HP LASERJET 1012 TONER CARTRIDGE

HP LaserJet 1012 Review

Overview:

A businesses laser printer with a small footprint, normally found for personal printers. The 2003 HP LaserJet 1012 is a USB printer that can emulate 1,200 dpi resolution quality at print speeds up to 15 pages per minute.

Pros:

Coming out of the box at 13-pounds, the rounded LaserJet 1012 has a footprint of only 15” x 9”—that is, with the paper flip-tray closed. When loaded with paper and the dust cover in place, you’ll need to add an additional 4 to 7 inches to it’s total depth.

While other manufacturers have warm-up times that can take as long as 30 seconds, HP resolves this by essentially keeping the fuser on standby. This results in the LaserJet 1012 to begin printing in less than 8 seconds. The 150-sheet/15-envelope flip-tray will support paperweights from 20# paper to 42# cardstock and sizes ranging from 3” x 5” up to 8.5” x 14” legal size. The 1012’s has a 10-sheet multi-purpose slot for labels, single-feed envelopes, and transparencies.

The control panel consists of separate Start and Cancel buttons and three LED indicator lights. The Toner and Data lights are self-explanatory. But the ambiguous Attention light can mean anything from “I’m out of paper” to “Fatal error!”, depending on the flash patterns of the LEDs. It might be a good idea to print a copy of the error codes and tape it to the side of the printer.

With HP’s Resolution Enhancement Technology, the LaserJet’s native 600 x 600 dpi resolution is enhanced to produce prints of 1,200 dpi quality. This keeps printed text relatively sharp and does a decent job with photographs. However, print speeds are reduced with the higher resolution settings. Like all LaserJets, the 1012 comes with a Toner Save feature to conserve on toner.

Housing 8MB of fixed memory, the 1012 will be able to handle any size personal print job you give it. But the little laser may be anemic if you’re trying to share this printer across several computers. The PCL5e printer emulator will handle most print jobs, but for a business printer it would have been nice if it also had PostScript support.

Cons:

Barely audible when idle, the printer produces 62 dB of sound printing. To give you an idea of what that means: normal conversations range from 60 to 70 decibels. When this prints, it will be definitely make itself heard in any classroom or office.

The LaserjJet 1012 only has a 150-sheet tray capacity. If HP marketed this printer for the home use, the small capacity wouldn’t be a problem for a single user. But being touted for businesses and schools, it should have at least a 250-sheet tray to reduce the amount of refilling that can happen during a day.

At 15 pages per minute, this laser printer is a little on the slow side of printing speeds. With current inkjets pushing B&W print speeds of 20 ppm, inkjets are now giving lasers a run for their money in performance.

At the time of this post, the 1012 LaserJet had been discontinued by Hewlett Packard, but refurbished printers can sell as high as $240, higher than the 2005 MSRP of $199 new. Fortunately, the price of the toner for this laser printer has dropped considerably to make the overall cost of a 1012 more affordable.

There are no options available for the LaserJet 1012 for expansion of memory, paper capacity, or network capability.