Home > Consumer Reviews > HP LaserJet 1020 Printer (Q5911A#ABA)

I purchased my HP 1020 laser printer at Office Depot for $129.99. This was a good bargain even compared to online shopping prices. I know that if you are patient, and you perform a bit of due diligence, you can get this printer "new, never opened, and unrefurbished" on eBay for around $100-120 (I know this because I bought a secnod one as a Christmas present for $105 on eBay). Note however, it does not come with a 2.0 cable - so you will have to buy one to connect it to your computer ($25 in the retail stores and $5-7 on eBay). I am one of those shoppers that "does his homework" before making purchases. I was buying this to replace my miserable Brother HL-1440. I say miserable despite its generally good ratings because the poor LONG-TERM value of this printer clearly outweighed the initial features. What I mean by this is that the Brother requires not only the replacement of a toner cartridge at, what $60 per shot? But also, an EXPENSIVE DRUM every 4-5 toner cartridges. The drum alone cost about $130!! You might as well buy a new laser printer - which I DID. Printer manufactureres are like drug dealers in a way- they sell the printer itself for cheap to lure you in...the hit you hard when it comes to the cartridges (and/or drum).

The beauty of the HP-1020 is that it is very inexpensive, efficient, blazing fast (as advertised - 353% faster) from the time you click "print" to when the printer actually spits our your document (about 4-5 seconds) even when the printer is not "warm." Also, THIS PRINTER DOES NOT REQUIRE A DRUM REPLACEMENT. The cartridges cost $70 if you pay full price, but I found new, original HP nonrefurbished cartridges for $55 (including the shipping cost) - never buy them in a store, always buy online from a reputable retailer like "New Egg".

Anyway, this prints very clean documents, and set-up could not be easier, even for a non-techie. I actually set this printer up on my home network so my wife could print from her (wireless internet connection) laptop, directly to the HP-1020 which I connected to my desktop computer. It is pretty cool.

FREE ADVICE: Don't listen to the untrained computer store high schoolers help who tell you (or me) that you need a network enabled printer to set up a network printer whereby you can share the printer with other computers or laptops on your network - you DON'T. Just search online for directions on how to set it up (and make sure your firewalls are DISABLED on all computers to add the new printer - you will know what I'm talking about once you try to set it up).

As for the specs of the HP-1020, don't let the 600x600 dpi mislead you. It prints equally as well if not better than as those "1200 x 1200" dpi printers - you will NOT be able to see a difference. If you can think you can, set up an appoinment with your optomotrist. In other words, why waste away your hard-earned $$$, which can be as much as an extra $50-100, just for useless specs that do not represent the true and actual print quality of documents you will receive? Put that $$$ towards a back-up toner cartridge. Besides, Hewlett-Packard utilizes some sort of "dpi enhancement" on the HL-1020 to maximize its 600x600 dpi to give you a 1200x1200 type print quality.

There was a newer model, i.e., HP-1022 with "better" dpi specs and more memory (8mb versus 2mb on the HP-1020). Again, don't let this mislead you into paying more than you have to. The memory supplied in the HP-1020 is PLENTY. Trust me, I am one of those guys that always wants the "best AND MOST features" on electronics - so if I thought it was necessary, I would have purchased the HP-1022.

The funny thing is, every time I would print on my old Brother HL-1440, my computer would ALWAYS give me an irritiating "not enough memory"-type pop-up everytime I printed, despite the fact I had over 24 MB of memory in the printer itself! NOT ANYMORE! This HL-1020 printer works flawlessly with 2 mb of memory. Also, if you are thinking about buying the HP-1022, the ratings I've seen online as not nearly as good as the HP-1020. In fact, the HP-1020 has received nearly perfect 5-star ratings from about 12-15 reviewers I've seen on the internet from different review websites. Plus, the HL-1022 costs about $70 more! For what?

In sum, I would HIGHLY recommend the HL-1020 printer for home or even small business use. It's truly a value, and you will not go broke once you get through the first toner cartridge. Thus, TWO thumbs up and FIVE stars. Oh by the way, I did look at other brands, HP seemed to be favored over others in reliability, quality, etc.

I hope this helps your shopping decision.

I have a model 1012 at work and liked it so much I bought a 1020 for home (the 1012 was unavailable at the time.) They are virtually the same machine. I have found these to be easy to use and pretty fast printers. I like the manual paper feed slot and use it often for envelopes and labels.
And, unlike Golden Comet, who either has a dozen printers at home or is in HP Marketing writing advertisements disguised as reviews, I am a regular customer with no bias towards or against HP products.

I bought this for use with my new Mac mini and was surprised to find that HP does not have any Mac drivers for the LJ 1020. (In the spirit of full disclosure, the box does list only Windows systems under the minimum systems requirements - I just didn't look since it did not occur to me that they would not have Mac drivers) I traded e-mails with HP and they indicated that I should return the unit for a refund since it was not designed to be Mac compatable. I then Googled a bit and found out that users were having success with the LJ 1022 drivers (as Amazon Lover indicates here) so I tried these and it worked like a charm. (December 2006 Update - It seems HP has updated the drivers on their website to delete functionality of the 1020 using the 1022 drivers. Not to worry - just Google HP 1020 Mac OSX and it will bring up sites that have the old drivers). I really don't know why HP Tech Support wouldn't know this. I like the unit as it has a small footprint on my desk, starts up fast, has excellent print resolution and a good capacity for the paper tray. I replaced an aging HP LaserJet 5P at about one quarter the cost and am very pleased with the unit.

