HP LaserJet 1200 review

Verdict:

Review Date: 1 May 2001

Price when reviewed: (£410)

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

Brand new, and hailing from the king of all printer manufacturers, the LaserJet 1200 is designed to accommodate an optional scanner unit that turns the plain printer into a digital photocopier.

We tested the printer-only product in its odd-looking (and rather bulky) case.

Ease of use

HP is a company that truly understands the term 'ease of use'. Everything installs as it should, without fuss or the need to reboot. Your USB or parallel cable plugs in behind a protective panel, which is a nice idea. Feeding paper into the bottom tray is a bit strange, however, because if you don't lift the lid carefully, the whole input tray falls out.

Print quality

Unusually, the LaserJet 1200 supports PCL5e, PCL6 and PostScript Level 2 printer languages as standard. The result is excellent text quality but, for some reason, so-so picture output. Greys all come out with unwanted dithered textures. The way the print-outs curl after landing in the output tray is annoying, too.

Performance

Print speed is a bit inconsistent. Our five-page Word test was finished in 31 seconds, which is good - but the CorelDraw newsletter took over a minute. This is a nippy device for text-only documents, as well as for line drawings and clip art, but it can't handle photos with any great urgency.

Overall

Treat the LaserJet 1200 as your first stop on the way to a digital photocopier, and it's great. But taken as a laser printer, it comes across as over-large and under-endowed for the money. There are other HP LaserJets we'd choose over this one.

Author: Alistair Dabbs

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