HP says its next-gen LaserJets are the most significant innovation in laser engineering since HP introduced its first LaserJet in 1984.

NEW YORK CITY – Today, HP has announced what it says is its most significant laser printing re-engineering since it introduced the first LaserJet back in 1984.Smaller and faster than their predecessors, the new HP LaserJets use up to 53 per cent less energy, take up to 40 per cent less space and wake up, print and duplex much quicker than before.

“This is a big day for us, an important set of announcements,” said Pradeep Jotwani, Senior Vice President and General Manager, LaserJet and Enterprise Solutions, Printing and Personal Systems at HP.

Jotwani’s presentation at the launch event began against a background of an office circa 1984 when LaserJets began, accompanied by music from the era. As he began, the backdrop morphed into an office of today.

“Today’s office is more collaborative, an office environment that has changed in many different ways – a new business reality, and LaserJets have changed as well,” he said. “We are reinventing the printer, making them leaner, faster, and smarter, We aren’t making them with small changes, but substantial improvements – not 5 per cent improvements but game changing improvements. These print up to 40 per cent faster, use 53 per cent less energy, and are 40 per cent smaller.”

Three groups of machines were announced, two for smaller business, built for 1-5 users, and an enterprise family for 5-15 person workgroups. The SMB ones are the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277, the smallest of the laser MFPs, and the HP Color LaserJet Pro M252. The enterprise model, the HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M552 and M553 is designed for a workload of up to 6,000 pages per month.

Jotwani then focused on what’s inside the printers.

“We have redesigned these from top to bottom – every component,” Jotwani said. “They have been reinvented big time to reflect how today’s business environment has changed.”

Jotwani said that starting small, with the toner cartridge, HP’s new JetIntelligence toner, which he said has 70% of smarts of the printer, makes all the big changes possible.

“The 70 per cent of the technology that sits in the cartridge must be changed to enable the rest of the changes,” he said. “Current toner is fairly hard particles which are crushed to form an image, and it does break down. This new ColorSphere 3 toner is more durable, harder, will last longer and results in getting more toner on the page. It doesn’t break down. It gets on the page with heat, but it melts at a lower temperature, so it needs less heat, and less energy, which means you can make the printer smaller, and it doesn’t heat up as much, so the printer can be faster. All this comes from the toner cartridge change.” The increase in the yield also means the toner prints 33 per cent more pages in the smaller cartridge – without the need for the dreaded ‘toner shake.’

HP has also added more convenience features with these printers.

“These are re-engineered so that the toner cartridge now comes inside the printer,” Jotwani said. “The little strip with the tab that has to be pulled no longer exists. That means more convenience, less waste and less cost.”

These printers now print the first page much faster than previous models.

“There is no tolerance now for waiting for the print,” Jotwani said. “The wait is half what it used to be. These will print several pages from sleep before its predecessors would have printed the first page.

Duplexing is also much improved with these models.

“Duplexing matters as people print increasingly from both sides of the age, but the problem has been that the second side in duplexing slows down quite a bit,” Jotwani said. “These are much improved there.” The new enterprise printer family prints the second page at 100 per cent efficiency.”

Security has also been enhanced with HP JetAdvantage Private Print.

“Enterprises have had this capability, but small businesses haven’t until now,” Jotwani said. “HP JetAdvantage Private Print prevents unauthorized access to output. You print to the cloud, and then you go to the printer and authenticate it, to make sure it’s really you and prevent an unauthorized person from getting what you printed. You essentially have a cloud inside your printer.” HP JetAdvantage Private Print also supports HP Common Card Reader for fast authentication, as well as a mobile app available on iOS and Android devices.

Karolina Gujska, a Corporate Account Executive with New York City-based Derive Technologies, an HP Platinum partner which has a wide range of customers from enterprises to one man shops, was extremely impressed with these next-gen products.

“I think the faster speeds will really impress, especially the faster print from sleep time,” she said. “Waiting for print is something I find frustrating myself.”

Pricing for the new printers, and the new cartridges is not yet available, but will be closer to the time these products are released on April 1. Jotwani told ChannelBuzz that pricing will, however, be comparable to the prior generation machines.