Customer Reviews

HP LaserJet 1012 Printer

5 star:		(74)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I will make this short and sweet. I love the HP 1012.

There are painful issues when buying low cost lasers beyond the cost of replacement toner.
The laser drum has a limited life span and will eventually fail, possibly do to the corrosive effects of heat and humidly over a period of six months to a year. In many lasers this is a separate assembly which has a rated life span of about 20,000 pages. That is great if you print all those pages within that time period but some users are finding that the drum fails regardless of per page use because of the above. They may print two thousand pages in one year and still have to purchase a new drum when the printing begins to fail. The pain is that a drum costs almost as much as a discounted laser printer does in the first place. This is a rip because these drums are not much more substantial than an empty coke can. Truly this is a case of "selling you the razor and hoping to make money when you need the blades". Look at all the Amazon reviews of other lasers where people have had them for more than six months. Do you begin to feel their pain?

The HP apparently does not have a separate drum assembly. When you replace the cartridge you are replacing this also. That is probably why their cartridges appear to cost slightly more per copy than the other low cost lasers that I looked at. HP states their cartridge is guaranteed to be good for at least six months after it has been opened and that an unopened cartridge has a shelf life of two years in the plastic package.

What HP doesn't want you or I to know is that they are rather conservative with the supply of toner and that the toner is designed to wear out long before the cartridge and drum does in the home environment of limited usage. If you really plan to print with the HP 1012, you may use that laser cartridge up long before six months is out. You may be interested in knowing that you can save two thirds the cost of a new cartridge by melting a hole in the used one and pouring in new toner designed for the HP 1012. You plug the hole and drop the little guy back in the printer and print away. Some people are reported to be able to do this up to four times before the little cartridge gives out completely and you must buy a new one. Anyone who can refill a salt shaker can be taught how to refill the HP 1012.

This tactic drops the true cost per page way down compared to those other printers I looked at. To calculate their true cost per page you have to figure in buying a new drum or amortizing the total cost of the printer and pages printed until you must throw it away. Almost all of them can be refilled in a similar manner to the HP or you can pick up remanufactured toner cartridges for them. Do a web search for "HP 1012" laser "toner refill" using GOOGLE and you will eventually figure out how it is done. You can buy both the toner and a little twelve dollar tool kit to melt the hole from various sources on the net.

Everyone else in these Amazon reviews have already hit on the other key reasons I grabbed an HP from one of Amazon's affiliates.

ADDITIONAL 1012 PROS
1 The printer has no fan and is super quiet.
2 The 1012 uses only two watts in standby, you could leave it on 24X7 and it will draw as much as an instant on monitor or TV in standby.
3 When printing it draws less than 300 watts, the others I looked at almost cause brownouts as they draw so much current while printing.
4 The toner save feature works very well, I find it suitable for most of my print outs.
5 It is so small it will fit almost anywhere. I placed mine behind my LCD montior screen in the area where there once was old huge CRT monitor body.

CONS
1 Printing on 3x5 cards is slower than normal printing, from hitting the command to send to the printer and the first card actually coming out. I suspect there is some driver issue causing this.
It is not irritating but noticeable when you are used to get the first page in eight to ten seconds.
My inkjets take far longer and they don't print on 3X5 cards correctly.

2 Turning the 1012 off while printing will cause a paper jam and the HP 1012 lights will flash indicating a problem when you turn it back on. You have to take out the toner cartridge being careful not to expose the drum to light; I covered mine with the black plastic bag it came in. Then you must pull the jammed sheet of paper carefully forward thru the exposed assembly.

This only happened to me once when I realized I had submitted a long WORD document of several hundred pages when I only wanted two pages excerpted out of it. I panicked before thinking because this printer is so fast and it was churning out all these pages when I only wanted two! The correct way to cancel a print job is open the Win XP printers' folder and click on CANCEL to stop the current job.

I don't work for anyone in the computer industry. I have owned a number of HP printers over the years and still do. They always seem to be well built. The last inkjet I bought was an EPSON. I truely loath this printer with its constand clogs and super expensive ink which is wasted in head cleaning.

I am trying to find someone I don't like to give this to.

