Laser Printers

Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 1300 was a super hit in the hardware marketing industry when it was released in the year 2003. This upgraded model has included a lot of features that were absent in the previous models such as, extra memory and wireless capabilities.

Design:

Design wise, HP LaserJet 1300 looks similar to its immediate predecessor HP LaserJet 1200 or the LaserJet 1000. It is having a straightforward design and is on the heavier side. The printer is compact enough that it can be rested just on the corner of any desk and does not require any stand. But make sure that you do not do the mistake of placing it near a telephone as it is very noisy.

Placement of the toner cartridge and paper tray:

The toner cartridge and the paper tray are easy to install as they are located in the front. Just above the opening where there is a paper tray, is a toner cartridge and is fitted behind a removable panel. An expansion slot is available for an Ethernet print server, and you will find the adapter readily available in the LaserJet 1300N model.  The HP JetDirect network adapter can also be added for fast Ethernet capabilities. HP LaserJet 1300 too, like some of the other low-priced laser printer has an array of status lights that indicate the functionality of the printer which is a good idea but it is practically a good idea only the they are given some clear explanation on what they indicate over the printer itself.

Setup and installation:

The set up of the LaserJet 1300 printer is extremely easy. The basic maintenance functions are very easy to do. The user guide provided by HP gives you step by step instructions and illustrations that are very easy to follow. They have also provided CD which has in it, an expanded user guide which covers for you most of the installation troubles. The CD also explains the major up gradations that had been made in 1300 from 1200 and also gives you various options for improvements that you can make over 1300 for a few extra bugs.

Paper tray and capacities:

The HP Laserjet 1300 monochrome laser printer is fitted with main paper input tray which has a capacity of 260 sheets. In addition to that, you have a manual feed tray which has a capacity of 10 sheets. While the main input tray handles all the standard sizes of business paper like letter, legal etc, with the manual feed tray you can feed in the envelops, card stock, transparencies and labels. You can also fit an optional input tray to the bottom of the unit which again has a capacity of 250 sheets that increases the maximum capacity to 510 sheets. The output tray that is at the back of the printer has a capacity of 125 sheets. You will have to handle the tray cautiously as rough handling of the main paper tray will dislodge the manual feed tray.

Improvised speed and degraded print quality:

LaserJet 1300 Printer has improvised a lot in case of the speed of the printer. Its flagship model had a rate of only 10ppm, whereas, 1300 has almost doubled this rate to 20ppm. Though it has a flattering print speed, the quality of the prints are not that impressive. They look awful when compared with the other models of the same price range. The text output does not look like a laser print, it lacked the definition and clarity that you would expect from one. The text looks faint and the text of smaller font are not even fully formed. Lot of bumps can be found in the text and the serifs and graphics were the worst of all. The grayscale images were inconsistent on top of banding.

Features and performance:

The HP LaserJet 1300 laser printer runs with a 133MHz Motorola Coldfire processor chip and has an internal memory of 16MB which is almost double the specification of HP 1200 which prints at the rate of 15ppm. The start up time of the printer is very good and the first printed paper appears in just 10 seconds. All which seem to be excellent SOHO features. The amount of horsepower is sufficient for most of the small scale jobs for the SOHO users.

Print driver language options are available which is of standard HP PCL 6. However, you can also install HP PCL 5e or PostScript level 2 emulation. The properties dialog box of the HP 1300 monochrome laser printer is of a great usage as it has in offer for you some nice printing features. Automatic duplexing is not available but you can do it manually if you wish to. There is a setting called as EconoMode that produces legible documents while printing using reduced amount of toner.

The package:

The printer comes in a package that contains everything that you will need. It has a toner cartridge, a power cord, a printed setup guide, and an installation CD. However, as is the case of a lot of other vendors, HP has also failed to include a USB or parallel-port cable.

Warranty and support:

HP offers the LaserJet 1300 a typical 1 year limited parts and labour warranty. Telephone tech support is available toll-free from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. The HP website offer you a lot of useful information and resources. They tell you how you can recycle used toner cartridges on which you can save a lot.

Verdict:

We are pleased with HP LaserJet 1300’s fast printing speeds, good expandability options and compatibility with a wide range of operating systems. But that factors that we are disappointed with and you have to think about before investing over the printer are it poor graphics and text print quality and also the absence of the USB or parallel cable. It is a good option if you are particular about fast prints but, if you are looking for good quality prints, then look elsewhere. The LaserJet 1200 of HP is a better choice as it has excellent print quality and acceptable print speeds.

HP LaserJet 1300 Printer – Technical Specifications, Features

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