The HP LaserJet 1020 Windows printer has been around for some time at much higher prices, but now that it's available for as little as £44 delivered to your doorstep, it's well worth considering as a partner or replacement for an expensive inkjet printer, and with tiny dimensions of 37 x 24.2 x 20.9cm, it won't take up much space.

Its toner cartridge is the same Q2612A all-in-one unit as used in several other HP personal printers, with a capacity of about 2,000 pages at the standard 5 percent coverage. Unlike printers from other manufacturers, it is supplied with a retail toner cartridge and not a part-filled sampler, so for personal users the question of a replacement cartridge won't arise for some time. Cartridges cost £38 including VAT, which works out at about 2p per page and is competitive with most other personal mono lasers.

With a duty cycle of 5,000 pages per month, the printer is theoretically suitable for light office use, but the 150-sheet paper tray is a serious limitation and because it has no network port, the only way to share it on a network is by connecting it directly to one of the workstation PCs. The installed memory is only 2MB, but as the printer draws on the memory of the host PC this is sufficient for any printing task.

At a true resolution of 600dpi the printer delivers crisp text documents, even with font sizes as small as 4 points, and there is a so-called FastRes mode offering '1200dpi-like' printing, although to our eyes this looks no different to standard mode.

A toner-saving Economode delivers perfectly legible draft output using dark grey text instead of black, and the output speed is impressive for such a dinky device, with a very fast time-to-first-print speed of only 11 seconds. After this, additional pages are churned out at the claimed rate of 14 pages per minute.

The graphics print speed is virtually identical and for the most part all kinds of images reproduce well, though there is evidence of mild blotching in areas of dense black. Despite this minor flaw, the quality of graphics output is fine for business charts, homework projects and personal correspondence.

The design of the LaserJet 1020 is ideally suited to cramped environments: it can be used on a shelf or bookcase instead of a desktop because the paper input and output trays are both on the same side (front) of the printer.

Just above the 150-sheet automatic tray is a separate single-sheet feeder for special papers, envelopes or card up to 163gsm, and being able to use alternative media without having to remove the main paper stock is a trick that few comparably-priced inkjet or laser printers can pull off.

Drivers are supplied for all versions of Windows from 98 to XP, and Vista drivers (32-bit only) can be downloaded from HP's support Web site. No USB 2.0 cable is provided, but when you're only paying £6 more for the printer than for a toner refill, the omission is perhaps forgivable.

Verdict
It's hard not to like this nippy little printer. While available for pocket-money prices it is built to the same quality standards as other HP printers and there's really no competition without shelling out a lot more dough.

Company: Hewlett Packard

Contact: 0870 547 4747

Tags: printer inkjet printer toner cartridge universal serial bus microsoft windows laser printer toner hardware