HP Deskjet 5940 Review
One of HP’s models that is currently popular is the Deskjet 5940, an affordable inkjet printer that is labeled by HP as a photo printer. As we mentioned recently, printer manufacturers like HP have to convince everyone that any machine they make is capable of printing photos. This way, they print more photos, which means more money on ink and specialty photo paper. HP even went so far as to give this printer the official title of HP Deskjet 5940 Photo Printer. In reality, it is no more of a photo printer than the Deskjets that HP has released over the past couple of years. The standard configuration is to have an HP 95 and 97 black and color cartridge in there with the ability to swap out the black for an HP 99 photo cartridge. Really not any different than what HP has been doing since they introduced the HP 58 photo cartridge a few years ago. So the moral is, as always, to not expect stellar photo results unless it is actually a photo printer.
The Deskjet 5940 is rated by HP at 30 pages per minute for black and 24ppm for color. While inflated as always, the color speed is even misleading when taken at face value, since most people associate color printing with photo printing. But, in their time test, PC Mag found that the 5940 took two minutes and 43 seconds to print out a 4 x 6 photo, which is a true test since people are more likely to be concerned about how long it takes to print a photo than how many draft pages with four colored boxes HP could print in one minute in their labs. The photo speed is an improvement over the Deskjet 5440, but, as PC Mag notes, is slower than the Canon PIXMA iP1600, a comparable model. On the other hand, like a lot of less-expensive HP models, the Deskjet 5940 shines at printing text. While it might not actually print 30ppm, the 5940 will give you high quality text results in a short amount of time. This, along with the affordability and reliability of HP Deskjets, is the strong suit of the machine.
Do you own the Deskjet 5940? If you do, leave a comment using the link just below and tell us and our readers how you feel about it. Do you hate it so much you want to prevent people from what you went through? Or maybe it is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to you? Well probably not, but let us know anyways.
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45 Comments about “HP Deskjet 5940 Review”
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April 9th, 2006 at 8:50 pm
A terrible printer! My HP Deskjet 5940 is by far the worst printer I have ever owned. It seems that with just about every print task I run I am un-jamming the paper feed. I even tried to use the expensive HP paper to solve the problem. No luck. But, when I can get it to print without jamming, it produces great print outs. My cartridges have lasted for quite some time. Just about all have lasted longer than my manual said they would.
April 9th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
I have not been happy with this printer at all. I got it in January and have had nothing but trouble. The ink goes was to fast and it is incapable of picking up a single sheet of paper. It will pick up two or more and then jam. I wish I could return the printer!
April 11th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
I read some negative reviews of this printer before I bought it but I haven’t found anything bad about it. I don’t use many of the features so maybe that is it. But it prints fine for me and I haven’t had any paper jams.
April 29th, 2006 at 5:57 am
Avoid this printer. Terrible paper feed problems.
April 30th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
Don’t buy this printer! I’ve never heard of a printer being paper selective, but the 5940 is. I’ve printed on a certain kind of stationary for years with different HP printers. When it came time to use the same paper in this printer. No luck. Paper jams galore.
May 13th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
This printer sucks royally. I am having no luck getting it to actually print with out paper jamming. I hope the people at HP are happy losing a customer forever. I’m the office manager for my company and I will never again buy anything HP for our office either.
May 14th, 2006 at 12:50 am
I’ve got the 5940, and I have to say after what I’ve put it through - it still works - a literal miracle. I’ve never had a paper jam yet, but the friggin 95a ink cartridge in it is an original brand new, store bought un-refilled cartridge and the printer keeps telling me it’s not an original hp cartridge - thus it won’t let me print. Well, yes, I have a bit of a temper and literally dragged the printer down the stairs by the power cord cause I was so . . . . . mad at it, beat it with a screw driver, and dumped rubbing alcohol into the cartridge port hoping this may somehow “cure” my problem. After several attempts at literally jamming the cartridge into its cradel AND jamming a flathead screw driver in between the cradel and the cartridge . . . it actually recognized the cartridge as an original and printed perfectly. Thus I have a hole in the printer cover, with the handle of a screw driver sticking out of it - hey - whatever makes it print - right? Of course 3 days later when I went up to the office to use the printer again, it was not recognizing the cartridge - AGAIN! So my beating ritual started again - this time with a rubber mallet. For now - it’s printing - like I said - a miracle! Oh yeah, my comment - I hate the D@#n thing!!!!!
