HP LaserJet 1020

~First impressions~ HP Laserjet 1020

Remember the bad old days when new appliances came without a plug, and if you were foolish enough not to buy a separate plug, you had to wait till the next day (and the opening of shops) to purchase one and be able to use your brand new toy? Well, I was certainly reminded of this when we unpacked our new HP LaserJet printer. I checked everywhere, no sign of a USB cable. Perhaps a mistake at the factory? The box the printer came in details what should be inside. No, no mistake, this printer comes without a USB cable. After the initial annoyance, I am in two minds about that. OK, people who have a computer at home are likely to have one or twelve USB cables already, from previous printers, etc. And I hate waste, I hate that I have an assortment of cables in a cupboard that I will probably never use for anything. On the other hand, having untangled them all, I find that not one of the USBs I have will match the printer. It's a bit like giving a child a new toy for Christmas and then telling him/her they have to wait a day or two to play with it because although you have a range of batteries in the cupboard, you do not have AA batteries. Anyway, after much huffing and puffing, we found that our scanner's USB would work with the printer, and we knew we were unlikely to use both at the same time. Problem sorted, but I wish we had known about this when buying the printer.

We bought this because the printer we had before - and still have - was too expensive to run. This Epson Stylus C44UX was cheap, and produces nice prints, but it gets through ink very quickly and is also quite noisy. Both my husband and I are teachers, and as the printer is used a lot for producing worksheet for photocopying, colour is not necessary. (I don't think I said this yet, the HP 1020 is a monochrome printer).

So with a scanner sitting on the desk, our colour printer, an old-fashioned (not flat screen) monitor, and quite a bit of clutter too, space is at a premium. Laser printers are usually quite big, but this one measures 37cm by 24.2 cm and is 20.9 cm high, barely bigger than our inkjet. It looks quite nice and well built, and weighs considerably more than our other printer.

~Installing the printer~

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Nothing unusual to report there, this printer comes with a 'quickstart' guide which basically tells you to put the installation CD in the drive and follow instructions and not to attach the computer until prompted to do so. The whole process was fairly quick and painless, and soon we were ready to print our first page. Note that a more detailed manual is installed on the computer and can be accessed by clicking on 'start', 'programmes', 'HP'. I haven't really had any need to use that, but looking at it, it seems pretty comprehensive. For instance, if you ever need to print booklets, it explains very clearly, with the help of diagrams how to do this. It also contains advice about using HP media to print on of course, which to me is more to do with advertising than a user guide.

~Printing~

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So now we are all set up, let's see what this baby can do. We open a word document and hit the 'print' button. The printer spring into action, with a slight noise, but nothing we can't live with. It is certainly quieter than our inkjet printer, as that sounds like a cross between a train and a washing-machine (OK, slight exaggeration, but you get my drift)! The sale pitch for this printer boasts the first page will be out in less than 10 seconds, so the moment I click on 'print', I start to count "One Mississippi, two Mississippi, 3 " And sure enough, before I reach my 10th Mississippi, out pops a freshly printed page, subsequent pages following in quick succession. The claim here is 14 pages per minute, which seems about right. Now this was a straight text document, but having tried to print documents with high picture content, I found the speed to be roughly the same. For me, this is a very impressive feature of this printer as I can be a little impatient. Our computer is fairly old and doesn't have a high-speed USB port and it is quite possible that this would make the printing process even faster, although not by much as it is already very fast.

~Print quality~

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Speed, as we know, is not everything. What does the printed page look like? Very nice and crisp is the answer to that. The technical specification is that it has a resolution of 1200 dpi (it means it can print as many as 1200 dots per square inch of paper). It also produces a nice range of greys for pictures. I have printed labels on this too, and was very satisfied with the resuts.

~Running costs~

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I was going to wait till our first toner ran out to write this review, but as I said above, I am very impatient I have ordered a replacement cartridge at £37.94 (as always, it pays to shop around for these things, and to order through a website that offers cash back, but I won't give you a list of suppliers as they are widely available) and the box informs me that it should print 2,000 pages at 5% coverage. Now, as I have no intention to count how many pages I get from each cartridge, I don't see the point in waiting to tell you about this useful little printer. The printer itself cost us about £80, and the price included a toner cartridge. I feel this is really excellent value. If my maths is correct, it works out at less than two pence per page, not including the initial cost of the printer as that would depend on how many pages you print during the printer's lifetime. I also know from putting in the first cartridge that this is quite an easy procedure.

~My verdict~

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I am very happy with this little machine as it is perfect for our needs and not overly expensive. Its size, speed and ability to cope with graphics, along with its relative quietness make it a useful tool for producing worksheets. I have no hesitation at all in recommending it for home use, and the reason I only gave it 4 stars is the lack of a USB cable. I don't think it would be ideal for a business as you can only put in 150 sheets at a time.

So far, I have not experienced paper-jams or any other problem.

The HP Laserjet 1020 is small enough to put in a corner and basically forget about except when it's needed. From turn-on when cold to beginning the first print is probably under 30 seconds. Quite a change from older laser printers which take quite a few minutes to warm up!

The supplied software CD installed the drivers and configured my PC effortlessly. Even though this printer uses the PC's CPU horsepower to create the images for printing, it doesn't noticeably affect my 1.7GHz Pentium 4 PC's performance.

It has a USB 2.0 connection, so everything happens quickly. In some reviews I read that there's no USB cable supplied with the 1020 so I bought one at the same time, only to discover that HP now supplies this cable with the printer. Don't get caught!

The only slightly annoying down-sides are that when first powered up and asked to print, it goes through several cycles of starting and stopping the feed rollers and flashing its LEDs before it does the first print. Then it's off and away!

From the day I bought it, it's made the previously mentioned 'clunk-clunk-clunk' sound (which is probably specific to this printer, not all HP 1020s).

Overall I'd certainly recommend the 1020 to anyone who needs high quality black and white prints with a laser printer's relatively low cost of consumables, for small business invoices or similar use.