HP LaserJet 1020 - A Great Printer at a Great Price!
Written: Sep 05 '05 (Updated Sep 05 '05)
Product Rating:
Ease of Use:
Paper Handling:
Pros: Small footprint, excellent quality of workmanship and output, great price.
Cons: No USB cord, 2mb RAM
The Bottom Line: If you can find a better laser printer at a lesser price, go for it. Right now, this is simply the best inexpensive laser printer on the market.
poseidon's Full Review: Hewlett Packard LaserJet 1020 Printer
We all know that inkjet printers can be inexpensive. After all, there are a ton of deals out there featuring inkjet printers for $30. Having an inkjet is a great way of printing in color or even printing up photographs. A decent inkjet will even print up fairly sharp text, allowing you to produce decent-looking reports. Also, a great advantage of inkjets is that, for the most part, their footprint is relatively small -- in other words, they do not hog up valuable real estate on your desk.
What happens, however, if you do a lot of printing, particularly a lot of black-and-white printing, or you do a lot of printing where color isn't important? Inkjet cartridges, especially color cartridges, can really impact you financially. I have some friends who, when their low-end inkjets run out of ink, go out and purchase a NEW printer, because it is more cost-effective than buying a new cartridge.
There are those that would argue that refilling a used cartridge is easy and inexpensive. My experience has been that refilling is a pain in the backside and that my printers have less-than-stellar results printing on refilled cartridges, even the professionally refilled ones.
Since I ended my career three weeks ago and have since returned to school to pursue my MBA, I have discovered that I am doing a lot of printing. I am using Excel to do most of my homework. While it is important to use color on my Excel documents, I am far more interested in the actual layout of the page than I am in how brilliant the colors turn out. While I can use the Print Preview feature to see on my computer screen how the page will look prior to printing, to be perfectly honest, it does not give me the whole picture when I compare it to actual printed documents.
I decided that, instead of printing up document after document on my inkjet and just tearing through my black cartridge (and replacing them -- I have a Dell 720 and the only ink available is through Dell -- no discount resellers are available), I needed a different solution. That different solution was to purchase a laser printer.
The first thing that I did was look at CompUSA, Best Buy, Circuit City, Staples, OfficeMax, Office Depot and yes, Dell. I wanted to do some research to determine what the least expensive laser printers on the market were. I was of the opinion that I did not need a high-end laser printer and that, for the most part, a laser printer was a laser printer. To be frank, I found a few laser printers that were under $100.00. Dell, Samsung and Konica-Minolta were all offering laser printers in this price range. However, upon reading consumer reviews at Epinions, Amazon and a few other websites, I discovered that the low-end Dells were built flimsy and had smaller toner capabilities, the Samsungs were power hogs, and the Konica-Minolta replacement cartridges were very expensive and had little capacity and, on top of that, the most common complaint was curling of the printed paper.
While the greatest of quality was not important to me, I knew that I did not want to repeat the mistake of buying a machine that was going to cost me dearly when it came time to change ink cartridges. I was also concerned with the complaints of power-hungry machines, some of which would trip the surge suppressors that they were hooked up through.
I decided that I needed to expand my search to include some more initial output from my wallet, or, to use layman's terms, I needed to spend some more money. I expanded my search to printers under $200.00. What then came up on various websites was the Hewlett Packard LaserJet 1020.
Many years ago, I had a LaserJet 5MP and was very impressed. It was huge, it was bulky, but in the few years that I owned it (my father eventually purchased it from me), I never had to change the toner cartridge. So, I was familiar with HP's quality when it came to laser printers.
When I read the specifications of the LaserJet 1020, I can say that I was impressed with the dimensions: 14.6"x9.5"x8.2". The machine is actually a smidge smaller than my Dell 720 inkjet, so it takes up very little space on my desk.
What turned me off about the specifications was the memory installed: 2mb. That seemed extraordinarily small, especially when compared to the other low-end laser printers on the market. Also, the 600x600 dpi was a concern, especially when I was looking at others with 600x1200 or even 1200x1200 dpi. It was also a slower printer at 15ppm compared to the 20-22ppm that I saw on the other lower-end printers.
However, when looking at the downsides, the upsides were of far greater importance to me. Aside from the footprint, the HP came with a FULL SIZE toner cartridge, not a starter cartridge like many of the competitors. This printer runs on USB 2.0, whereas the competitors were running on USB 1.1. The first page comes out in less than ten seconds, and, for a laser printer, it does not produce a lot of noise. Most importantly, the reviews that I read about the printer were all positive.
I priced the replacement cartridges, and they run about $69.00, which appears to be a good deal for toner. I saw that price time and time again at the various outlets that I searched. I am sure that a better deal can be found, but I was looking at it from an oh-my-gosh-I-ran-out-of-toner-and-I-need-to-run-to-the-store-now point of view.
Setup for the LaserJet was about as easy as it comes. You unpack the machine and plug in the installation CD. It walks you through the entire step from preparation to loading the drivers. The entire installation took possibly three minutes. On top of that, unlike an inkjet printer, there is no need to align the print heads, so, in all reality, it was easier to set up this printer than it is to set up an inkjet printer.
Print quality is, I must say, incredible. The text is sharp. Even grayscale graphics look decent. The white part of the page is clear of any defects. Moreover, I am not exactly sure what the ten-second printout time is all about for the first page, as my printing has been almost instantaneous from hitting the "Print" button. It might take a second for the printer to go from standby mode to print mode.
The LaserJet 1020 does not make excessive noise. I have had several experiences between personal use and work use around laser printers. The LaserJet 1020 is among the quietest that I have experienced. Also, I do not experience the printer "waking up" randomly and making excessive noise that way as some other laser printers do.
This printer, as well as my inkjet, is hooked up via USB to my desktop computer. While this printer is not a networked computer, it will print just fine over my wireless network from my laptop.
Hewlett Packard does sell this as both a personal use and a business use printer.
At $149.00 (after a $30 instant rebate at OfficeMax), this is a deal that just cannot be beat. For the money, you are getting HP's legendary LaserJet technology at an incredible price. While it is not the least-expensive laser printer on the market, I do not believe that you will find a greater-quality laser printer at a lesser price.
For the techies out there, I'll go ahead and list the specifications for the LaserJet 1020 that have not been mentioned elsewhere in my review (borrowed from HP's website):
234mHz processor
1200 dpi effective print quality and HP's Resolution Enhancement Technology (REt)
150-sheet input tray, 125-sheet output tray, up to legal sized paper
12-month warranty
5000 sheets/month cycle
If you can't yet tell, I cannot do anything but recommend this printer.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 149.99 Operating System: Windows
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