HP LaserJet 1500

With its fluid contours, the HP LaserJet 1500 is pretty easy on the eye and is a fairly compact unit.

At the base of the curved front panel is the primary input tray, which is capable of holding up to 250 sheets of paper at a time and has a paper level indicator that is visible when the drawer is shut.

There is a fold-down 125-sheet capacity multipurpose input tray just above this, with paper guides to help you cope with a range of different media.

A fold-down flap to the rear provides a more direct path from the imaging drum for thicker media, otherwise your printouts will appear in the output tray moulded into the top of the unit.

The remaining surface of the front panel folds up to give access to the printer drum unit and four individual ink cartridges.

Access to the cartridges is controlled by a button on the control panel that rotates the cartridge carousel, while a set of four lights shows which cartridge is accessible at any one time. Installation and removal is a doddle.

A single black cartridge costs £72.45 and should be good for 5,000 pages while the cyan, magenta and yellow cartridges have a duty cycle of 14,000 pages and cost £87.63 each.

Output quality was excellent - characters were solid with crisp, smooth outlines and legible right down to 2pt. Areas of shading or solid colour were well rendered with no visible banding and areas of tonal graduation were smooth.

In our timed tests the HP printed our mono text document at 16ppm, our 10-page mixed mono content document at 5ppm and produced four colour pdfs per minute. It took a respectable 44 seconds to print our test photo.

Unfortunately for a printer aimed at the small business market, there is no automated duplex option, nor is there an upgrade available.

Contact: HP 08705 474 747
www.hp-expo.com/uk/eng

Specifications:

• Laserjet
• 250-sheet input/125-sheet output
• 4ppm colour
• 16ppm mono printing
• 600 x 600dpi resolution
• Four cartridges
• 16MB memory
• USB2
• 482 x 451 x 376mm (w x d x h)
• 23.9kg

See also:

Minolta-QMS Magicolor

Very affordable colour laser with good print quality  20 May 2003

Epson Aculaser C900

Colour printer for business at a compelling price  25 Mar 2003

Minolta-QMS Magicolor 2300 DL

Colour laser printing becomes affordable with this value printer  27 Nov 2002

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