HP LASERJET 2430 TONER CARTRIDGE

HP LaserJet 2430 Review

Overview:

While many consumer-electronic stores offer a variety of laser printers, most of the models on the display floor aren’t robust or durable enough to handle the demands of small businesses and school classrooms. For a commercial-grade desktop laser printer, one that delivers 1200 dpi at speeds up to 35ppm and able to hold 850 sheets of paper, Hewlett-Packard offers the LaserJet 2430 laser printer.

Pros:

Before we discuss the specs, you need to know that the 2430 comes in three different flavors: The basic 2430t, the 2430tn with built-in network and extra memory, and the 2430dtn with network and 2-sided printing capabilities. The duplex unit, memory, and network cards are available as optional accessories that can be easily added to the base model with as little as a screwdriver.

The cube-like LaserJet has a 16” x 17” footprint for easy placement in any corner or credenza. Paper and toner access are all from the front, reducing the need of moving the printer for refills.

A big step up from the 2200 and earlier LaserJet printers, the 2430’s control panel is very easy to understand and use. An alphanumeric LCD display and LED indicators provides enough visuals to easily troubleshoot problems. In addition to the traditional Start and Cancel buttons, the 2430 LaserJet also has four menu buttons, making configuration changes directly on the printer simple, topped with an actual “Help” button.

Like is younger sibling the 2420, the LaserJet 2430 comes with a 250-sheet cassette tray. But only offered as an option on the 2420, the 2430 comes standard with a second 500-sheet cassette, capable of supporting letter or legal-size paper. The flip-door reveals a 100-sheet multi-purpose tray that can handle transparencies, labels, post cards, envelopes, 3” x 5” postcards up to 8.5” x 14” legal paper of various bond weights.

The 2430 prints fast. After 8.5 seconds, this laser starts chugging letter-size prints at 35 pages per minute at 600dpi. In 1200 x 1200dpi resolution, the LaserJet 2430 keeps text sharp--even at 6-point font sizes--and does a great job with monochrome graphics. This laser printer comes standard with 48MB of memory, and an empty memory slot to add an additional 288MB. This LaserJet to use in any business classroom where it will handle multiple text jobs without buffer delays. More memory should be added for graphics printing.

Understanding the printing needs of today’s businesses in providing support for the major software applications, HP has installed a full set for print emulators that should satisfy the most diverse office. Emulators include HP PCL5e, PCL6 and PostScript3

Cons:

This is a noisy printer. While idling silently below 15dB, the 2430 produces 53dB of sound. To give you an idea of what that means: 60 decibels is the level of typical conversations and 30 decibels is a quiet office. If you have a quiet workplace, you don’t want to sit this near any office cubicles, but placed inside a copy room or break area it’s noise will hardly be noticeable.