The company that sells the most printers in the world announced late last year the marketing of this new family of printers based on monochrome laser technology. These are the Neverstop where you will also find multifunction versions like the one analyzed here.
Specifically, the HP Neverstop MFP Laser 1202nw boasts of being a versatile team by bringing together the functions of scanning, printing and copying documents in one team.
As we will see below, its great novelty is the possibility of easily refilling its toner in a clean way, as has traditionally been done with certain models of inkjet technology printers. See Epson’s EcoTank family, as an example.
This is a team with a recommended volume of printed pages which can vary between 250 and 2,500 per month. If you plan to use it by a small business or a service group, it can handle up to 5 users according to HP.
Design and manufacture
It is difficult to define when a printer of these sizes is bulky, or on the contrary, when it is more compact due to its dimensions. We assume it’s aimed at small businesses, startups, or even homes where printing is the order of the day.
The design of the Neverstop is quite familiar between the brand’s models, with white finishes that contrast with gray and black so they don’t clash in offices or even homes in a domestic environment.
The distribution of its elements in this multifunction is such that the flatbed scanner will be found in the upper part of it. Below, the output bin for printed or copied sheets appears.
Already in the lower part is the printer’s input tray with a capacity of 150 sheets for a DIN-A4 format, with the possibility of handling other smaller formats and high paper weights of up to to 120 grams.
Two small slots, located on either side of the Neverstop, allow us to grip it more easily with both hands to transport it from one place to another. The weight is less than 9 kg, an acceptable figure for it to be able to be handled and moved by one person.
Besides the Wi-Fi wireless connectivity supp orted by this specific model, the Neverstop MFP Laser 1202nw, we have a USB connector and another Ethernet port on the back as alternatives for wired connection to a computer or network. business.
If one had to mention the less user-friendly aspect of the MFP, it would be the equipment control panel, since it consists of a small black LCD panel and seven function indicators that also act as a button.
The good news here is that by using the printer, you realize that you won’t need much more for its setup and management, especially if you are sending your jobs from your mobile app. HP Smart, where you can do it all.
The first rechargeable laser
The great novelty of the Neverstop family is, as the name suggests, a product that never stops. It has an ink refill system which comes in the form of a giant syringe as can be seen in the photo.
Each refill kit or syringe, acting as a spare, increases print capacity by an additional 2,500 pages. This way, you don’t have to wait for the printer to show signs of low ink levels before reloading.
The toner supplied as standard with the printer has a print capacity of up to 5,000 pages. The printer has an indicator on the front that alerts us when the ink is less than half, or, or ⅓ of its total capacity.
The top scanner module is foldable, so that we can lift it 90 degrees to free up the area of the printer where we can access the toner. However, a small cap indicates where you can refill the toner ink, without having to handle any part or access the inside of the mechanism.
During the testing period that we went through we saw the need to reload the hardware on one occasion, I feel the process pretty straightforward. It is always advisable to manage the ink levels well to completely empty the cartridge and not to leave the ink for another later dose.
The procedure involves shaking the syringe and inserting it into the nozzle so that the plunger acts and drops all the ink inside the printer reservoir, preventing you from smudging or ink rushing. in an unwanted location.
For those who are usually in charge of replenishing the toner for these printers, they will verify that the procedure is foolproof and all at once rule out the possibility of black powder coming out and settling on your hands.
In the picture it is possible to see in detail how, although it is not necessary to access the interior for filling, it is possible to completely extract the imaging drum from the printer in its entirety, leaving a clean design of the interior of the equipment.
Commissioning and operation
As we have advanced, for the setup tasks, it is more convenient to use a mobile device, as it will be easier for you to integrate the printer into your desired Wi-Fi network for the first time upgrade. in service.
At this precise moment, you can also grant print permissions to other users or relatives in an easy way, by sharing a URL address by mail or WhatsApp. This way, the receiver only has to follow a few simple steps to get your device set up.
But if you want to make copies of documents or scan them without relying on using another device, you can still access the control panel to order the jobs. It is very easy to manually increase the number of copies and wait for them to print.
