Ten... mono laser printers

Fine lines and fast pages

Product Round-up Mono laser printers have been available for 30 years and remain the bedrock of most business. From small printers in home offices to large ones in corporate departments, they print most of the commercial correspondence in the country, yet their technical specs have changed little.

They are now faster, have higher resolution and many print duplex. They also cost a lot less these days, although faster printers still command much higher prices. The key feature of mono lasers is that they print text much better than inkjets. If you don’t need colour print, but you do want clean, crisp, black text, here are ten printers you should consider.

Brother HL-2130

As you get down below £100, you expect the feature set of a mono laser to be trimmed, but this machine still has a lot to offer. Its square-cut appearance includes a 250-sheet paper tray at the front, with a single-sheet tray for special media. The controls are simple but effective and, although the HL-2130 doesn’t print duplex and only connects using USB, it manages over 17ppm on longer documents, with a very quick first page out, and produces crisp dense print with a good toner-save mode. Running costs, at around 3.5p per page, are reasonable, though with a maximum toner yield of 1,000 pages, maintenance is higher than some.

Reg Rating 80%
Price £96
More info Brother

Canon i-SENSYS LBP6000B

This small, bread-loaf shaped printer has a simple design and a small desktop footprint. The front panel folds down to become a 150-sheet paper tray and the top cover folds up to become a steeply raked output tray. There's a single USB socket on the left-hand side and a paper feed button is the only control. Canon rates the printer at 18ppm and I saw 16ppm on a 20-page document, which is well above average. Print quality is good, with sharp black text, though greyscales show less definition than they should. At 3.1p per page, running costs are reasonable for its class.

Reg Rating 80%
Price £99
More info Canon