If you aren't going to be printing huge files, the cheaper initial purchase price of the 1020 could be worth the higher page cost. That's not bad but it's not as good as, say, the Kyocera 920 that we reviewed in MF156, which offers 6,000 pages for the same price. That's about 2.5p per print excluding paper.

The 12A replacement cartridge that the LaserJet 1020 uses will yield around 2,000 pages at a cost of £50. It's here that HP's strategy becomes a bit clearer. It's all very well buying a printer for £105, but the ongoing running costs do have to be manageable. The one thing this printer doesn't have is a straight paper path for thicker media it's not needed in most instances but some people like to have the option. But ask yourself how often you actually print a document of more than 14 pages? For the average home user, the time to first page is a far more vital statistic than the quoted number of pages per minute.Īnyway, if you are going to be doing such high-volume print runs then the LaserJet 1020, with its low 5,000 pages per month duty cycle, clearly isn't for you.Īnother really impressive feature on the 1020 is the provision of a second paper feed that's perfect for feeding in labels and envelopes without disturbing the main 150-sheet paper tray. Of course, some people might say that 14 pages per minute is a little on the sluggish side - even some inkjets can go faster than that.

The print quality is razor sharp because of the 1,200dpi-type output with HP's REt and FastRes processing. And once the 1020 gets into its stride, it can crank out up to 14 pages per minute. It's less than ten seconds from standstill to print thanks to HP's Instant-on technology. The most impressive feature of the 1020 is the very short time between pressing C and seeing the first page of your document come out.

Hp laserjet 1020 test page