HP LaserJet
LaserJet is a line of laser printers sold by HP Inc. since 1984. The LaserJet was the world's first commercially successful laser printer. Canon supplies both mechanisms and cartridges for most HP laser printers; some larger A3 models use Samsung print engines.
These printers have, as of 2025, a four decade plus history of serving both in offices and at home for personal/at home use.
In 2013, Advertising Age reported that HP had "78 different printers with 6 different model names."
Technology
Most HP LaserJet printers employ xerographic laser-marking engines sourced from the Japanese company Canon. Due to a tight turnaround schedule on the first LaserJet, HP elected to use the controller already developed by Canon for the CX engine in the first LaserJet. In spring of 1989 The New York Times said that HP "dominates" the PC laser printer market.The first LaserJet and the first Apple LaserWriter used the same print engine, the Canon CX engine. HP chose to use their in-house developed Printer Command Language as opposed to Apple, which adopted the PostScript language, as developed by Adobe Systems. The use of a less-ambitious and simpler Page description language allowed HP to deliver its LaserJet to the market about a year before Apple's CX based product, and $1000 lower street price. The sharing of an identical Canon engine in two competing products continued with the LaserJet II/III and the Apple LaserWriter II, which both used the Canon LBP-CX print engine.
History
1980s
HP introduced the first laser printer for IBM PC compatible personal computers on May 22, 1984 at the Computer Dealers' Exhibition. It was a 300-dpi, 8 ppm printer that sold for $3,495 with the price reduced to $2,995 in September 1985. It used an 8 MHz Motorola 68000 processor and could print in a variety of character fonts. It was controlled using PCL3. Due to the high cost of memory, the first LaserJet only had 128 kilobytes of memory, and a portion of that was reserved for use by the controller.The LaserJet printer had high print quality, could print horizontally or vertically and produce graphics. It was ideal for printing memos, letters, and spreadsheets. It was quiet compared to other contemporary printers, hence people could use the telephone while sitting near the LaserJet.
The first LaserJet was a high-speed replacement for text-only daisy wheel impact printers and the noisy dot matrix printers. By using control codes it was possible to change the printed text style using font patterns stored in permanent ROM in the printer. Although unsupported by HP, because the Laserjet used the same basic PCL language spoken by HP's other printers it was possible to use the Laserjet on HP 3000 multiuser systems.
The LaserJet Plus followed in September 1985, priced at US$3,995. It introduced "soft fonts", treatments like bold and italic and other features including a parallel interface. It also included 512 kilobytes of memory, which was sufficient to print graphics at 300 dpi that covered about 70% of the letter-size page area.
- In March 1986 HP introduced the LaserJet D+, which included the LaserJet print engine and formatter but with two paper trays. The original MSRP was $4,495. In 1986, desktop publishing came to the world of IBM PCs and compatibles, after its origin on the Apple Macintosh and Apple LaserWriter. The LaserJet family, along with Aldus PageMaker and Microsoft Windows, was central to the PC-based solution and while the design was more plebeian than Apple's product, this multi-vendor solution was available to a mass audience for the first time.
- HP introduced the mass-market laser printer, the LaserJet series II, in March 1987. The LaserJet II was designed as a laser printer with correct order page output as opposed to being leveraged from the Canon PC-20 personal copier. The LaserJet II used PCL4, improved features, more memory and fonts for a market price of $2,695.
- Also in March 1987, the LaserJet 2000 was launched. A high-end, networkable printer, the LaserJet 2000 offered a duty cycle of 70,000 pages per month and the standard 300-dpi output, initially priced at $19,995. In the same month, the company unveiled the ScanJet, their first image scanner. It allowed them to round out their portfolio of desktop publishing products and itself was very successful commercially.
In September 1989, HP introduced the first "personal" version of the LaserJet printer series, the LaserJet IIP. Priced at US$1,495 by HP, and half the size and price of its predecessor, the LaserJet II, it offered 300-dpi output and 4 ppm printing with PCL 4 enhancements such as support for compressed bitmapped fonts and raster images. It was also the first no ozone print engine. Retailers predicted a street price of $1000 or less, making it the world's first sub-$1,000 laser printer. The LaserJet IIP were reliable.
Aftermarket replacement scanner assemblies remain available today.
1990s
In March 1990 HP introduced the LaserJet III, priced at US$2,395, with two new features: Resolution Enhancement technology, which dramatically increased print quality, and HP PCL 5. Thanks to PCL 5, text scaling became easy, and thus customers were no longer restricted to 10- and 12-point type sizes. This had a dramatic effect on word processing software market.The LaserJet IIID was the same as the LaserJet III except it had 2 paper trays and duplex printing. It sold for $4,995 in the fall of 1990.
