HP CM1017 Toner
LaserJet CM1017 Toner Cartridges

The HP Color LaserJet CM1017 is a color laser printer with multifunction features designed for the home office or small office user. It features excellent print quality and built-in networking, but no faxing capability, and toner is expensive, like the LaserJet 1600 toner.

The HP CM1017 includes almost every feature a home or small office could need, including printing, scanning, and copying. It does not include faxing capabilities, which might be a problem for some users. The printer also includes a built-in ethernet port for networking, allowing it to be easily shared across a network of computers. The CM1017 can certainly handle a small office of users, but too many and its limited paper capacities and slow printing speeds will become a problem.

The printer includes memory card slots on its side for printing directly from memory cards. This is a common feature for inkjet and photo printers, but not as common for laser printers. It is a handy feature for those who will use it, but may seem unnecessary in many office environments.

Toner cartridges are easy to access and replace from the front panel. Black cartridges have a capacity of 2,500 pages and each of the 3 color cartridges has a capacity of 2,000 pages. Cartridges for the CM1017 tend to be a little on the expensive side for laser cartridges, making per-page costs a little higher than competing models like the HP 2500 toner printer.

Print quality is excellent, especially for text. Color and photo quality is quite good, and at times even approaches inkjet quality, especially when printing on glossy paper. Print speeds are below average for the CM1017's price however, at around 7 pages per minute. These speeds won't be much of a problem for most home users, but a busy office of a few users might find it annoying.

Overall, the HP Color LaserJet CM1017 has many great multifunction features, good print quality and decent page yields from the toner cartridges, but its lack of faxing and its slow speeds cause it to lag behind the competition.