Dell 1320c

A laser printer can be better than an inkjet if you print more text-heavy documents than photographs - the cost of each printer page is generally lower from a laser than from an inkjet.

Even better, colour-laser printers are getting cheaper all the time. The Dell 1320C is a colour-laser printer with both USB and network connections so you can plug it straight into a computer or plug it into a router to share it over your home network.

As far as laser printers go, the 1320c is not bad looking and it's certainly well made. The doors and buttons are all sturdy and we liked the simplicity of the printer’s interface. The only downside we could find was the paper tray, which only holds 250 sheets of A4.

The 1320c produced some really impressive text during our tests with sharp and well-defined characters. It was fast, too, with just eight seconds needed to print a page of text. A ten-page print took just under a minute.

The really outstanding performance came with our test document that mixed graphics and text as a business or school presentation would. The printer gave brilliant colour reproduction and sharp rendition of both images and text, something we were very impressed with considering its price.

It's not too loud either. We have tested some laser printers that sound like a jet engine powering up, but this one was pleasingly quiet.

Inkjet printers have lower ink capacities and are more expensive to run for longer periods, but you need to take into account the price when replacing the toner in a laser printer too.

At the time of this review a full set of high-capacity toner cartridges costs £220, which is slightly more than the cost of the printer. The cartridges that come with the printer have lower capacities but still the replacement cost is high.

The Dell 1320c performed well and produced results far above expectation, but the price of replacement toner will put many people off.