May 24th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
A terrible printer. You can not put more than 10 sheets in the loading tray without a paper jam. Do NOT buy this printer. Myself, I’ll never buy another HP.
July 13th, 2006 at 8:12 pm
terrible experience with this nice looking printer. this printer will not load paper. i will also not buy another hp printer after this frustrating experience
July 26th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
Me too! I hate this printer, paper jams all the time. It will finally print after several tries. I agree that full color printing is slow but regular text printing is quick. But it really does not matter because darn thing keeps jamming! You get what you paid for.
August 4th, 2006 at 5:59 am
Worst of it’s lot!!!! One of my associates searched for the whole day to acquire one of it’s type but after using it for some time now, he is really frustrated. The color printing is real slow and the paper jams after almost every other print out. He is just waiting to get rid of it as soon as possible!!!! Watching him suffer, I doubt I’ll ever opt for this printer!!!
August 16th, 2006 at 8:30 am
My problems with this printer have to do with the margin settings….I do a lot of desktop publishing and I can not get this printer to print closer that about an inch from the margin. It also jams and does all the miserable things other people have mentioned. I called HP about the margin problem and they told me it was the fault of Publisher. I have 3 other HP printers that print the exact same file without problems. So much for the lady in India. I’m sick of all these problems and will buy another printer when I know which one is better.
September 2nd, 2006 at 3:57 am
This is the worst printer I have ever had the misfortune to use.
I have had the printer little more than a month and the paper feed has deteriorated to the point where the thing is unusable. If it does feed, it jams. It’s not down to paper quality either… since I’m using HP paper!
The previous comment about margins is also completely true. It will not, on any setting, however persuaded, print close enough to the bottom of the page to be useful. I have had previous printers from HP and others, both colour and b/w, and have not encountered such a useless printer or interfering and frustrating software.
The borderless print option in the driver is pointless - it rearranges the entire page and squashes white space so that your document is unrecognisable. Some of the other hand-holding options are also a waste of time: I do not want the print driver to change my document settings because it thinks it knows best; moving pages to the left and right for booklets for me. I do the layout in Publisher, and the software with this printer just interferes. It should facilitate WYSIWYG, but what you actually get is what it thinks is best.
HP Total Care (a misleading name) have been a waste of time. Have finally convinced them to send out a cleaning kit for the paper path - but after only 5 or 6 weeks and less than 100 sheets through it, this shouldn’t even be needed. They cannot fix the margin issue; that’s a design fault in the printer; their solution to the driver problems is to suggest using the Win XP DeskJet 550C driver (a 300×300dpi max res printer, so that’s really going get the best from the 4800×1200dpi max res of the 5940.
In summary: bad printer, bad printer software, bad support, avoid at all costs.
September 9th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
I cannot understand how HP can build something that works this badly. Do they hire any engineers over there?
September 16th, 2006 at 7:25 pm
Maybe I’m not using the same way as others, but it seems to work great for me. Very fast & I like the way it shows ink levels. I have mine defaulted to print quickly in draft mode. What a time saver over my old HP printer. Set up on my home network with 2 other computers having access also.
September 22nd, 2006 at 9:39 pm
Ditto all the comments on the paper feed. I can’t believe this is happening and it started after the refund period was over. I can’t print a dang thing.
September 23rd, 2006 at 1:32 pm
Holy crap I hate this machine more than I’ve ever hated any inanimate object in my life.
Mainly the paper feed BS. If you have not experienced this machine when it doesn’t want to take your paper… and then by the time it finally does your “connection failed” so you have to restart the job… so it starts all over again jamming once more…
AAAAARRRGGHH!!!!!
I’m totally pulling an “Office Space” scene with this one as soon as I post this message.
HP, you suck. I will never buy anything from you ever again.
I swear, a monkey with a sharpie taped to his hand would be a better printer than this.
October 12th, 2006 at 7:24 am
This printer is crap. It’s crashed somehow and now it says wrong color cartridge installed. But it was using this cartridge before. I don’t know what’s wrong with it.
October 21st, 2006 at 6:26 am
It does a good job of printing, but it is TERRIBLE at loading paper. It constantly requires manual assistance to pick up a sheet of paper. I wish reviews of this problem were published earlier, or I would have never bought the thing!
October 23rd, 2006 at 7:42 pm
This printer has decided to print extremely slowly. I have updated the drivers and shut off all the digital photo optios and selected normal or worse quality and still no luck. It didn’t start out printing so slowly, but something has s crewed up. Help!