Vic

I ordered the printer on Christmas Eve 2004 from Amazon, and it arrived about 3 weeks later on a Friday. I reckon the holidays must have delayed the shipment. I have seen it selling for a little less elsewhere, but taking into consideration that shipping was free and I didn't have to pay sales tax in California, it was the best deal.

I have a Powerbook running Mac OS-X 10.3.8 and I had the printer working in about 15-20 minutes after opening the box. There is no USB cable or a manual. A PDF manual is supplied in the CD-ROM along with the print driver. Just make sure you purchase a USB cable. I got an inexpensive Belkin USB cable from Amazon.

The supplied HP print driver is version 1.1.3 and it prints the pages in reverse order by default. The printer puts out the pages face down, so you have to rearrange the pages in the proper order every time. I am a writer and I print out over 100 pages at a time, so that can be a big problem. I searched for a newer version of the print driver on the HP website, but they only had version 1.1.3 for download. I emailed Tech Support at HP on a Saturday and received a reply from them on Monday. They informed me that Version 4 of the print driver can be downloaded via an FTP address, which they emailed me. I don't know why they didn't make the latest print driver available on the HP website in the first place. I downloaded Version 4 and everything has been smooth sailing ever since. I have to commend HP Tech Support for their timely response and effectively solving my problem.

Regarding the speed of the HP 1012.... It puts out the first page in less than 10 seconds. It is very quiet, because it doesn't have a fan. I have heard that the printer slows down after 50-plus pages while doing my research prior to purchasing it. Honestly, that concerned me. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I printed a manuscript that was 106 pages long. My printer never slowed down! Although the printer did get rather warm without a fan, it kept putting out the pages at the same consistent pace. I've printed 100-plus page manuscripts several times now with the same results. Even then, if you are doing extensive printing jobs, expect it to slow down. Otherwise, you might be better off getting a different printer that can handle the volume.

I bought the printer for printing text and the results are sharp and clear. I considered the Samsung 1710 and 1740 and a couple of Brother printers in the same price range. I soon learned that Samsung stopped supporting Mac OS-X. While less expensive, Brother printers require a separate toner and drum, thus making the operating costs higher in the long run. The HP 1012 has the toner and drum combined together in one cartridge, so there are no expensive drum replacements. I've heard some people complain about the $69 price for the HP 1012 toner cartridge. You won't see me complaining, because I will not be paying $150 for a separate drum replacement. Besides, I've seen a new HP 1012 toner cartridge selling substantially less than $69 on the web.

For my requirements, the HP 1012 was my only choice and the best choice. I've had the HP 1012 for 3 months now, and I've purposely waited this long to write this review so I can fully evaluate it. Aside from initial print driver issues, it has performed flawlessly printing everything from pages to envelopes. Feel free to contact me if you need print driver Version 4. I rate it 4 and a half stars. It would be 5 stars if it wasn't for the print driver issue.

I bought this laser printer when I realized I will need to print out dozens of pdf research papers. Laser printers can churn out black and white prints much faster than ink jets. As a low end laser printer, I was surprised at how good the quality of its print outs are. The printer is quiet and compact. Toner cartridges cost around 70 bucks for 2000 pages, which is a bit more expensive versus that from other brand names. But I am very satisfied with my purchase. A great laser printer to have at home for printing out forms, documents and homeworks! I'd give it a 4.5 if i could, but its more 4 than 5 because it prints a bit slow and is a bit on the expensive side versus other budget printers.

P.S. I also own a Konica Minolta 1350W, I find the LaserJet 1012 a much better product.

I purchased this printer a year ago for use in my home office, and for my fiance to print drafts of her masters paper on. I had an inkjet printer that worked fine, but the cost per page was quite high, so I went shopping for a laser printer.

I chose the 1012 based in part on positive reader reviews on Macintouch.com. I ordered it from Amazon (free/slow shipping) and it arrived just a couple days later -- lovely! It's been trouble free ever since. It has only 8 MB of memory, but this has proven to be more than adequate for printing full page bitmaps, so it does not turn out to be a handicap.

