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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2020
It is borderline unusable over wifi.
Easy to setup, easy to use, print quality is fine as well. Plug it in, connect it to wifi, add it to your laptop or phone, print. Easy. Everything works fine the first time.
However next time you try to print anything from the laptop or the phone nothing will work. It will say "printer is offline" and after that, no matter what you do to it, there is no reliable way to refresh its status and force it to print anything. Reboot the printer - doesn't matter, says "offline", reboot the laptop - doesn't matter, "offline". Re-connect the printer to wifi, doesn't matter - "offline".
The stupidest thing is that when you open the HP app on the same laptop the app does see the printer and recognizes it as online. Shows you the status, the toner level. But you can't print anything, print queue and print dialogs say it's offline.
Then randomly after a few minutes (or a lot of minutes, it's random) it would get recognized as online again and you would be able to print. Until you pause for some period and it becomes offline again. Repeat.
There are "troubleshooting" steps like making a default printer, some other similar suggestions. They help maybe once, after the period of inactivity you will be back at square one, everything will say it's offline. And at that point it's already a default printer and all troubleshooting steps performed. Nothing helps.
Same when printing from the phone. Trying to add it from the print dialog works the first time. Next times it would say offline. Sometimes it would randomly recognize it as online after a few minutes of staring at the print dialog. But sometimes it wouldn't. When you try to add it over wifi direct it would work the first time. But then again, next time it's offline. And if you remove and attempt to add it again - good luck, the phone would find it but you won't be able to install it.
Or you can install HP smart app and whatever other apps it requires to print from the phone. It won't see the printer. But then after you lose the patience and go back to the print dialog, it would be available in the dialog using the HP plugin. What is going on.....
Doesn't matter the OS either. MacOS, Windows, Android - same things. Doesn't matter the wifi quality, gone through multiple routers, different bands, through other different settings, and currently sitting right next to it on the same network, unable to print anything but able to do everything else over the same wifi.
I dread the next time I need to print anything, I will need to go over all possible combinations of random actions that I think are related. I feel like I am following a cargo cult, where I need to perform some weird dance and press random things in hope that the pinter gods will allow me to send the PDF over and I would get it on a paper by some magic.
How hard it is to implement a reliable working wifi printer driver?
Easy to setup, easy to use, print quality is fine as well. Plug it in, connect it to wifi, add it to your laptop or phone, print. Easy. Everything works fine the first time.
However next time you try to print anything from the laptop or the phone nothing will work. It will say "printer is offline" and after that, no matter what you do to it, there is no reliable way to refresh its status and force it to print anything. Reboot the printer - doesn't matter, says "offline", reboot the laptop - doesn't matter, "offline". Re-connect the printer to wifi, doesn't matter - "offline".
The stupidest thing is that when you open the HP app on the same laptop the app does see the printer and recognizes it as online. Shows you the status, the toner level. But you can't print anything, print queue and print dialogs say it's offline.
Then randomly after a few minutes (or a lot of minutes, it's random) it would get recognized as online again and you would be able to print. Until you pause for some period and it becomes offline again. Repeat.
There are "troubleshooting" steps like making a default printer, some other similar suggestions. They help maybe once, after the period of inactivity you will be back at square one, everything will say it's offline. And at that point it's already a default printer and all troubleshooting steps performed. Nothing helps.
Same when printing from the phone. Trying to add it from the print dialog works the first time. Next times it would say offline. Sometimes it would randomly recognize it as online after a few minutes of staring at the print dialog. But sometimes it wouldn't. When you try to add it over wifi direct it would work the first time. But then again, next time it's offline. And if you remove and attempt to add it again - good luck, the phone would find it but you won't be able to install it.
Or you can install HP smart app and whatever other apps it requires to print from the phone. It won't see the printer. But then after you lose the patience and go back to the print dialog, it would be available in the dialog using the HP plugin. What is going on.....
Doesn't matter the OS either. MacOS, Windows, Android - same things. Doesn't matter the wifi quality, gone through multiple routers, different bands, through other different settings, and currently sitting right next to it on the same network, unable to print anything but able to do everything else over the same wifi.
I dread the next time I need to print anything, I will need to go over all possible combinations of random actions that I think are related. I feel like I am following a cargo cult, where I need to perform some weird dance and press random things in hope that the pinter gods will allow me to send the PDF over and I would get it on a paper by some magic.
How hard it is to implement a reliable working wifi printer driver?
