Review: HP Laserjet p2015 printer

An American from the software industry recently told me that Thanksgiving isn't actually about giving thanks to God close to the harvest season.

Instead it's a day where families across America can see their parents just before Christmas. That way they don’t have to spend Christmas with the old folks and instead can just relax at home. It isn't a religious weekend but a weekend built for a purpose.

The HP Laserjet p2015 is not an exciting product to look at, but it too is here to serve a purpose, with simple colours and even simpler lines that whisper ‘small efficient business’.

Start-up times were amongst the best we've even seen. We tested time to first page in standby mode at 7.5 seconds. Blank pages went through the system at 25ppm (pages per minute) and we achieved the same rate for pages of text and images.

Results aren’t particularly pure, text appears dark and dark grey but not truly black. It is extremely sharp though and we were impressed by the quality overall.

When not in use the printer is essentially silent. When printing a fan comes on but is never particularly disturbing, and it turns off a few seconds after printing has finished.

We tested the base model from HP. Other p2015 versions pack networking and/or duplexing (automatic double sided printing) capabilities. It's a shame the duplexing model costs £261 because this is a really useful feature on laser printers.

The p2015's biggest challenge is justifying its added cost over Dell's excellent 1710. We have already reviewed the networked model (the 1710N). HP’s p2015 costs £199 inc. VAT which is £53 more than the Dell.

A replacement black ink cartridge with a yield of 7,000 pages costs £109.99 inc. VAT. By comparison Dell charges just £81 for a 6,000 page black cartridge. This means the Dell is also cheaper to run.

Despite all that we really liked HP’s offering. It's quiet, efficient and easy to use but we're disappointed it is priced so high, particularly considering how cheap you can pick up comparable products elsewhere.

Also consider:
Samsung CLP-300 laser printer
Small, well designed and easy to use

Dell 1815dn mono laser printer
Well priced for the features, Dell's 1815dn is ideal for the home user or small office looking for a well balanced multifunction device

Dell Laser 1110 budget laser printer
If all you need is a small, fast laser printer that prints text well without any fuss Dell's Laser 1100 is worth looking at, but despite the low RRP it's not the cheapest to run