Replacing spent toner cartridges is a simple task on the CM1017. Simply flip open the front panel and pull out the used cartridges individually. A new 2,500-page black cartridge costs about $75, while each 2,000-page color cartridge (cyan, magenta, and yellow) costs about $83. This puts black prints at around 3 cents per page and color prints at about 15.4 cents per page. These numbers are a bit high when compared to nonmultifunction color laser printers and are also higher than the per-page costs for the Epson AcuLaser CX11NF. Clearly, HP should work on high-capacity cartridges for this model.
Performance
It's difficult to make direct performance comparisons for the HP Color LaserJet CM1017 MFP, as we haven't reviewed a color laser multifunction in quite some time. The last one we reviewed was the above-mentioned Epson AcuLaser CX11NF. Still, the numbers speak for themselves and what they say is, if you do a lot of printing and print speed matters, this is not the machine for you. HP rates this machine to print eight pages per minute in both mono and color, so it's not intended to be a speed demon. In our Labs' tests, it printed black text at 6.81ppm, black graphics at 6.31ppm, color text at 5.91ppm, and color graphics at 6.16ppm. It scanned a grayscale document at a rate of 3.39ppm and a color document at 2.61ppm. To compare, the Epson CX11NF churned out black text at 18.44ppm.
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What the HP CM1017 lacks in speed, though, it makes up for in quality, at least with prints. Black text was everything it's supposed to be: dark, sharp, clean, and well-formed. The same applies to color text. The cross-hatching that often plagues color text from laser printers was minimal--this is among the best color laser text quality we've seen. The mono graphics print was also of high quality, especially the photo elements, which were mostly free of cross-hatching. The only minor issue we saw was a tiny bit of compression in both ends of the grayscale. The color graphics print quality was impressive too, though the colors tended to be a bit dark and skin tones looked ruddy. Otherwise, the prints were sharp and colors were nicely saturated. Although we didn't officially test the photo prints, we did make some prints off a memory card and were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the prints. Again, these aren't prints that we'd frame and hang, but for a laser printer, the quality was impressive and definitely good enough for professional looking documents such as real estate flyers or insurance pictures.
Sadly, the same doesn't apply to the scan quality. While both scans were sharp and showed good detail, they were extremely faded, almost as though they were scanned with a layer of tracing paper over the originals.
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Hewlett-Packard backs the Color LaserJet CM1017 MFP with a standard one-year warranty, which is on par with the competition, but you can extend the warranty. While under warranty, you can get free, toll-free phone support 24-7. HP's Web site has downloadable drivers, software, and manuals; e-mail tech support; online chat with tech support; FAQs; and a troubleshooting guide.
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Where to buy
HP Color LaserJet CM1017:
$425.00 - $699.48
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$509.24 | Yes |
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$465.90 | Yes |
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California Computer Center
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$495.00 | Yes |
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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$699.48 | Yes |
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EnterComputers.com
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$466.00 | Yes |
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