The first mass-market Ethernet network printer, the LaserJet IIISi, debuted in March 1991. Priced at $5,495, it featured a high-speed, 17 ppm engine, 5MB of memory, 300-dpi output, Image REt and such paper handling features as job stacking and optional duplex printing. The LaserJet IIISi also was HP's first printer to offer onboard Adobe PostScript emulation as opposed to the font-cartridge solution offered on earlier models.
In October 1992, HP introduced the LaserJet 4 featuring a Canon EX engine with native 600-dpi output and Microfine toner for US$2,199. This model also introduced TrueType fonts to LaserJets which ensured that the printer fonts exactly matched the fonts displayed on the computer screen. Some competitors also utilized the Canon EX engine, including Apple, Digital Equipment Corporation, and Canon.
File:Hewlett-Packard JetDirect J2555-60001-48238.jpg|thumb|JetDirect J2555 print server card for connection to a Token Ring network
By installing an HP JetDirect print server card, a LaserJet 4 / 4M printer could be connected to a network, for example as a departmental printer in companies instead of the larger III Si and 4 Si models.
In 2020 The New York Times wrote "by the 1990s, it was a staple of offices around the world." The flagship of the family was the LaserJet 4 SiMX, launched in May 1993. It had several network interfaces by default, both Ethernet, Appletalk and TokenRing. Instant-on fusing was introduced with the LaserJet 4L in the spring of 1993. It included a new low cost print engine. It sold for $1,229.
- In April 1994 HP shipped its 10-millionth LaserJet printer.
- In September 1994 HP introduced the Color LaserJet, the corporation's first color laser printer. The printer had an average cost per page of less than 10 cents. The Color LaserJet offered 2 ppm color printing and 10 ppm for black text, 8MB of memory, 45 built-in fonts, a 250-sheet paper tray and enhanced PCL 5 with color. It was priced at $7,295.
- In March 1995 HP introduced the LaserJet 5 family of printers. They supported HP PCL 6, a printer-language which gave noticeably faster output – especially with complex, graphics-intensive documents. They also featured 600-dpi output with REt, and a 12 ppm engine. Prices started from $1,629. The models were updated next year.
In November 1996, HP introduced the network-ready LaserJet 5Si, a major revision and upgrade to the 3Si and 4Si, which had used the Canon NX engine. The 5Si, based on the Canon WX engine, could thus provide 11"x17" printing at an unprecedented 24 pages per minute and at 600 dpi with resolution enhancement. An internal duplexer enabled full-speed double-sided printing. Automatic personality switching, a feature that first appeared on the 4SiMX, was standard on the 5SiMX. The 5Si series were true workhorses, but initial production models were somewhat hobbled by a vulnerability to slightly low voltage as well as a weak clutch in Tray 3, and also a weak solenoid in the manual feed tray. These paper-handling issues were easily dealt with, and many 5Si LaserJets remain in service today. The HP 5Si Mopier, a 5Si equipped with all available options, was marketed as the first network printer that was optimized to produce multiple original prints. It had a 100,000 copies-per-month duty cycle, and 24 ppm print speed.
In 1997, HP introduced the LaserJet 4000 family of printers. They included features from the LaserJet 5 plus higher resolution of 1200 dpi. These are mostly used in offices, and most recently in people's homes mainly to replace the LaserJet 4/5 series if the user had them previously. In 1999, HP released the LaserJet 4050 series, which was identical to the HP 4000 but with a faster formatter and an easily accessible paper registration area The 4000 series, as well as the 4050 and the 4100, used partly external duplexers.
The world's first mass market all-in-one laser device, the LaserJet 4101 MFP, debuted in April 1998. Users could print, fax, copy, and scan with a single appliance. In July 1998 HP shipped its 30-millionth LaserJet printer.
In February 1999, HP introduced the LaserJet 2100 printer series
– the world's first personal laser printers in their class to offer high-quality 1200x1200-dpi resolution without significant performance loss.
In the network laser-printer market, the 5Si series was succeeded by the 8000, and later by the 8100 and 8150. The 8000 brought 1200x1200-dpi resolution, which was continued in the 8100 and 8150. The 8100 and 8150 brought faster printing, but this speed was only realized for single-sided printing; double-sided printing remained at 24 pages per minute. These models, which used the Canon WX engine, provided durability and good maintainability.