My faithful old workhorse, the Laserjet 6L, toiled tirelessly for 9 years before it died recently. I was scrambling for a replacement and happily came upon this little baby. The Laserjet 1020 makes an excellent choice. It costs less than half the price of the old 6L and has better print quality to boot. Like its predecessor, it is a monochrome printer, best suited for printing text. Graphics are good enough but if graphics are your primary concern, you'd be better off with a separate colour printer. Text though is absolutely perfect (HP's strong point) - you need a magnifying glass and very meticulous scrutinising to spot any imperfections. It has a print resolution of 600x600x2 with RET to give an effective resolution of 1200 dpi. But the actual print quality outshines those of many printers boasting much higher resolutions. The 2MB memory may seem small by today's standards but it is still twice the 1MB on my old LJ-6L and I never had any trouble running out of memory even then. Like most newer printers, it connects to the PC via a USB 2.0 port. You cannot connect via a parallel printer port. It doesn't have an auto-start or auto-shutdown like the old LJ-6L but has a manual on/off switch instead. No big loss. The accompanying toner cartridge is rated at a decent 2000 pages. You can extend that quite a bit by using Economode (Draft print). The quality on HP's economode is good enough for daily personal use. The default setting on the LJ-1020 is 600dpi. To print at the higher 1200dpi or the lower Economode, you need to change the settings in the printer's properties page on your PC. Despite its relatively compact size, it is slightly larger and bulkier than the LJ-6L (14inches across cf. 12inches for the 6L).

It installs like a breeze on both XP and Vista. The drivers are not Vista certified but they work without a hitch. It took barely 10 minutes from software installation to printing out the test page. (Note: Follow HP's advice and install the software first, and only then connect the printer).

After that pleasant initial experience, my nightmare began. I have older systems with Win ME and 98SE installed, which depended on the old LJ-6L for printing. Despite HP's claim that this printer will work on Win ME and 98SE, I was unable to have it work on either. After 5 evenings of fruitless troubleshooting, I finally caved in and called HP tech-support (India). The Indian staff were as always exceedingly polite but they insisted that the printer wouldn't work on either ME or 98SE. As they said, "HP no longer supports installation on ME or 98SE". They advised me to just install it on the new XP or Vista machine. I was crushed but I carried on tinkering. I finally got it to print on not only the ME and 98SE machines but even on a system with Win98 (First Edition) - supposedly unsupported. The trouble was in the USB connection. On the older machines I had to plug the printer into the old USB 1.0 ports, instead of the newer 2.0 ports I had added on later. On the 2.0 port it simply wouldn't print, but on the 1.0 port it autodetected and printed flawlessly. The 2.0 ports are fully functional as I use them to connect the old machines to external backup disks, so I have no idea why the printer simply can't use them. On the new XP and Vista machine, the printer was happy enough to print via the USB 2.0 port.

Incredibly, I found that the LJ-1020 even works on Linux which is explicitly NOT supported by HP (HP does not provide Linux drivers). I tried using it on the latest version of Ubuntu Linux (Feisty Fawn). You need to search for and download a third-party driver called foo2zjs (Google it). It's provided free by some kind soul in the open-source community. You need to be reasonably familiar with Linux to tweak it. There's help at the author's homepage. It has bugs but at least it prints, which is more than can be said for HP's own miserable efforts. (Note: Feisty Fawn contains an early version of foo2zjs but get the latest version from the author's website.)

My printer came packaged with the latest drivers as well as the USB cable (HP finally woke up to customer complaints regarding the absence of the USB cable in previous releases). The reason the Laserjet 1020 is so cheap, is because, like most things nowadays, it is "Made in China". The accompanying toner cartridge is "Made in Japan" and the CD-ROM is "Made in Singapore". The manufacturing quality is good enough. No complaints. Especially at this price. The quick-setup guide is a single-sheet foldout - simple, easy to understand pictures. Even a child could set this up. For those who like ploughing through technical stuff, there is the full and very detailed 118-page manual in pdf format on the accompanying CD-ROM. It includes troubleshooting tips on all sorts of potential problems and how to best avoid them. It also tells you how to open up the printer, not only to clean, but also to replace worn-out moving parts like the "pickup roller" and the "separation pad". I take this to mean that HP expects its printer to last a very long time (In 9 years, I never had to change anything on my old 6L except for the toner cartridge). All in all, aside from the disappointing and wholly misleading tech-support, this was an excellent buy. I expect as many years of unfailing service from this little printer as from its venerable predecessor.


PS: A note on HP repair services. When my old Laserjet 6L stopped working, I took it straight to the HP repair centre. I fully expected to have it repaired and working again within a week or so. It took HP more than 2 weeks to get back to me with the curt and dismissive claim that it was "unrepairable" - "too old to repair" - "why don't you buy a new one?". On further questioning, I found out that it could, in fact be repaired (the problem was a defective transformer) but at a price. They then quoted me the extraordinary estimate of just over $130. Does it cost $130 to replace a defective transformer? I doubt it. It may seem odd to want to repair something in this throwaway-age, but I happen to be someone who values quality and durability and fully expects products to last a lifetime. Was this just HP's ploy to get loyal customers to buy new HP products? If they think they are gaining business this way, they are sadly mistaken. Customer loyalty is earned when a company stands by its product to the end and not treat it as throwaway junk. If it weren't for the high quality printouts HP laser-printers are justifiably famous for, I would have shunned HP forever based on their so-called "support" service. HP's "support" could do with a lot of improvement if it hopes to even begin to match the quality of its products.

I am a homeschooling parent who prints ALOT, sometimes 100 pages at a time, certainly 100 pages a week, minimum. And I also work at home, and print business letters and envelopes. This printer has taken all the drudgery away. Its fast, good quality print appearance (although I print in draft by default to further save on toner). The setup under XP was a breeze (using my old USB cable). I have been using it for about 7 months now, still on the same cartridge.