HP Laserjet 1300 - More bang for your buck

The printer that I have been using since I started my new job quit last week and my boss was looking for one to replace it for me. I asked him to checkout what HP had to offer. I have been working with HP LaserJet printers for over 9 years and I trust their quality.

He decided on the HP LaserJet 1300 and I couldn't be happier. The LaserJet 1300 is the replacement for the LaserJet 1200 and I was interested in seeing if HP made any improvements. I am familiar with the LaserJet 1200 from my last job and I looked forward to using the LaserJet 1300 to print my emails and reports that I needed to print out daily. This is a black and white laser printer so I still had to use a color laser to print anything in color.

I couldn't wait to unpack the printer and get it installed in my PC and do some testing. I unpacked the box and made sure everything that was supposed to be in the box was included so I didn't have to go searching. The contents of the box included; the LaserJet 1300 printer, the installation booklet, driver CD and the special parallel port adapter. It didn't include the USB cable so my boss made sure he picked up one when he bought the printer.

Installation

Installation couldn't have been easier as long as you follow the instructions. You need to install the software first and by placing the CD that came with the printer and follow the onscreen steps you will be done in no time. It takes you through all the necessary procedures to setup the printer and it installed the needed drivers and associated software. Once the software is installed and the printer is setup it will complete a test page for you and you will exit the installation.

Print Speed and Quality

After the print test was completed I started doing some simple print testing from MS Word and also printing some emails. I was very impressed to find that HP had made a major improvement in the speed of the LaserJet 1300. The old LaserJet 1200 was rated at 15 pages per minute and the LaserJet 1300 print speed has been boosted up to 20 pages per minute. Since I have to turn in daily reports and important letters I was really needing a printer that can produce really nice quality prints. I was really impressed with the 1200 x 1200 dpi print resolution of this printer. It makes all my reports look professional and if I am printing grayscale graphics they also look crisp. I have observed a slightly slower page per minute rate and it is based on a couple of factors. The amount of print on each page and if I am printing grayscale graphics will affect the speed of the printing.

Another factor that is involved in the speed at which a laser printer will print is the amount of onboard memory and the processor that is built into the printer. This allows your computer to send larger files as a whole and the printer receives the files and prints them. This frees up your computer for another job while you are printing the last one you sent to it. HP included a 133 MHz processor along with 16 MB of memory standard and room to upgrade to 80 MB of total memory. The upgrade of memory is handled by one 100 pin DIMM slot that can accept up a 64 MB memory module.

Size is important

I have been so used to the usual boxy laser printers made by HP, I was looking for a little change of pace. I found that all in this little package. The compact design and pleasing shape made it the logical choice. I am so glad to see HP scrap the design of placing the paper feed on top and also having the paper come out on top. With the HP LaserJet 1300 you have a paper feed tray on the bottom that holds only 250 sheets of paper and a small capacity output tray on the top. With an optional 250 sheet tray you can increase your paper input capacity up to 510 sheets for larger print jobs. As I mentioned it's very small footprint, it is only 16.3" W x 19.1" D x 9.5" H.

The toner cartridge

For those that are not familiar with how a laser printer works, I will give a little brief explanation. Unlike inkjet printers that use a liquid filled cartridge to create the image on a page, the laser printer uses a dry material to create the image on the page. A laser printer uses a combination of digital signals, magnetism and heat to create an image on the page. The dry ink material is mixed with a magnetic carrier material and this mixture is called toner and it is contained within the disposable toner cartridge. This cartridge also serves a dual purpose, there is a film that is contained inside the cartridge and on the this film using a combination of digital signal and magnetism the exact image is created on this film. Then using another component of the printer called a transfer corona, the image is transferred to the paper and it is then moved by rubber rollers to the fuser unit. This uses a heating element and pressure rollers to adhere the toner to page and finishing the process. Depending on which toner cartridge you purchase the toner cartridge is designed to be able to print up to 4000 images. The standard print cartridge is designed to print up to 2500 images and it actually will depend on the page coverage. The high capacity print cartridge is rated at 4000 images per cartridge and just like the standard capacity cartridge it will depend on the amount of coverage. The cost of the cartridges will depend on where you buy them we purchase them from a local Office Depot and they run us around $95.00 for the standard cartridge and $116.00 for the high capacity.

Duty Cycle

I would like to discussed an important factor to consider when deciding on which model printer to purchase and that would be the duty cycle (pages per month) a laser printer can handle is very important. The reason is if you exceed the printers rated duty cycle you can cause the printer to wear out faster. The reason this happens is because a laser printer uses rubber pick up rollers and transport rollers to move the paper through the printer. As the paper is being moved the rollers will eventually accumulate paper dust and other contaminates and cause the rollers not to be able to move the paper. The duty cycle of the this printer is rated at 10,000 pages per month so it doesn't have the ability for heavy printing. If you are looking for a printer that can handle the larger print jobs check out the HP LaserJet 2300, 4200 or 4300 series LaserJet printers. They are all rated at much higher duty cycles and are faster.

Likes and Dislikes

I was happy to see that HP made improvements in the speed of all of it's models of laser printers. They have come a long ways from when there personal LaserJet printers used to only print 8 pages per minute. They also have come a long ways in the quality of print. I like the fact that the paper feeds from the bottom instead of the top. This helped to eliminate the pesky problem the older top feeding HP LaserJet printers (5L,6L and 1100 models) had with feeding multiple pages at once. I think HP made a good decision to keep the unique shape of new 1300 Series LaserJet printers.

I do wish that HP would have made the paper tray a little larger and maybe they could have made an envelope feeder. But those would be the only two things that I would classify as dislikes.