Note here that the scanner module does not have an automatic document feeder (ADF) to handle two-sided pages, so the whole scanning process is very manual.
For its part, the printer function also lacks a duplex function, so that double page printing is not possible on these models either. You will need to go through the manual process of re-feeding the sheet with the changed side into the input tray.
Both are small inconveniences that can save you paper costs in the long run. Either way, it’s not a departmental printer with heavy workloads, so double-sided printing won’t be one of the most requested aspects.
HP guarantees compatibility with most popular cloud services, such as Google Cloud Print or Apple AirPrint, in addition to proprietary HP Smart.
Performance
If anything is required of these types of multifunction printers that sit halfway between professionals who print a lot of documents, and small businesses with multiple employees, it’s low cost per page and immediacy of work. .
So the Neverstop MFP Laser 1202nw gave us first page print times of just 12 seconds, a factor when most jobs in this line of printers focus on print jobs with few pages. .
Regarding the printing speed, being very optimistic, we can reach 20 ppm, which HP marks. In our tests, it underperformed with Word document speeds of 17.2 ppm in black.
What is clear is that it is not the fastest on the market in its class. We have tried printing PowerPoint spreadsheets and brochures with various graphics, and got acceptable results, albeit better in terms of image quality and grayscale.
For the scanner function, due to the lack of an automatic feeder, it is difficult to achieve suitable speeds, apart from the fact that after depositing a sheet to be copied, the time until the production of the final print is not takes no more than 11 seconds, with warm-up time included.
In terms of costs per page printed, there are several factors to consider. However, far from the prices treated in inkjet technologies, the refill kit The 2,500-page Neverstop laser costs just $ 19.99.
There is a second option in consumables because if you choose to purchase the HP Neverstop 143AD Black Refill Kit, the recommended price is $ 34.90 to cover 5,000 pages.
This implies that after the initial investment in purchasing the printer, if you do not need to print in color, it seems a very good choice to go for a model from this Neverstop family, given that the cost per printed page can only cost a little over 6 euro cents.
Price
The selling price of the model evaluated here HP Neverstop MFP Laser 1202nw With the extras of the Ethernet connector and the Wi-Fi wireless connection, it is currently $ 299. It is clear that this is not an acceptable price for everyone, and less for home environments.
The brand markets a similar model, the HP Neverstop Laser 1001nw, which does not include MFP aspects, at a lower price of $ 269. You can also find the HP NeverStop Laser 1201n without Wi-Fi connectivity at $ 289, but you lose a lot because of the small price difference.
Verdict
HP has the program HP Instant Ink with a fairly competitive pricing plan based on the number of pages you print per month and not the volume of ink you consume, which is closely associated with color inkjet equipment.
In the field of monochrome laser, which we are discussing here, the company has launched this family of Neverstop equipment with which it aims to make things easier for professionals and small businesses that print a lot of documents and constantly replace toner cartridges.
With these models of refill kits, HP puts an end to the hassle of replacing or replacing a toner, leaving anyone to refill what we have called printer ink at any time.
Apart from ensuring a clean environment during the whole process, it also presents the handicap that the refill kits are compact and easy to store, as they hardly take up space. It’s a real advantage not to run out of ink at the most unexpected moment.
Thinking of small offices, the Neverstop is interesting if you are one of those who consider your monthly page print volume to be over 250 pages. It is from these figures that you should consider purchasing this device.
Of course, do not expect to be able to use an automatic sheet feeder for the scanner part, or manage double page printing to save paper, since these teams do not offer the possibility of adding the duplex function which activates this option.
Characteristics
- Monochrome laser printing technology
- Multifunction machine: scanner, printer and copier
- Display with LCD panel and 7 function keys
- Input tray capacity: 150 sheets
- 600 dpi flatbed scanner
- Connections: Ethernet, USB and Wifi
- Paper format: DIN-A4
- Print speed: 21 ppm
- First page speed: 12 s
- Recommended duty cycle: 2,500 pages per month
- Maximum duty cycle: 20,000 pages per month
- Cost per page estimated at 6 euro cents
- Weight of 9 Kg
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