Description

The Hewlett-Packard (HP) LaserJet P2035 is a typical small-office printer in appearance, blending into the background with its beige-ish white color scheme. It measures 14.4″ wide, 14.5″ deep, and 10.1″ high. It has only four buttons – a push-button on/off switch on the front, a test-page button and cancel-job button on the top, along with a door release button to access the toner compartment.

Features

There are only two real “features” of the P2035 – the 250-sheet internal paper tray with a handy external paper level indicator, and the flip-down 50-page multipurpose input tray, which makes the printer very useful for the typical office-related tasks of printing envelopes, printing on letter-head, or manually double-siding.

As mentioned above, the printer has no multifunction capabilities, nor does it offer built-in networking or duplex printing. HP rates it at up to a 25,000-page monthly duty cycle, but recommends a much more modest 2,500-page monthly duty cycle for optimum performance.

It uses the standard HP 05A black toner cartridge, which retails and typically sells for approximately $90 and is rated at 2,300 pages, giving it a class-average cost of 4 cents per page. The high-yield HP 05X black toner cartridge can also be used with the P2035. It is rated at 6,500 pages and retails for about $200 but can be found for under $150, making it a standout bargain at 2.3 cents per page. For high-volume office users, the HP 05X can even be purchased in double packs for $190, driving the per-page price down to 1.5 cents.

Performance

The P2035 starts up very quickly, meaning it’s ready to print almost instantly. In our speed tests, it printed a sample 10-page Word document in 25 seconds, timed from the initiation of printing. Processing on the computer may add an additional 5-10 seconds. Printing of a more complex sample, our 16-page PDF test document, with text, graphics, and photos, took 38 seconds. It’s rated at 30 pages per minute (ppm), and unlike many printer ratings, compared to our tested 24ppm, this one is actually in the ballpark!

The print quality of the P2035 was above-average, particularly its handling of grayscale photos. Fonts also looked very smooth.

Conclusion

The HP LaserJet P2035 is an ideal small-office printer, assuming you don’t need any multifunction features, such as scanning, copying, or faxing. Because it has neither additional functions nor color printing, it doesn’t offer much to the home user – for such users, there are much better picks. But it’s compact and quite fast, offering above-average print quality, making it a perfect fit for a small office with basic printing needs. The P2035 retails for $250. It can be purchased from Amazon for under $250, as of our publication date.