The toner cartridge is the one achilles heel of this device. It is designed for approx 3000 page service duty, about half a typical HP toner cartridge yield, but costs about as much as others, about $70 retail. (Your Milage May Vary: I've gotten at least 3500 pages so far, but I have a spare tone cartridge ready to swap in). I suspect this is how HP hopes to make money on such an inexpensive laser printer. But, if you do the math, the cost per page for your first 3000 sheets, including paper and the printer, is under seven cents per page, compared to 25 cents or more for inkjet prints. After this, the ongoing cost is only $0.025/page -- yes, two and a half cents. This assumes you get only what HP predicts, and not significantly better, as I have experienced. If your budget allows a more expensive printer which gets more pages per cart, you may want to, but for those of us on a budget, this is still a great deal, with the HP reliability we have come to expect.

As noted by other reviewers, heavy duty cycle causes the printer to slow down. I don't consider this a big flaw -- it has no trouble turning out sixty page drafts on demand, at its full rated speed. And it's ultra-fast first page out is great!

I have printed undersized stock and heavy stock with no real issues. When printing on card stock, the printer slows down and prints five to ten sheets per minute. I assume that the heavy cardstock somehow causes it to heat up and slow down. I've also printed sheets down to post card sized (about 4"x6") and it handles the paper fine. (The manual says the minimum sheet size is 3.5"x5".)

A tip for Mac Users: this printer works fine with Panther out of the box, but install HP's drivers anyway to access some extra printer settings, such as Economode, low/high rez printing, and explicit support for the manual feed ("bypass") paper path.

PROS: fast first page out, low cost of operation, HP reliability, plug-and-play with Airport Express

CONS: higher cost of toner than professional-grade printers, slows down to cool off during very heavy print jobs

SUMMARY: If you need to print hundreds of pages at a shot, get a professional grade printer such as the HP 4050. However, if you are a SOHO user and rarely need to print more than fifty or sixty pages at a time, I feel that this printer is an excellent choice with a low cost-per-page.

I previously gave this printer 5 stars. However, beware. If you print, say, 50 pages in a row, the printer slows from its rated throughput to only ca. 4 pages per minute. HP tech support confirms this, and indicates that a cheap printer 'without a fan' overheats, and compensates by stopping the continuous printing...it could not be expected to do any better. Then why is it rated at 15 ppm?

What nonsense. The printer is misrepresented. If you only print a couple of pages at a time, then this is fine. But if you print out program code or book or article manuscripts, this is a BIG problem.

Other than the fact that the installation CD was all bent up, and thus unusable, I had no problems (I downloaded the driver from HP's web site). At any rate, the printer is cheap, small, and light. I was a little worried about compatibility with 10.3 (Panther) but I've had no problems other than the fact that it doesn't remember printer settings (as with all HP printers and OSX, maybe?). Fast delivery from Amazon, using their free delivery it arrived in two days.

Print quality is excellent. Speed is excellent. Paper curls slightly when it comes out, but not enough to be a problem in my opinion. Might just be the paper.

I gave it four stars instead of five because the ink cartridges are rated for 2,000 pages instead of the typical 2,500 (I was comparing with the laserjet 1300), yet the refill cartridges cost the same ($70).

But I'm well aware that with the cheaper printers they make their money on ink, not the printer itself. And if you are going to be printing a lot of text, then it's still much, much cheaper than an inkjet, and the print quality is incomparably better--I just got rid of an HP inkjet 3650 that prints only 200 pages on a $20 ink cartridge, which is ridiculous. If you do a lot of printing, that adds up quickly...So, overall, highly recommended, at least after two weeks of use....

Firstly, I'd like to endorse all the other positive reviews of the HP LaserJet 1012. I initially purchased this printer to replace a lousy Epson C82 inkjet that kept sucking up ink and clogging. The 1012 LaserJet is fast (7 seconds to start up and print), quiet, and produces excellent black and white documents. Couldn't be happier with it.

I wish I could say the same about Amazon's delivery methods. When I purchased this printer, it was unfortunately fulfilled through Office Depot. That meant a shipping charge (which originally hadn't been on the web page) and sales tax. Fine.

The trouble came when I found the printer for $50 less on HPshopping.com the very next day. I immediately tried to cancel my purchase on Amazon.com but found the order had been locked, even though no discernible fulfillment or shipping was in process. I immediately called Office Depot because it was obvious that they had not shipped it yet (there was no tracking trail yet via UPS).

