HP Laserjet 1320 – Big Performance in a Small Package

Our trusty, old HP Laserjet 4 finally dies so my wife and I set out to find a good, quality, inexpensive replacement. We wanted to stay with HP if possible since we have both had very good experience with them in the past at both home and work. While we did have to give up a little, (very little,) we did find a printer that filled the bill. After looking over the various HP laser printer models, the feature sets and costs of each and of course went to the store and tested the ones we had narrowed our choices to. We ultimately selected the HP Laserjet 1320 as it most closely met our needs.

Performance
This is the first printer I have had any experience with that actually over-delivered on its promises. HP specifications indicate that it should deliver approximately 22 pages per minute (ppm). When printing text in simplex (single-sided) mode, this printer actually delivers the promised 22 pages per minute. Printing in duplex mode does reduce the speed a little but it still has good output. The promise I was most eager to test was the first page out in 8.5 seconds. My prior experience with HP printers (and others as well) led me to believe that this was pure hype, a specification that any printer manufacturer never delivers on. Wow, was I ever wrong! Not only did the 1320 meet the specification, it beat it. The time between sending a document to the printer and the first page being pulled off of the printer is closer to 7 seconds. No more waiting 5 minutes, (or more) for the printer to warm up before delivering your document.

Quality
This printer’s output is top notch. The pages are clean and the text is crisp and sharp. How good is it? My wife printed the announcements, invitations and RSVP cards for her sister’s wedding on it, (on special paper of course) and people commented on how nice a job the “printer” they hired to do them had done. I also do an occasional gem/craft show to sell jewelry I have made. This printer produces all of my documents, from price sheets to business cards, with a professional look. Anything produced by this printer would be of sufficient quality to use in any business situation.

Ease of Setup/Use
This printer is relatively simple to set up. It is pretty much just plug it in, install the driver/software and it is ready to go. It uses an USB connection and therefore not a network printer but can easily be shared. The included software has something else going for it that is rarely seen in printer monitoring software, accuracy. When it says that the toner is 25% gone, it is pretty accurate. Unlike the Epson ink monitoring systems I have seen that tells you to replace your cartridge based more on time than on use, this printer lets you use all of your toner before replacing it, and you have a good gauge of when it is getting low.

Improvements Needed
While this printer is great, it does have its drawbacks. That fact that it can only handle one envelope at a time can get a bit tiresome if printing an appreciable number of envelopes. HP also needs to work on the duplexing process. While the printer has a nice small footprint for a laser printer of its capabilities, it is essentially expanded by the requirement for the paper to almost completely exit, then re-enter the printer in order for it to duplex.

The Bottom Line
If you are looking for a quality laser printer with a small footprint and an economical price tag, look no further. This printer gives you the performance expected of a much larger printer. While we have not used it to the projected 10,000 sheets a month duty cycle, I have no doubts that this little dynamo could handle