The HP Color LaserJet 1500L is the entry-level model in Hewlett-Packard’s line of home and small-office color laser printers. The HP Color LaserJet 1500L is the compact, pot-bellied shape common among HP color lasers. Its soft, blue-gray-on-gray contours are homier than the drab, putty-colored plastics of office printers. Overall, it has a sensible, sturdy look and feel. Laser jet 1500L include four toner cartridge: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. The engine of this printer uses a carousel that rotates to lay down each color separately.
This cheap printer also includes a USB interface. The 1500L is also compatible with Windows 98 and me and Mac OS 9 and X. The LaserJet 1500L is also Mac compatible. The input tray of the printer holds only 125 sheets and an additional 500 sheet. Printer also consists of 16MB of memory which can’t be upgraded further. The Color LaserJet 1500L can be networked via an external HP Jet Direct Ethernet ($249) or 802.11b ($239) print server.
The HP Color LaserJet 1500L averaged 11.17 pages per minute (ppm) on black text, making it the fastest of the color lasers. Color printing is slower, in part because the printer must make one pass per color. The 1500L’s color toner cartridges (though expensive at $83 for black and $100 for each color) yield 5,000 and 4,000 pages, respectively, which works out to 1.6 cents per black-text page and 2.5 cents per color page. The LaserJet 1500L’s print quality is fairly good. Black text is sharp and clear as a monochrome laser’s. Grayscale graphics also has good detail.