Unfortunately, Amazon.com failed to provide me with any useful information that could be related to Office Depot. Their unfriendly Customer Service Rep didn't recognized my tracking Order, my name, or anything about my order. As far as Office Depot was concerned, I didn't exist. And yet, they were going to ship me a printer.

I had to wait 8 days for Office Dept to finally fulfil my order. Ironically, HPShopping.com delivered my printer 2 days later, a full 5 days before Office Depot got around to me, even though my HP order was made a day later (go figure). When I immediately took my unwanted printer to the Post Office to mail it back after calling Office Depot for an RMA number, I was a bit horrified to find the cheapest method of mailing the printer back cost $23.96. I plunked down the plastic and that's all she wrote.

I suggest skipping buying this printer from Amazon. There's no retail cost savings (it's $199 everywhere or less). No tax savings. Shipping costs to add in. And return costs if you decide you don't like/want/need the printer.

Go to the store and buy it there instead.

I'm not sure where the line is drawn between "light" and "medium" use but from my estimations this printer handles like a champ in the latter category.

While many HP drivers are included in Mac OS X you will need to install the 1012 version from the inlcluded CD.

As a web developer my needs are split between quick printouts of emails and technical docs and screen mockups for clients and internal review. After some deliberation I decided to go Epson for color (inkjet) and the HP 1012 for b&w - very glad I did as 98% of our printouts work fine in monotone.

CNet had mentioned that the print quality for images is better on the 1012 than both of the two more expensive models. I tend to agree -- now internal mockups and wireframes will be saving ink :-)

The 1012 also plays nice with Macintosh - after clicking "share this printer" in the system prefs it was working flawlessly on our 4 Mac wireless network shredding through docs (largest was a 200-page screenplay which was quick and painless, though did have to refill paper halfway through...)

The age of laser printing for home (and small businesses who are trying to cut down on costs) has arrived. Just try not to get to carried away with printing everything and remember to use both sides of the paper unless showing files to clients!

I was going to purchase the HP Laserjet 1000 originally but had learned that the 1012 replaced that printer. When I got the printer, I was shocked at its small size. It is smaller than my DeskJet 940C! Installation was a breeze. I had none of the problems other people have reported.

I installed mine by loading the drivers FIRST before even hooking up the printer to the computer. This is what the setup sheet said to do. After the drivers are loaded, then you connect the printer to the PC.

I was so amazed at the speed and whisper quiet operation of the printer. HP uses the 1012's speed and quietness as selling points and they weren't pulling people's legs about this. This printer is absolutely fast and quiet!!!

Despite it's size and many plastic parts, this printer is built to be very sturdy. HP created a winner with the 1012.

I bought an HP LaserJet 1012 for my 75 yo mother. She's been frustrated with cheap inkjet printers that never work for her (she prints so infrequently the cartridges clog or expire); I wanted something I could setup and forget about. The LJ1012 costs $175 to $200 or so, is utterly quiet and pretty compact, has a flat paper tray, is quite simple, and ought to do the trick for the next 5-10 years. So far, I'm pleased.

But it does include spyware - or at least "nagware". The standard installer adds a "reminder" utility on the sly. It pops up every two weeks and recommends buying printer supplies. True, it comes with an uninstaller and one can turn off the reminders without uninstalling, but it is fundamentally marketing software installed without my awareness that provides me no benefit. By some definitions, that's spyware.

It is hard for vendors to resist the temptations offered by an authenticated installer. I gave the printer 4 stars instead of five for that little trick. After you install your HP 1012, uninstall the nagware.

Other than the nagware, there's not much to complain about. This ought to be an 'install and forget' light duty printer. It is very quiet and includes a bypass tray (not tested). USB only of course, no parallel. I'm testing it on an XP machine, it has OS X support (for when I switch my mother's Win98 box for a Mac mini and a Dell LCD panel). The installer utility appears to support client network access to a shared printer (not tested).

There's almost no documentation with it. The documentation is on the CD. This may puzzle some people, it's not immediately obvious how to install the cartridge.