The HP Laserjet P1505 is clearly aimed at the entry-level end of the Laser Printer market and can be found for under £90. At this price you cannot expect many extras and the P1505 is indeed a very basic model only suitable as a standalone device for the home office or personal desktop use. HP does offer a network capable model, the P1505n, but the price increases by an unreasonable 50% and better options are available for less, for example the Lexmark E250dn that offers USB, Ethernet and parallel ports.

Design

The P1505 will certainly not take up too much room on your desktop. At 8.9x14.9x9.6 inches, it is smaller than many inkjet printers and weighing only 12.9 pounds it is not difficult to move single-handed. Without an LCD screen, the control panel consists of an array of lights labelled with icons that are so confusing, you often have to refer to the on screen documentation to figure out what the light sequence is telling you. HP has obviously cut corners to get down to this price and the paper guides that are located deep within the input tray are small and hard to move. The output tray also has a rather flimsy fold out extension showing more cost paring.

Cartridges

The printer is supplied with a starter cartridge with a limited capacity of 1,000 pages, so it will not be long before you are forced to buy a replacement. The only toner cartridge suitable for this printer is the HP CB436a with a capacity of 2,000 pages and is not intended for heavy-duty use. This cartridge type is currently only used in this machine and two multifunction printers and costs a hefty £42. This yields a cost per page of over 2p, so it is not particularly economical. Compatible cartridges have not reached the market yet, so you cannot rely on this avenue for cost savings.

Performance

Unfortunately there was also evidence of cost cutting in the print tests. Plain text is handled fairly well given the likely workload, HP’s new spherical toner delivering crisp characters, however graphic performance isn’t up to par. Gradients were afflicted by plenty of banding and the maximum resolution of 600x600 dpi is half of that available from some other budget printers, like the Brother HL-5240. If print quality is disappointing, the same cannot be said for print speed. This printer hit 22ppm in tests that included both text and graphics, a result that is excellent for a budget laser printer and is faster than many more expensive printers.

Verdict

If you are just after a fast affordable mono laser printer for your home office, at less than £90 the HP Laserjet P1505 may just fit the bill. But if you require a little more in the way of usable features or better quality output, you would be well advised to increase the budget slightly and look one division up, at the likes of the Brother HL-5240.