HP Deskjet 970CSE Inkjet Printer

When my six-year-old workhorse HP Deskjet 970cxi printer (same as the 970cse)started having problems, I figured replacing it was much more economical than having it repaired. There were several listed on eBay, and I'm very pleased with the 970cse that I purchased; it was like getting an old friend back.

The 970 cse/cxi printers are fast, quiet, and produce excellent results for day-to-day tasks, and produce "pretty good" photo prints, but not as good as the newer HP Photosmart printers (I have a Photosmart 7350 for doing photos, but for general use it is much slower, noisier, and less versatile than the 970cse).

The 970cse has an accessory duplexer for automatic two-sided printing that works very well; if you're looking to buy this printer, check to see if it's included. If not, they're often available separately on eBay.

The 970cse is designed for office use, rated for up to 5000 pages per month. It is still fully supported by HP for documentation, drivers, and other downloads from their website. In a home office, it should perform well for a long, long time.

It uses the popular HP 45 (black) and 78 (color) ink cartridges, which are widely available as low cost after-market refills, as well as the "genuine" HP cartridges.

The problem I has with my original 970cxi was loss of color, printing only magenta and black. I tried other color cartridges, same result, so I assumed it was a printer problem, and gave it away. When I got the replacement 970cse, it did the same thing (with my original ink cartridges). After some research I found that it's a somewhat common ink cartridge problem, found a fix for it (soak the cartridge's bottom end in a cup of hot water for a half hour to unclog the built-in printhead), and all the cartridges now work perfectly. So apparently my original 970cxi was OK; I hope someone has put it to good use.

I have been using this printer for about 6 years and have not found one better. It is faster in Black & White than almost all new printers and rivals a Laser Printer. The color quality is excellent in "Best" print mode. I will continue to use one as long as I can find one or until somebody like HP gets it right like they did on this one.

I love this new old printer. The price was right to take a chance with it. The reason why I bought it was: I am tired of all the claims of all the printer companies of how cheep their printers are to operate. The ink cartridges are expensive and contain a chip which limits how much ink can be used. I receintly bought a Kodak ESP7 printer,copier,scanner. It is expensive to operate, no matter what the adds say. The cartridges are not filled completely so when the ink indicator gets showing a third left the cartridge runs out of ink, what a rip off. So, I deceided to buy this older printer because you can print all month with ink to spare. You can also refill the cartridge because it has no chip. The cartridges are cheep if you don't want to refill them.
I am keeping my Kodak ESP7 and will use it also because the printer prints excellent photos. I may need to purchase a flatbed scanner.

the hp 970 cse printer is easy to load espically since its a front loader i find hp printers are well built and last years if taken care of, the all in one printers are ok but more complicated to use, espically the photo scanner i tryed one and spent forever sliding the photo arouned to get it set right, so as for using a regular printer, i prefer hp over others, due to the front paper load than the rear paper load, espically in a tight set up just my observation with printers...

I love the speed, crisp clear print product and compactness of the product. Works well with Vista-which can not be said for everything.