hp LaserJet 1320 - Mono Laser Printer review

At the launch of this new LaserJet, hp made much of its built-in duplexer, enabling you to print on both sides of the paper in one operation, as well as its wireless networkability. At the price, this seems like a good specification, so we were keen to check out exactly what you’re getting for your money.

Looking very square cut and cubic, the pale cream and slate grey LaserJet has a desktop footprint larger than an A4 sheet of paper, closer to a 12in vinyl album sleeve. The 250 sheet paper tray slides in under the printer and a second, optional 250 sheet tray can be fitted underneath that. Paper follows an S-shaped path, to be ejected onto the printer's indented top surface, but there's also a straight-through feed to the back of the machine.

A single-sheet feeder is available under a rather stiff, fold-down cover at the front. This really is a single-sheet feed, though, as there's no pull out, supporting tray for even a few envelopes. The printer’s duplexer is built into the device and, when selected through software, part-ejects each page to the top surface before re-feeding it to print the second side.

Controls and indicators on the top surface of the printer are minimal, with three lights for low toner, paper jam and data, while two buttons will initiate and cancel a job. At the bottom of the right-hand side is the power switch and at the back are power, parallel and USB 2.0 ports.

The top front of the LaserJet 3120 folds down to give access to the integral drum and toner cartridge. There are versions of this providing enough toner for either 2,500 or 6,000 pages – the low capacity version is supplied with the printer.

Installation is a little more involved than normal and, although automated, you have to pay attention and restart your PC to complete it. Although the LaserJet can work with internal and external, wireless and cabled network interfaces, you have to pay extra for any of these options. You can buy the 1320n, which includes 10/100 Ethernet, for an RRP of £349 or the 1320nw for an RRP of £379 with 802.11g as well. The 1320n version in particular looks expensive for a comparatively mainstream upgrade.

HP’s software driver is comprehensive, with full control of watermarks and page imposition – printing reduced images of more than one page per sheet of paper. The radio buttons for portrait and landscape output are hidden away on the Finishing tab though and we initially had trouble persuading the printer to default to A4 rather than Letter paper. There’s a good little interactive help page, where you can simulate any combination of indicator lights and read off what they mean.

Running our standard series of benchmarks produced some impressive results. HP claims a maximum print speed of 21ppm on A4 paper, but under default settings we saw 13ppm printing single-sided and just over 10ppm when duplexing. However, using Economode and printing very simple text, we could get quite close to the claimed print speed.