HP OfficeJet 5740 All-in-One Wireless Printer with Mobile Printing, HP Instant Ink or Amazon Dash replenishment ready (B9S76A)

I previously owned one of these printers and used it heavily for the past three years. I was surprised by the poor reviews so I wanted to share my experience, especially since I decided to replace my original printer with the same model after it broke.In the three years we used it, the printer did all we asked it to. It scans well, acts as a photocopier, and is great a duplex printing, though it is slower than I'd like. That said, for the price it should be sufficient for a small business or home user. If you want a faster printer, you'll need to pay much more. We never used the "instant ink" feature (I was concerned about cost and privacy issues) and instead opted to purchase our own cartridges. We also don't have a landline, so I can't speak to the fax feature. I also can't speak to the photo printing aspect of the machine, as we don't use photo paper but we do print images in color on regular paper embedded in documents.The printer does reasonably well on all the things we used most. It does use a lot of ink, so we always purchased extended (XL) cartridges, but we have not had issues with genuine HP ones. Over the years and many iterations of printers I've used remanufactured/refilled cartridges, generics, and have refilled my own cartridges. I've had the most success using genuine cartridges and get the best print quality that way.Unfortunately, a grinding sound recently developed and I kept getting an error message that the photo tray was "blocked". It wasn't, but nothing we did fixed the issue. We tried removing the photo tray as a last resort as we never used it, but that didn't fix the issue either. This printer is no longer supported by HP, so understand that you are on your own if it breaks, even if you purchase a "new" one. Despite this, we opted to purchase the same model because our old one has worked so well and we already had a lot of money invested in cartridges. HP always uses propriety ink blends (or so they say), so you can't use another number cartridge in any new printer, even if the cartridges look identical (they have chips in the cartridge that will give an error message and refuse to print if you do). So, to change printers for a newer model would have required our throwing away the old cartridges, which given the cost of ink, we did not wish to do.We are on our second new printer (after the original broke). The first arrived without a working front panel. The printer was getting power given a light at the back, but the power button did nothing. We filed a claim for return and were given a prepaid label to return the dead one. We just received the second printer today, which started up right away. We did have some issues with the duplexer not being recognized as installed, but deleting the printer and reinstalling the software fixed that problem. Over the years, we've done that a few times to fix issues on the old one (such as ones that developed with new Windows updates) and that's often the best way.We NEVER use the "full" software, only the basic drivers. I've found the "full featured" software is buggy and bloated, so we get the best performance by sticking only to the drivers necessary to run the printer, scanner, etc. We haven't missed anything that was in the much larger software package, and the extra space we saved and better performance was worth it. I do not allow my printer to connect to the internet so no Instant Ink for me, but we are on a metered connection and HP checks for updates constantly, so it is better leaving it that way for us.I am hoping this review helps others to make a decision. For our Windows 10 based systems, this printer has been a good choice over the years. The wifi feature I will say is glitchy, so we use a USB connection, but that's mostly because of the type of connection we have at home (wireless internet only). If we had a broadband connection, I might reconsider.Bottom line, I'd not hesitate to buy this printer. It is a good value, but you need to be comfortable providing your own technical support or try buying one of those warranties offered for an extra fee since this printer model is no longer supported by HP. In all the years we've used HP printers, I've never had to return one for warranty service, and this one was no different. I've used tech support of course, but can't for this one due to it being a discontinued model. To be honest though, HP support never really helped and were frustrating to use, so I found out more by googling than talking to them anyway. I could be sorry a few months from now if it breaks, but I'm hoping this one is just as good as our original.

I’ve owned 2 other HP All-In-One printers before, the HP 5610 and 4500 series. Both of which were excellent printers. However, I had to go through more steps before faxing a document using Next Day Faxing on both of the other printers. In addition, when scanning a document they would only save it in one place that the printers automatically set-up. With the Officejet 5740 I can scan a document and Save it to a particular file instead of it going just to one place. And Next Day Faxing was so easy. All I had to do is press the Fax button on the Main Screen of the printer and touch Fax, then press the Send Later and set the time of day I want the document to be faxed. I was so pleased it was that simple.The other reason I purchased the 5740 is because the paper compartment on the other printers were open where dust could get on the paper. I found myself always taking the top piece of paper out just to shake off any dust particles that might go through the printer as it was processing the page for printing. The 5740 hides the paper in a underneath closed compartment, plus it holds up to 250 sheets of paper at a time rather than 100. I also got the 5740 for a really good price. I only paid $82.50 for it at Amazon but when I found out that Best Buy was only charging $74.99 for the same printer, I asked Amazon to give me back the difference as a Price Match and they did. TigerDirect is now charging $149.99, BestBuy is now charging $89.99, Walmart is now charging $89.99, OfficeMax is now charging $89.99, Target is also charging $89.99 and Amazon is now charging $99.00 for this printer. I purchased the HP Officejet 5740 at a great time when it was a really great price.The other thing I love about this printer is the Tri-Color single cartridge. There are other Officejet Printers where you have to pay for each color separate. It costs more to replace those type of cartridges. The HP Officejet Pro 8610 All-In-One printer uses the separate 3 color cartridges. It’s just a waste of money to by 3 different colors cartridges rather than paying for one cartridge that includes all 3 colors. Go to Amazon and the other stores I mentioned and see for yourself. If you’re like me, you want to get the best bang for your dollar. Don’t over spend when you don’t have to.My rating for the HP Officejet 5740 All-In-One printer is a resounding OUTSTANDING!