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Strengths: Fast, memory to spare, excellent drivers on all platforms, silent sleep mode. Perfect text, good to excellent photos. Clean design. Low maintainence.
Weaknesses: Noisy when fired up to print, occational calibrations also make noise. Confusing driver choices for Windows. Large footprint.
Summary: The HP 3800dn is the duplexing, networked version of the 3800 series color laser printers from Hewlett-Packard. The 3800 competes with the Dell 5110cn and Xerox Phaser 8500dn, but is the most expensive of the three. I chose the HP 3800dn because of its low maintenance and partially due to my loyalty to HP printers. I was not dissappointed.
The 3800 is surprisingly fast, with very consistant color output. Photos are better than expected from a color laser printer, and even on the cheapest laser glossy paper photos have a magazine quality to them. On plain paper, the color output is better than any inkjet printer will provide on anything less than photo paper. Of course, give an inkjet photo paper and you will get a more photorealistic print (you'll also pay for it!). However, where it takes my inkjet 10 minutes to produce a photo print, the HP 3800 can print a full page 8x10 print in seconds. I tested out various papers and found that even the generic glossy paper prints great. The 3800 did have a problem with a (non-HP brand) 180 g/m2 heavy glossy photo paper. The image is consistently printed with a slight rotation on the page, so that the margins are not quite even on the sides. The print quality was still excellent, so I believe the issue lies in the paper traction. I have not tried the HP branded paper (a little pricey for my use).
I have the Xerox Phaser 8500 at work, but I find the photo quality to be more consistant on the HP. I've also read that the wax based printers need to waste a little ink each time on a power cycle which can add up if you only do a few prints a day. Another benefit of laser (as opposed to the wax printers such as the 8500) is that you can write on top of the prints without smudging, and your papers don't stick together after being stacked over time. I don't have any issues with banding or any other unexpected image problems on prints on the HP.
Compared to the Dell 5100, the HP has fewer maintenance items. While some will complain about the forced expense of integrated toner/drum assemblies, I feel that HP has done a good job of balancing that cost with the simplicity of their system. Since each cartridge is good for 6000 prints, the cost per page is still competitive with systems requiring separate drum replacements.
Finally, a note about drivers. HP is well supported in the Linux environment, and the drivers for CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) were easy to set up and work well with all of my applications. On Windows, there are at least 3 different drivers to choose from, and I'm still not sure when one should be used over another. I initially installed the Universal drivers, but for some reason the print dialog boxes were really slow. Reinstalling with the PCL driver fixed my problem, which may have been a fluke to begin with. Once installed, the drivers offer useful features such as multiple pages per sheet, virtual paper sizes, and of course, duplex options. I didn't bother with the included software CD on either platform.
Overall, the HP 3800dn offers little to complain about. You should expect some noise from an office printer, and understand that it will not fit on your desk. I am pleasantly surprised by the print quality and speed, and highly recommend this product.
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