HP 1500 Toner
LaserJet 1500 Toner Cartridges

HP 1500 Printer Review

The HP LaserJet 1500 color laser printer is designed with the small office in mind. Its low price will make it a good choice for offices on a budget, while it includes many of the features of more expensive units. If a faster printer is required, the LaserJet 2500 toner printer should be considered.

One of the first things to catch the eye is the design and construction of the HP 1500 color laser printer, which is different than typical printers like the HP 1600 toner printer. Instead of the typical beige color, it is designed with a cool blue color on its front. Rather than the usual square shape with hard edges, the unit is more curved and rounded. Many buyers won't care much about how the machine looks, but it is nice to see companies making an attempt at changing the status quo a bit. The unit comes in multiple models, including the 1500, 1500L, and 1500LXI, each with different add-ons and upgrades.

Print speed is surprisingly fast for the price, at around 11 pages per minute black. Color printing is slower at 3.5 pages per minute due to the way the color cartridges are implemented, requiring a separate pass for each color, which slows the process down, but assumedly keeps costs lower. Print quality is excellent, especially for budget models, with very sharp text and graphics. Photos are lower in quality than a typical inkjet print, but this is the norm for lasers.

The HP LaserJet 1500 toner cartridges have a moderate page yield. The black HP 1500 toner cartridges have a 5,100 page capacity and the three color laser toner cartridges have 4,100 page capacities for each. The printer toner cartridge being so economically priced gives a per-page cost of approximately 1.5 cents for black, and 2.5 cents for color. This is quite impressive for a budget model, beating out per-page costs of more expensive models. Especially when compared to inkjet per-page costs, this represents a significant savings over the life of the machine.

Networking is possible, but the unit doesn't come with an included ethernet port. Users will need to keep the printer connected by USB to a PC, which will have to remain on when printing.

Overall, the HP LaserJet 1500 represents a good balance of price and performance that should hit a sweet spot for small offices that need great print quality and good speed, but don't want to pay as much for it upfront. Combined with the low per-page costs, the unit makes a great budget solution.