HP LaserJet 1320 Monochrome Laser Printer

Rating:
Summary: Good speed and quality, nice little footprint
Review: I bought this printer to make double-sided printouts of order forms, and I am very pleased with its performance. The print quality is clear and even, the machine is very reliable even though I printed over 25,000 sheets on it the first week.

Cons: the paper sometimes gets jammed as it feeds from the tray, and even when you fix the problem and hit the green "okay" button to continue printing, it continues to register a problem until you cancel the job and shut down the printer. Also, the initial toner cartridge does not last very long, it's only good for about 1,000 sheets. The extended life toner cartridges are much better but are pricey at $130 each.

Overall a good machine and worth the money, the double-sided printing feature is a very nice bonus.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Our five year old HP 2100 was relocated out from under us and replaced with this model. I miss the old one. I wanted to like this machine; it is quicker by a good amount. It seems less likely to jam when doing two-sided copies. There, I said something nice about it. Here comes the rest. The main paper tray does not accept envelopes. You're supposed to feed them one at a time into tray #1, a cantankerous option at best, as my success rate with that feed is about 50%. I'll second the earlier report about the occasional need to shut down and restart. The print on ours has begun coming out crooked despite properly set guides on the main tray. The back side of the pages smudge with toner resulting in unacceptable back-to-back printing. I'm looking for an alternative and suggest the same to anyone considering this model.

Rating:
Summary: Good, fast printer, setup can be tricky.
Review: Pros -
* FAST beautiful prints
* Cartridges are toner+drum, eliinating the impending drum replacement that usually costs more than the printer.
* Cost per page is good when using the extended life toner
* Duplexer is always cool
* Compact and it looks great

Cons -
* Drivers can be tricky to install and can bog down your computer if you don't customize them.
* Manual feed doesn't work well for single sheets of paper (good for envelopes though)
* My first unit was defective

A great monochrome printer. Its fast, sharp, and economic (in terms of cost per page). The only things that went wrong for me was the first unit I received only printed on half the page no matter what I did, HP had me send it back to Amazon (easy returns with Amazon!). What I did learn from the first unit was that the HP toolbox software that comes on the provided disc lags and freezes my computer plus the drivers from the website don't install. Second time around I customized the installation of the drivers so the HP Toolbox util didn't install and all is GREAT.

When I spoke with HP tech support they informed me that alot of people were having problems with the manual feed. It works great for me with envelopes and in fact is super smooth. Single sheets of paper are trickier but I never manually feed those so its a non-issue for me.

In all, I would have to say this is a good purchase.

Rating:
Summary: Fast, duplex printer but manual feed is weak
Review: The print quality is excellent, and time to first page print from cold-start is very short. I love the duplexing on this unit and the ability to print 2 & 4 up. My main complaint about this printers is the manual feed function. Basically, I think the 1320 has some fundamental design flaws with regard to manual feeds. I can now do envelopes reliably with the method described below, but feeding standard letter-size paper is still an iffy proposition.

The manual envelope feed work-around that I've kludged together is the following:
1) take the regular paper tray out slightly (2-3 inches) so it does not feed from there
2) have the paper path go straight-thru
3) adjust the manual feed guide to fit the envelope
4) send the print job to the printer, and wait for the yellow indicator light to blink before putting in the envelope (feeding the envelope earlier seems to not work)



Rating:
Summary: HP is on the cheap again!
Review: The reason that the laser cartridge only last for 1000 sheet, is due to a business decision by HP to provide only "starter Cartridges" in most of their printers. They want you to spend four hundred dollars or more for their printers, but it pains them to provide you with a full cartridge.