November 20th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
Total POS. The paper trays break, takes forever to print, paper jams more often then not, software is cumbersome. My god, this printer stinks more than an outhouse on a hot July day. And if you don’t like talking to India for tech support, this isn’t the printer for you. Take my word for it, printing with this printer is as much fun as a receiving a frontal lobotomy. If you have this printer, throw it away and buy a different brand, your blood pressure will thank you.
December 8th, 2006 at 6:30 am
My final exam is in two hours and I need a document for it. The piece of filth won’t let me print because of the “incorrect ink cartridge.” I used it a week ago! This is so unfair!
December 17th, 2006 at 8:37 am
I have always been a HP guy, but I am definitely disappointed in this one. I haven’t had any paper feed problems, but after reading the other posts, I am keeping my fingers crossed. My problem is print speed. This may be my fault, but I can’t figure out how. I made a Christmas letter in Pages and it is taking forever to print out- and I do mean forever. I hoping now that they will be ready for next Christmas. It will print two lines and then think for 3 or 4 minutes. I am going to have to take them down to Office Max to have them done. Like I said, I have always been happy with the HP’s, but not this one.
December 22nd, 2006 at 12:35 pm
same as everyone else really…the HP 5940 is the worst printer I’ve ever used. It only prints if I manually feed in one sheet at a time. If I leave it to it’s devices it won’t pick up a sheet at all! The worst thing is if you search for reviews on the web they’re all fab, it was only when I started searching for the paper feed problem I discovered how crap it really is! HP get yourself sorted cos I’m swapping to a different manufacturer!
January 6th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Worst printer I’ve ever owned. TERRIBLE paper feed problems. Printing a document is like helping a baby eat spaghetti.
January 28th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
This is a very frustrating printer to own. It looks nice and the door on it has a nice solid feel, but it can’t feed paper. I have used it very little and it indicates a paper jam after each page that has printed (of course that’s after the rare occurrence of it actually feeding a sheet of paper correctly.) This is my third and worst Deskjet, and I will not be buying another HP printer anytime soon. The cheap 3820 I had was a better printer, even if it was apparently designed to grind gears and self-destruct. The 5940, however, was useless junk from the start.
February 6th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Same here. I have experienced paper feed problem about a couple months after I bought it. I printed about 100 pages of paper (not continuously) and after that it went downhill from there.
Now I cannot print without manually feeding the paper one by one and for some strange reason the printer stops printing word/excel document, it can only print things in pdf file. Weird.
February 10th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
No surprise here really - this is the worst printer I have ever owned!
I have had several HP printers over the years and I’ve been particularly impressed with the 5550, but the 5940 is a total dud -it is just incapable of normal paper feed. You would think that HP know how to feed paper into a printer by now, but this one chews up paper like it’s going out of fashion. I have had some other niggles with it as well, but the feed problem is just inexcusable for a HP. Don’t buy it!
February 12th, 2007 at 12:53 am
Bought this last year and one month later, paper jams started occuring. Thought it was an anomaly until I looked up this printer online. It jams so often, I haven’t had to replace ink cartridges yet, because I cannot print. No more HP printers for me. A competitor’s printer I dug out of the trash works better than this POS.
February 21st, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Ditto the comments about margins. I couldn’t believe that HP would actually release a printer cuts off half of the footer! I do a lot of printing for client presentations and this flaw is totally unacceptable. It makes my work look flawed. All my previous HP machines have been great. This is a piece of crap. Did HP buy this machine design from a competitor with a sick sense of humor?
February 23rd, 2007 at 2:32 pm
There seems to be an indemic problem with the deskjets–they quit accepting paper. This one quit earlier than most. The cost of repair would be nearly the purchase price that it wasn’t worth in the first place.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:06 am
The HP Deskjet 5940 has been the worst printer experience for me as well. I bought it for my business because I trusted a salesman that it was the best printer for the money…I have had paper feed problems after only using it about 2 months and now I am having paper jam problems and after reading all of these reviews, I think I am going to buy a new printer instead of spending any more time or money on this one!!
March 30th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Paper feed problems- other than that, prints text fine. However, I now have to manually feed each page, which is too much of a pain for words.
I hear, that overall, HPs lack a common problem, which is printer head clogging (which has killed a cannon printer and an epson printer). However, the paperfeed thing also makes it unusable. any recommendations on a better model fo HP?
April 22nd, 2007 at 1:56 am
I must be honest - we bought this printer for looks and badge. HP is a good make and the printer does look very good whereas a lot of the competition are ugly.
However, I’m telling you now, buy an ugly one.
