HP LaserJet 1012 Printer

 (127 customer reviews)

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...Read more

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...Read more

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.