The HP Officejet 3830 All-in-One Printer is one of HP’s recommended home printers for those with a limited budget. But should you buy it yourself?
It has almost has the same features and design as the HP Deskjet Ink Advantage 3800 series.
Basically this printer is more of a Deskjet than an Officejet. But with its built-in display screen in front of the printer, the HP Officejet 3830 printer is easier to use than any HP Deskjet printers.
Let’s start this HP Officejet 3830 review, by talking about this printer’s features.
HP Officejet 3830 Printer Features
Wireless Printer
The HP Officejet 3830 printer is designed to be a wireless printer. This feature is not unique with this printer as there are hundreds of printers with the same feature. But what HP developed with their HP printers over the years is they made it easier for printer owners to connect their computers, laptops, or mobile phones with their printer.
This printer utilizes a 802.11 b/g/n wireless radio that ca only connect to 2.4-GHz networks.
The HP Officejet 3830 printer uses the common WiFi setup of choosing your wireless network on your printer display screen and entering your WiFi password to establish a connection between your WiFi network and printer. This is similar to how you connect your phone to your WiFi.
If it so happens that you don’t have any idea what your WiFi password is, then you can utilize the WPS button or WiFi Protected Setup on your HP Officejet 3830 printer.
All-in-One Printer
The HP Officejet 3830 printer can print, copy, scan, and fax. For its price, these functions are well-worth it.
When it comes to printing documents, the HP Officejet 3830 printer has one input tray located at the bottom of the printer that can hold up to 60 sheets of paper with 64 to 90 gsm. It can also hold 20 sheets of photo paper with a gsm up to 280.
For photo printing, we can say that compared to printers who are designed for printing colored images, the HP Officejet 3830 printer’s photo printouts are not on the same level. But if you’re just printing colored charts and graphs along with your black and white documents, then this printer’s capability should be enough.
When it comes to copying and scanning, the HP Officejet 5255 printer allows you to copy or scan through the automatic document feeder or ADF or by using the scanner glass on top of the printer. For the price you’re paying for this printer model, it’s a good feature to have the option to scan multiple documents easily. The maximum number of papers that the ADF can hold is 35 sheets.
Water-based Ink Cartridges
The HP Officejet 3830 All-in-One Printer only uses two ink cartridges (both HP 63 cartridges) and the best thing about it is the black ink is capable to print up to 190 pages according to HP. But we know that may not be the case as most home printers may only print 100 pages before you have to change them.
Since it’s using water-based inks the HP Officejet 3830 printer is suspect to dry inks. Once this happens, you may have to change your ink completely for you to use your printer which will cost you money.
One of the great features of having an HP Officejet 3830 printer is you can use it even if you only have one ink installed inside the printer. This is called single-cartridge mode and it only works for HP printers that use only two ink cartridges, not four.
If you’re only printing black and white documents, then you might consider installing and using only black ink cartridges to save money in the long run.
HP Officejet 3830 Printer Customers’ Review
We’ve checked online shopping websites and printer forums and we’re able to compile the list of most common problems encountered by HP Officejet 5255 printer owners.
Automatic Document Feeder Issue
HP Officejet 5255 printer owners have reported that they have difficulty scanning using the automatic document feeder of their HP printer.
The paper is often not picked up by the document feeder, so they had to scan their documents one by one using the scanner glass.
Color Printing
We’re already aware that the HP Officejet 5255 is not a good printer for photos or images, but some customers have experienced being unable to print in color completely.
This is a common issue for inkjet printers or printer who uses water-based inks, and it can be easily fixed by cleaning the printhead of your printer using your printer’s display screen.
However, some owners reported they had to replace their cartridges right away or return the printer to the store they bought them from as they don’t want any more headaches using the HP Officejet 5255 All-in-One Printer.
Unable To Copy Documents
There are some customers have said that they were unable to copy documents using their HP Officejet 5255 printer.
However, the issue was easily resolved by updating their printer’s firmware or by doing several sets of printhead cleaning.
This is also what we would recommend for printers printing blank pages or printer not printing black inks.
Easy Setup
True to its word. The HP Officejet 3830 All-in-One Printer was very easy to set up according to its owners. Since most HP printers don’t come with USB cables anymore, they had to set up their printer using a wireless connection.
They phrased how easy it is to connect the printer to their WiFi networks using the printer’s display screen.
Good For Printing Black and White Documents
The HP Officejet 3830 printer owners are satisfied with how it prints their black and white documents.
Once they’ve been able to connect their printers to their devices, printing documents were fairly easy to do.
A business owner mentioned how she was able to print hundreds of pages in a day and still have enough inks to print another hundred more the next day.
The black ink capacity for this type of printer is only 190 pages as per HP. Maybe she used the draft mode to print her documents but she never mentioned that.
HP Officejet 3830 Review – Final Verdict
With its capability to print, copy, or scan multiple documents, the HP Officejet 5255 All-in-One Printer can be a good printer to be used at home. However, with all the issues it has for scanning and copying documents, we won’t recommend it for business owners.
We usually give a rating of pass or purchase for all the printers we review here at Printer Not Printing.
For this HP Officejet 3830 review, we will give a PASS rating.
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