The paper feed on this printer is absolutely rubbish. It really knows how to wind me up and I can’t print something without punching it.
First it can’t pick up the paper. Then when you’ve pressed the button telling it to check again for paper about 5 times, it takes the paper though and jams.
You then have to pull the back of the printer off, remove the jam and go through the whole painstaking process again.
All our printers have been HP, and they’ve been great. Except this one. I’m not risking another HP.
May 20th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Have not had TOO much trouble with paper jams
with inkjet paper from various mfg’s.
However. the 5940 rarely can print envelopes
due too their thickness. In other words the
5940 is VERY sensitve to paper thickness.
This printer is touted for home and small business use. It seems that HP is expecting
to drive small business to other makes of printers. Yes, HP support is one of the
worst. But have faith, the american way
is to outsource as much as possible.
Are there any truly good printers out there under $300????
June 21st, 2007 at 11:14 am
I bought an HP Deskjet 5940 off Ebay for 99pence, and it had the paper feed problem that everyone seems to get with this printer. However if you call HP Customer Service and ask for a paper feed cleaning kit (they should send you one for free) it should sort out the problem. I understand that the rubber that is on the paper feed roller is a little soft and picks up paper dust far too quickly thus losing grip on the paper. I used the cleaning kit and it fixed the problem immediatly.
July 7th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
An absolute piece of garbage. Sure it looks all shiny and friendly in the store, but unless all you want to do is print text or draft quality color on 8×11 paper, then you will hate it.
8×11 paper: Usually works, but
sometimes feeds 10
pages at once.
Envelopes: Jams 2 out of 3 times.
4×6 photo paper: Jams 5 out of 6 times.
HP 8×11 photo paper: Jams or misaligns image.
When the cartridge finally runs out of ink I am going to just buy a new printer…and certainly not one from HP.
September 6th, 2007 at 6:56 am
As stated above, it does have horrible picture quality for a so-called “photo printer”. My main beef however, is it’s inability to print envelopes. Whether an actual paper feed problem or an incompatability issue with Word, It jams or freezes every time, I’ve had this printer two years, and it has failed to print the first envelope. I Hope you see this HP…no more HP’s for me.
September 11th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
i HAVE AN HP oFFICEJET 6200. I cannot get it to print the whole page, left to right side of article. Why? And what do I do to change it so it will print the whole page from left to right? Thank You…
October 22nd, 2007 at 4:19 pm
This printer is a real piece. It wouldn’t print black ink for a while, but I just knocked it one day and it started up again. Classic. Also, I agree that it goes through ink extremely quickly.
November 27th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
my deskjet 5940 is a pain in the behind, the paper feed is impossible, it claims to be empty no matter what I do, the Co. suggestions on line are not working for me. But if any one knows how to solve this I’d be pleased, it IS a nice piece of equipment and fits in my small space….. Any ideas on how to cure? oh, I am quite new to this world so make it in real EASY language, thank you…..
November 29th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
I’m joining the masses when I say I am frustrated with this printer. My problem is quite similar to the ones that have already been mentioned. It misfeeds, it claims there is no loaded paper when in fact there is, and (my biggest peeve of all) the paper is jammed frequently. Sometimes I think that this printer is jamming itself just to make me mad.
Apparently HP isn’t any help, as they will make you walk a circle with a bunch of phones calls and shipping orders that will burn a hole in your pocket. If anyone discovers a solution to tame the savage HP Deskjet 5940 (or is able to beat it down and make it able to function correctly), please make it public. Thanks a bunch.
January 25th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
With out a doubt, the most frustrating printer I have ever owned, and I have owned some terrible printers. The printer cannot pick up paper unless you manualy feed it. Then it will decide to pick up a random number of sheets. Some times it is only two, other times it will empty the tray.
April 29th, 2008 at 1:17 am
Well… I was satisfied with the printer until now… IMO it works great and I had no problem with the paper, okey if the tray was almost empty it sometimes took two sheets, but nothing special… but after two years it began to indicate paper jam after each sheet, but there`s no paper jam at all…
May 27th, 2008 at 2:58 am
Don’t touch this printer with a bargepole! I work in IT and install printers regularly so I’m used to installing a printer driver in about a minute or so. Not with this baby. The so-called “driver” is a 53 meg package which is full of crap I neither need nor want on PCs. It took 40 minutes to download and install this junk and by the end of the process I wanted to kill someone at HP. JUST GIVE ME A BASIC BLOODY DRIVER YOU IDIOTS!!!!