Restoring lost print quality on the 1600, 2600 or 2605 range of HP printers

Hewlett Packard's Colour Laserjet 1600/2600/2605 printers are great printers, we use them ourselves, but a very common print quality problem is “faded Reds” where any colours that use the Magenta Toner including red, purple, browns etc will either print very faintly or they come out the wrong colour due to lack of red pigment, eg. purples are printed as blue and browns as yellow.

Initially users may notice problems towards the edges of the page, but it will get worse over time and eventually it will reach the point where print outs are considered unacceptable and something must be done.

To check your printers health simply print out a Demo Page and Config Report from your printer and then compare them against the examples below. Hopefully they will look as good as the “After” images.

To print a Demo page on the HP 1600/2600/2605 simply press the centre (Green) button on the printer Three times.

To print a Config Report Press centre button twice, right button twice, then centre button. (If you have a 2605DTN you’ll need to press the green button once, then the right button once, then the green button twice).



If your printouts look closer to the “before” pictures then you probably have the classic “faded reds” problem.

The first thing users will normally try is to change the toners, particularly the Magenta toner. The bad news is that whilst changing toners can solve some print quality issues, changing the magenta toner or indeed all of them isn’t going to fix the faded reds problem.

Having changed toners without success, the next likely step many businesses will take is to buy a new printer and dispose of their HP1600/2600/2605.* Replacing your printer and the consumables that go with it is of course an expensive business, and it’s also a bit of hassle as you have to load new drivers reconfigure the network etc.

The good news is that if you don’t need to do this. You can fix this problem yourself or get it fixed very cost effectively, and it will restore print quality to as good as new.

*Be aware that virtually every used HP2600/2605 we have ever seen offered for sale on places such as eBay has this “faded reds” issue. If sellers admit there’s a problem with their printer they will often make statements such as “magenta is printing a bit faint maybe needs new toner”. If you know what to look for you can diagnose this problem simply by looking at the demo page, config page and supplies status printouts.

This faded reds problem is caused by dust and dirt settling on a mirror that reflects laser light deep inside the printer. The only way to fix it, is to strip down the printer, carefully clean all the optics and then reassemble and test the printer. (Magenta is affected first simply because it uses the lowest of the 4 mirrors inside the printer and it faces upwards.)

If you wish to do the repair yourself we can supply an illustrated guide on how to do it for just £15. However be aware it’s a reasonably complex repair that’s not for faint hearted, or the “non techy”. It’s fiddly, and you’ll need nimble fingers and reasonable eyesight. As an engineer I’d describe it as a moderately challenging but very rewarding job to do. Expect it to take at least 2 hours.

But why not take advantage of our repair service instead. We’ve done this many times successfully and we can carry out the procedure for you from just £75+VAT. The improvement is both immediate and spectacular, as can be seen from the “After” pictures.

Restoring you printer will also be a far more economic and environmentally friendly solution than having the disruption and expense of buying and installing a new printer and wasting used toners. Users also generally really appreciate having their own familiar printer back but now printing as good as new.

To view the full price list of services we can provide for HP Colour Laserjet printers, please click here.

If you want to find out more about this service click here to contact us or call us on 01553 636 444.

If you have any printer quality issue with any of the HP 1600, 2600 or 2605 family of printers talk to us first and we’ll try to help. We can normally diagnose the problem from looking at your test prints. If it’s not a toner issue, we’ll normally be able to give you a fixed price quote to carry out any necessary work to fix the problem. We also have loan printers available and can offer printer exchanges.