Printer Review: HP LaserJet Pro CP1525nw

In shopping for a new printer, one of the first things we have to decide on is whether to go with an inkjet or a laser printer. Not so long ago, there was such a disparity between the two options that the decision all but made itself. If you wanted to do decent color printing and/or if you planned to do fairly light printing, you got an inkjet. If your printing volume was more considerable, but pretty much restricted to a world of black-and-white, then a laser printer might be a more attractive option. Sure, they cost a little more, going into it, but they tended to offer crisper, better looking text, faster speeds and lower printing costs in the long run. However, in recent years, the once apparent lines have increasingly gotten blurred.

Not only did color laser printers make their ways into the market, they also came down enough in price that home office and small business users could realistically consider it as an option. At the same time, though, inkjets improved, upping their speeds, improving their text printing capabilities and lowering their printing costs (a little, at least). And while most of this is good news, it means you really need to put the time and effort into assessing their printing needs in deciding which technology, and which model, to go with.

Whether you’re looking at color laser printers or inkjets, few companies are as synonymous with printing as HP. With offerings that range from personal inkjets costing less than $50 to business-class printers costing well into the thousands, they’ve aggressively gone after every segment of the printing market. One of their latest offerings is the $299 HP LaserJet Pro CP1525nw, an Ethernet and wirelessly networkable printer that puts color laser printing within the reach of most small business users. But does the relatively low price tag come at the expense of features and/or performance? Let’s find out.

Getting Started

Setting up the CP1525nw was fairly straightforward. The four color print cartridges came loaded in place, with just a pull needed to remove the sealing tape from each cartridge, along with a few more to remove the other strips of packing tape. And once we loaded the paper into the printer’s 150-sheet paper tray, we were ready to fire it up, choosing the desired language setting on the CP1525nw’s small monochrome LCD display.

HP LaserJet Pro CP1525nw

From there, it’s just a matter of deciding how you want to connect to the CP1525nw: wireless, wired Ethernet or USB. A USB cable is included if you want to make a direct connection between their computer systems and their new color laser printers. But it also comes in handy if you want to add the CP1525nw to your wireless network. While no cable is necessarily needed to get the printer communicating wirelessly, as you can use the WPS setup option that most modern routers offer, others might find it easier to just make that one-time connection via USB, get it set up as desired, and then go wireless.

In our case, the USB cable came in handy because despite having set our router’s option to retain the existing SSID, choosing to set up via WPS resulted in a new one being assigned. So having to make an initial USB connection, in our case, was preferable to having to reconfigure the several other wireless devices we already had on the network.

Whichever connection route you go with, and whether you’re on a Windows machine or a Mac, you’ll likely be up and running within a few moments. Add a few moments more, and you can also install and set up its Web-enabled capabilities by creating a profile on the HP ePrintCenter web site. This done, you’ll be able to send documents to be printed, via email, from your computer, cell phone, or other internet-enabled devices. And if you’re worried that this will result in a bunch of spam being printed out, rest assured that you can set the printer up to accept jobs only from specific email addresses.

How Did it Perform?

Well it’s not likely to come as much of a surprise that a $300 color laser printer is going to be somewhat more limited in its capabilities than a model that costs a few (or even many) times that much. No matter what price point you’re shopping at, it’s always a balancing act between the features you want and the price that you’re willing to pay for them. Its 128MB of memory might not be a huge amount, but it will meet most home office and small business users’ needs. And if it doesn’t, you can upgrade that amount to as much as 384MB. Perhaps the biggest compromises you’ll make with the CP1525nw are in the areas of paper handling and speed.

Regarding paper handling, it's important to note that despite the fact that you’ll see markings for paper trays 1 and 2 on the front of the unit, the first of these is a 1-sheet priority feed tray and that only the second tray actually holds more than that. And with a 150-sheet capacity and no option to add any additional trays, this means you’ll be reloading paper more often than you might have been expecting… or at least hoping for. The output bin, meanwhile, holds a little bit less, with a capacity of 125 sheets. And the CP1525nw’s only duplex printing capability is a manual process that consists of printing onto one side of each page and then loading the paper back in to print onto the other.

As for printing speeds, the CP1525nw performed well enough to satisfy most users; but it’s not going to set any records. A one page print came out in about 25 seconds, just as HP’s specs indicated that it should, while a 20-page print was completed in 3 minutes and 5 seconds. For comparison’s sake, the HP Officejet Pro 8500A Plus inkjet multifunction printer that we reviewed back in November printed the same single page in about 10 seconds and that 20-page job in 1 minute and 45 seconds.

Now it goes without saying that the text printed by the CP1525nw was crisper than what the 8500A produced. And it’s also worth noting that the CP1525nw was also capable of producing some gorgeous color prints, especially considering that it was printing on plain paper. Just be careful not to think that laser printing always means faster speeds.

Closing Thoughts

All in all, the HP LaserJet Pro CP1525nw is a capable color laser printer that packs a decent amount of performance and functionality into a reasonably affordable package. And while we wished it that it held more paper than it does and that HP could have included actual duplexing capabilities at this price point, the CP1525nw makes up for some of its limitations by doing what it does well.

So if you’re looking for a color laser printer at the $300 price range, by all means give the CP1525nw a look. Just have a list of your needs handy and make sure that this color laser printer is one that's going to meet them.

HardwareCentral Intelligence

HP LaserJet Pro CP1525nw HP $299 Available: Now On a 5-star scale: Features: Performance: Value: Total: 12 out of 15