HP Laserjet P1505 review
Design
The P1505 will certainly not take up too much room on your desktop. At 8.9x14.9x9.6 inches, it is smaller than many inkjet printers and weighing only 12.9 pounds it is not difficult to move single-handed. Without an LCD screen, the control panel consists of an array of lights labelled with icons that are so confusing, you often have to refer to the on screen documentation to figure out what the light sequence is telling you. HP has obviously cut corners to get down to this price and the paper guides that are located deep within the input tray are small and hard to move.
Cartridges
The printer is supplied with a starter cartridge with a limited capacity of 1,000 pages, so it will not be long before you are forced to buy a replacement. The only cartridge suitable for this printer is the HP CB436a with a capacity of 2,000 pages and is not intended for heavy-duty use.
Performance
Unfortunately there was also evidence of cost cutting in the print tests. Plain text is handled fairly well given the likely workload, HP's new spherical toner delivering crisp characters, however graphic performance isn't up to par.
If you are just after a fast affordable mono laser printer for your home office, at less than £90 the HP Laserjet P1505 may just fit the bill. But if you require a little more in the way of usable features or better quality output, you would be well advised to increase the budget slightly and look one division up, at the likes of the Brother HL-5240.
Alan Wilson has over 10 years experience in the imaging industry and is a director of Cartridge Concept, a supplier of discount toner cartridges for all Laser printers using laser toner cartridges