Blurry Color Pages on my HP Laserjet CP1525nw

[OhBeWan]

My question is: If I buy new cartridges and that does not fix the problem, can I get my money back? Or should I just give up and buy a new printer?

Printer is about 10 years old.  30,456 total impressions. Black & white jobs are perfect.  Color jobs are blurry.  This started a few months ago.  Did not start when I installed new cartridges.  I have done all of the alignment, reinstalls, cleanings, firmware updates listed on this site.  Problem occurs from any device used: multiple laptops, tablets, phones, so it is not a driver issue. Paper is fine.  Humidity is not an issue.  Yes, I have power cycled the printer.    

At this stage it is either a bad cartridge or a bad printer.  Do I spend hundreds of dollars on new cartridges or hundreds of dollars on a new printer?  

[Valsimot]

Print a sample page and post it here.

[OhBeWan]

[OhBeWan]

1. The orange headings and sub-headings are fairly blurry.  Staring at them will give you a headache. 
2. Any other words that are in color are almost illegible. For example, the 3rd ingredient down is fine until the last word.  The last word (s) in most of the ingredients are blurry. 
3. Up near the top "Prep Time" and "Cook Time" are blurry.
4. On screen, the picture of the sandwich is crisp and detailed.  The printed copy is not.

Again, we have reset, cleaned, alignment, drivers, restart and more. It did not start when we changed cartridges, only mid-way.  These are genuine HP cartridges.  Question is: If we buy new cartridges and it doesn't fix it, can we return or should we just replace the printer?

[Valsimot]

It's the printer, not the cartridges. Turn the printer OFF, remove all cartridges.

Press and hold on the printer's panel right arrow and cancel button. Turn the printer ON, keep 2 buttons pressed together until the screen reads “permanent storage init”, leave it to initialize, then install toner cartridges and wait to finish calibration and then test it.

[OhBeWan]

No change.  Still blurry.   

Did it again.  Still blurry.

Tried recalibration. Still blurry.

[Valsimot]

New toners will not fix your issue, you have printer malfunction.

[OhBeWan]

OK.  And with a printer over 10 years old, looks like repairing is not an option.  Correct?  Only solution is a new printer or only print in black and white. 

[Valsimot]

It depends, if you have toner cartridges on stock or yours are close to full you can get an used CP1525nw on eBay rather cheaply, Otherwise it's not worth repairing.

[OhBeWan]

Thank you.  All cartridges are almost empty.  I will be looking for HP Color Laserjets on sale!

You have been very good to work with.