Hands down one of the best laser printers ever... at an unbeatable price
Written: Feb 28 '07 (Updated Feb 28 '07)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: cheap, reliable, cost-effective, small, high quality printouts, etc., etc., etc., etc.
Cons: "cancel-printout"-button is gone
The Bottom Line: This is hands down one of the best laser printers around. If you look for a basic printer, get it!
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| twofish72's Full Review: |
As I had to replace two company office printers with new (and of course cheap) ones, my eye fell on the Hewlett Packard Laserjet 1018. We already have the Laserjet 1010 numerous times in our office and everybody is really happy with it, so I decided to stay with the 10XX series. Especially since the 1018 was available for $100!
unpacking the printer
Unpacking the printer did not really yield any surprises. In the box is the printer, power cable, driver CD, one black print cartridge (for 1000 pages) and a "welcome mat", kind of a quick set up manual.
The printer looks almost exactly like the Laserjet 1010, except it's white (must be the new "lets look like Apple" theme) and it doesn't have any control-buttons anymore, except the power button on the back of course.
The printer specs
for only $100, the specs of the HP Laserjet 1018 are rather impressive:
General:
- Print speed Up to 12 ppm letter, first page out in less than 10 seconds
- Resolution 1200 dpi effective output quality (600 by 600 dpi with HP REt and FastRes 1200 technology)
- Processor 234 MHz
- Memory 2 MB RAM
- Duty cycle of 3,000 pages per month
- Dimensions: (W x D x H) 14.6 x 9.5 x 8.2 inches (370 x 242 x 209 mm)
- Weight 11 lb (5 kg)
Paper trays and supported media:
- Input tray(s) : 150-sheet plus single-sheet specialty paper input slot
- Output tray: 100-sheet face down bin
- Size of main input tray: 5.8 x 8.27 to 8.5 x 14 in (147 x 211 to 216 x 356 mm)
- size of special input slot: 3 x 5 in to 8.5 x 14 in (76 x 127 mm to 216 x 356 mm) for use with letter, legal, executive, postcards and envelopes (No. 10 and Monarch)
- supported paper Weights 16 to 43 lb bond (60 to 163 g/m2)
- supported types of paper: plain, LaserJet, photo, envelopes, transparencies, labels, cardstock and postcards
Connectivity:
- Interface: USB 2.0 port
- Languages: Host-based printing
- Client operating systems:
Windows 98 SE
Windows Me
Windows 2000
Windows XP (32 bit)
Windows Server 2003 (print driver only)
Windows Vista
Apple MAC not available
The printer uses the HP Q2612A black printer cartridge, which is available at the HP website for $69.99 and is good for 2000 standard pages.
As you can see, this printer is not only extremely small, but very efficient. If you know the Laserjet 1010 or 1020, it's the same size/shell. If you don't know them, I can tell you this printer is not much bigger than a regular inkjet printer. You won't be losing much desk-space with this one.
Cost effectiveness
This thing is extremely cost effective. A small calculation:
One toner cartridge costs $70 and can print 2000 pages. If you buy four 500-sheet packs of paper, you pay an additional $20 (Office Depot brand paper - $4.99 per 500 sheets). So for around $90 you get 2000 pages printed. That is less than 5 cents per page. You pay a lot more for a page if you get a copy at Kinkos. So if you have a scanner too you can really make your own copies much cheaper than going elsewhere.
Even if you take into account the initial cost of $100 for getting the printer, the cost per page for the first 1000 pages lies only at around 11 cents. Try to beat that with a small home office printer.
A short comparison:
An Ink cartridge like the HP 21 is good for about 150 pages and costs $14.99. So that is around $200 for the same 2000 pages capacity that the laser print cartridge holds. If you add the $20 for the paper then your price per page is 11 cents. Compared to the 5 cents you pay with the laser printer...that's more than double the amount!!
Also keep in mind that a print cartridge for a laser printer doesn't dry out, like some ink cartridges do (Hello Epson!). So you won't loose pages that way either.
Installing the printer
There is not much to it. You can either install the drivers from the CD and then plug the printer in the USB port, or download the driver from HP's website, plug the printer in and point to the directory with the downloaded drivers. It takes less than 5 minutes. Personally, I can go without all the fancy software that HP brings with the printer drivers so I usually download them and install from there. Still, if you need or want the software package it's very easy and straightforward to install too.
Features
The HP Laserjet 1018 does not have much fancy features to offer. But it's not meant to. It's a small office / home office black/white laser printer. It's only supposed to print text and black/white graphics fast and cost effective and without hassle. And it does exactly that. This is the ideal printer for the "technically challenged" too. Because where no buttons are, no problems can arise.
As you can see in the specs 'though, all the basic office features are supported. You can print envelopes and postcards and lots of different paper types. Less than 10 seconds for the first printout is priceless to for the occasional one page printout per day.
One thing I do miss 'though:
HP used to have this wonderful "cancel printout" button on the small 10XX series that cancels the printout no-matter-what. This button sadly is gone. If you accidently press the quick print button on a 500 page word document, when you only wanted one page, you have to cancel the printout through windows and possibly switch the printer off and on to clear it's print buffer memory. As far as I can tell, that is the only drawback of the Laserjet 1018.
Usability
Using the printer is as easy as installing it. Because it is only a basic printer with basic features it is so easy to use that a four year old could do it. It literally is as easy as clicking the print button in windows.
Clearing paper jams? The printer only has one hatch to open to put the cartridge in (piece of cake too). So you will be able to reach jammed paper very easily. Not that it will be necessary, because the 10XX series is one of the most reliable printer series I have ever seen. I have around 5 in our company for some time now and I have never witnessed one paper jam or heard complains.
Performance and Quality
I have yet to see anybody who is not surprised by the printouts of this little but powerful printer. The printouts are sharp and crisp and surprisingly fast. Everybody is always surprised that laser print technology that reliable and good is affordable for that little money. Bottom line: This $100 laser printer gets you the same quality printouts as the "big" HP Laserjets - for the fraction of the price.
My final Epinion
This is hands down one of the best laser printers around and there is probably not any company out there who can offer you the same quality, reliability and performance for the same price. This $100 laser printer is a bargain and should be on the desk of any office user who just needs a black/white printer with good quality and cost effectiveness. So go ahead, get one already. If you have two computers, get two!
"But who shouldn't get this printer?" you may ask now. Well, anybody who needs more than the above mentioned capabilities. Obviously, if you need color printouts, built-in scanner or fax, this printer is nothing for you. It's a basic printer, not more, but sure as hell not the fraction of an atom less.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
twofish72
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Member: Michael Opitz
Location: Wisconsin
Reviews written: 36
Trusted by: 0 members
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