Thread: Hp color laserjet CP1215

The HP Color LaserJet CP1215 cannot go unnoticed-it comes clad in bright pink stickers all over. But whether to leave them on or remove them is your choice. The device measures 16 inches in width and stands just 10 inches tall. However, it has a big footprint due to the design of its printing mechanism that HP calls the In-line technology. The four color cartridges, each with their own imaging unit (drum), are placed in a tray. When you fire a print command, the paper passes through each of the four colors (CMYK) and then rolls out. The advantage with this design is that when you replace the cartridges you get fresh new drums. However, the inclusion of drums hikes the price of the cartridges. HP claims the black cartridge yields 2200 pages and the color cartridges yield 1400 pages. To install/replace the cartridge, you have to pull down the front door which releases the cartridge assembly lock. The cartridge tray slides out smoothly when you pull the tray handle. Each cartridge has a handle in the center for lifting it out. You push the tray back in after installing the cartridges and push the front door up-very, very simple.

The feed tray is located right at the bottom of the unit and holds 150 sheets. The mechanism for adjusting the paper size is very simple. You simply have to adjust the paper width and length guides by sliding them. The tray can also be extended for legal document sheets by pressing and holding the extension tab while pulling out the front tray towards you. We found the flap above the paper tray very strange. We thought it would be a manual single sheet feeder, but when we lifted it up, there was nothing. Maybe HP has provided it for loading paper in the tray without having to pull it out. which makes no difference anyway. The control panel is a small 2-inch square panel located at the top right corner which has indicators for toners, error, 'no paper' warning and paper jam. The printer driver and the HP Toolbox application take up 82 MB of drive space. The HP Toolbox application runs at startup and shows up in the system tray. When you double-click on the icon, it brings up a window with a Windows Explorer like interface. The left pane has a tree structure with three major sections-status, help and device settings. The status section has links to the status of the toners (toner level and page capacity) and device configuration. You can also print the configuration' page, demo page and supplies status page for your reference. The Help section has a 110 page user manual and troubleshooting guide for resolving issues with print driver, print media, color management and maintenance. The device settings section has settings related to paper handling, print quality and color density. You can adjust the density of each color for contrasts, highlights, mid-tones and shadows. But we recommend you use a calorimeter for calibrating the colors.



The printer driver has a tabbed interface like how most other drivers do. There are six sections-printing shortcuts, paper/quality, effects, finishing, color and services. The features are pretty standard, but are laid out differently nothing special. There are settings to choose the paper size and type, orientation, manual 2-sided printing, number of pages per sheet, grayscale printing, and so on. What we found missing was the print quality option. The Print Quality drop down box has only one option called ImageREt 2400. There are no modes such as Draft or Best to choose from. The HP Color LaserJet CP1215 can spew 10 pages in a minute with the first page taking around 22 seconds to roll out. A single color print takes around 28 seconds, but the successive prints are relatively faster when you specify multiple copies (6 pages per minute). The print quality of both text and graphics is excellent-very good reproduction of details and colors. Even fine text was very clear and legible, albeit a bit strenuous on the eyes. We don't have any complaints regarding the performance of this printer. But we wish HP had sent us brand new cartridges. The demo unit supposedly had preinstalled cartridges that were mishandled due to which the prints had a couple of spots at fixed intervals. On this note, we strongly suggest you take extreme care while handling the cartridges don't touch the drum at all and make sure no foreign objects come in contact with it. The warning label near the cartridge tray clearly mentions this. A cartridge with a marred drum will deliver spotty prints throughout its lifetime. VERDICT: If you can compromise your desk space for excellent print quality and good speed, this printer is for you. FOR: Very good print quality, lots of tweaks for calibrating colors. AGAINST: Big footprint, no manual single sheet feeder.