Still here.
I remember those DVD sets from eons ago. I wish I'd have known then what I know now. Or that methods that exist now would have existed there. Garfield was thankfully replaced with a release (aside from that terrible replacement intro music), but Life With Louie will probably never see release. My Talespin is still every bit as good as the release, as are most of my Disney cartoon sets.
Anyway, to answer your question, Minolta is always better than HP for color accuracy AND for price (including refills!). So it's win-win. I got my 1600W for under $100 at
Adorama back in 2012.
I'll admit, the 1600W is not quite as good as the older 2300W, but it may just be my copy. The toner spread is not quite as tight. It may also be my Photoshop print settings.
I have an HP CP1215, and it's blah. Better than HP of the past, but still blah.
PCMag sucks at reviewing things, and their review policies require so-called "fair" reviewing. They end up glossing over bad aspects, and being overly glowing about decent-but-not-great aspects. Beware. If you read it carefully, the "photo quality" is a mere "good enough" to lousy. And "photo quality" is the same as "DVD cover quality" that I need it for.
I've not tried this exact model HP color printer, but after 15+ years of crappy color quality, I don't have any expectations of HP. Remember, it's the toner that does it, not the mechanics of the print. I highly doubt HP has changed their toner recipes. So if you do get it, realize it's a gamble. If you're fine with that, then go for it.
At least the 1600W is a known quality printer.
Some of those
Amazon reviews for the Minolta were left by idiots -- mostly people not reading the documentation for drivers, changing supplies (paper/toner), etc. FYI: As you said, it's a 2009 printer, so it clearly doesn't come with Windows 8 drivers on the disk -- go online for those. That's common sense that's not very common to some of the
Amazon users.
Most of the glowing HP reviews make zero mention of image quality. Like you said, sometimes it's hard to get useless reviews from Amazon these days.
So:
- Gamble on the HP.
- Or buy the known-good Minolta.
Either way, you'll always be curious how the other looks. The grass is always greener....