentalism is the other perk of signing up for Hewlett Packard's monthly ink program”
For all of these reasons, I briefly humored the idea of the HP All-In Plan to rent an actual printer to replace the one I have. That is, until I read the full details.