HP LaserJet 4 Plus Workgroup Laser Printer

When my old Laserjet Series II printer finally died because I could no longer get parts for it, I went searching for a Laserjet 4 or Laserjet 5. I found a Laserjet 4 Plus under for $100 (printer and shipping combined). It included a HP JetDirect network card, good memory, and a low page count. So I bought it. Since it weighs 50 lbs, I was worried that it would get dammaged in shipment. However, when it arrived it showed just how rugged it was, by powering up immediately and being warmed up and ready for service in about 30 seconds. From when you select it to print until the first page comes out is about 9 seconds, with each additional page arriving about every 3 to 5 seconds. That's about triple the speed of my old Laserjet Series II. This unit has a deep paper tray that pulls out from the front. The tray has an indicator on the front to show you approximately how much paper is in the tray. The Toner Cartrige is similar to those in Canon Copiers. Open the top of the printer, push the toner cartrige down in at an angle until it snaps in place, then close the top. The paper path is a lot easier to clean than earlier models. Remove, the toner cartrige. Then put alcohol on a piece of paper towel and wipe the interior as far in as you can reach. Then pull back the top of the paper feed, and wipe inside it. The fuser assembly is much improved from earlier models, and keeps itself clean. One nice feature of the Laserjet 4 is that: the paper path is straight through, so you can print single long sheets or single thick sheets by pulling the front and back doors of the printer open, and inserting the single sheets into the single feed tray. This makes the printer great for graphic designers. One warning however: This printer draws a lot of current for a few seconds when you first turn it on, so you should have a UPS on your computer to hold it up when the printer is turned on, if you have them both plugged into the same power socket. If you need more information, there is a Wikipedia article about the Laserjet 4 printer family. Also, you can download an operation manual from tradebit.com, as a .pdf file. HP92298A compatible toner cartriges are available from inkoasis.com and eink2go.com for aprox. $30.00ea plus $7.00 shipping. This is about the best printer you can get for an economy budget under $100. It is a rugged printer that will last you many years (and you can still get parts and rebuild kits for it from printerworks.com). Happy printing.

Gee Strongbear

I picked up an HP LaserJet 4 Plus from a local merchant over two years ago. I used it for a while, then stuffed it in my closet for about 1 year while I used a different printer. the other printer I was using was a Minolta 2300DL Color Laser, and believe it or not, I'm much happier with the HP 4 Plus than I ever was with the color one. Basically I used the color printer because it had an ethernet card, and I only printed Black and white stuff on it anyway, so when the black toner started to run out, I hopped on ebay and picked up a JetDirect card for the LaserJet for like $10 and voila! Perfection.

That is the beauty of these things, parts and accessories are so darn cheap and abundant. Toner is especially cheap for high yield 8000 page carts, and that will save you tons of money in the long term. Especially since if you take care of it, these printers will basically last forever. I've also ordered 64MB of RAM for the ol' girl, and she just flies now printing PDF's and web pages. (The stock 2MB of RAM is pretty weak. Do yourself a HUGE favor, and upgrade to at least 32MB of RAM. you can find sellers on eBay offering kits for less that $20 to max your printers RAM out.

Well, as much as I love this printer it does have a couple drawbacks. First and foremost, Mine is very picky about paper thickness. It has major problems printing on anything over 24lb weight. Cardstock and 36lb paper simply jam up every time. Even with the settings changed to the thicker stock it doesn't like to print on it. Also the speed is just bleh. 12PPM is its rated speed, and that is plenty fast for me for personal and light home business printing. ( I probably print about 500-700 pages a month on it ) Just be warned if you do not upgrade the RAM, honestly if you have 18MB or less installed in the printer it will lag a bit printing web pages or PDF files with any sort of graphics or background shading. Again do yourself a huge favor and max out the RAM, it is so cheap there is no reason not too, and you will fall in love with this printer.

In summary, this is a solid reliable printer that I would happily recommend to anyone looking for a used, business class laser with few frills, that just works. The newer printers have better speeds and resolutions, but maintenance and supplies for the 4 Plus are so cheap these days it's hard to lose.

Hope this helps.

Probably one of HPs most reliable laser printers. Ok, you can buy faster, newer, lighter, smaller and more high tech printers but for the price you can't go wrong with an LJ 4+. The 4+ plods along at about 12ppm (faster than the LJ 4) which is fast enough for most light duties in a office.

We have four printers, two LJ4+s, a Minolta laser and an Infotec IPC2838. The LJ4s are the oldest of our printers and where bought secondhand a few years ago after the Minolta broke down (paper feed fault and computer interface failed). Our infotec is very fast with excellent print quality but takes too long to warm up so everyone uses the LJ4s for general printing. The first LJ4 I bought has proved to so popular that I was asked to buy another for the office. I now have one at home and a list of people looking for one!

As I have said before, this is a very reliable printer. Our Minolta has broken down (too expensive to repair), our Infotec has had a new fuser unit and photoconductor kit ($$$$$$$$$!!) but the laserjets just need a new toner from time to time.

LaserJet 4+ SPEC:
Speed: 12 PPM
Resolution: 600 DPI
Trays: Upper Tray - 250 Sheet, Bypass Tray - 100 Sheet, Optional Lower Tray - 500 Sheet
Input: Parallel and Serial, Optional MIO card for Networking
Duplex Printing: Optional
Colour: No
Memory: 64MB MAX

Summary:
Excellent value as a secondhand laser printer, ideal for general/light office duties. Very easy to upgrade to duplex network printer with 750 sheet capacity with parts from eBay... just slot it all together. Not ideal for printing graphics or photos but will make a reasonable job of them. This printer is very solid and has proven track record for reliability

I have been using the HP 4m Plus printer since it was first released about 12 years ago. Lost my original one in a fire and chose to replace it rather than take any of the newer models because of the great service I got from the original model. (Paid over $1000 for the original, about $120 for the replacement.) The memory it was originally sold with is inadequate for modern, more complex work, so I added memory up to a total of 70Mb and have had no more trouble. Other than adding RAM, the only service I ever had to pay for was to replace the feed rollers at the rear and to buy new toner cartridges from time to time. It is nice to be able to print around 6000 sheets from a $50 (third party) toner cartridge--that's less than a penny a sheet, which is wonderfully economic compared with anything else out there. I think this printer will run forever if properly cleaned and maintained. Among other things, I like having a quality printer which will work equally well in the legacy MS DOS and current Windows/Mac environments. I have recently added the duplexer and lower paper cartridge and expect years more service from the unit.

Like so many of those of us who suffer with the daily drama of the inkjet. I suffered through the endless routines of "clean print nozzles" and replace cartridge low suggestions from these infernal machines. Having been through countless numbers of the Lexmark z series all the way up to the X63, I decide it was time for a change. I purchased the Hewlett Packard LaserJet 4 plus Printer out of desperation and defiance to the Lexmark company's money sucking machines. Well step into the light. This actually makes me mad that I didn't bother to buy this printer when it was new in 1995. I guess sometimes "old" tech is better than new. I found a used LaserJet 4 and purchased for $8.99 plus shipping(it's heavy). All I can say is WOW! Cleaner, sharper text, faster printing, no smearing, and cost is not a factor when deciding how many to print. Buy this printer and quit worrying about the refill kits and cartridge numbers etc. Each toner cartridge yields thousands of prints, and with remanufactured toner cartridges out there for very reasonable prices it makes inkjets a waste of time and money for any text printing that requires only black and white.
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