Canon i-SENSYS LBP3010

The entry-level (meaning ‘cheap’) laser printers from most manufacturers are pretty basic, without the features of the more expensive models.

Canon's i-SENSYS LBP3010, by contrast, is the cheapest black-and-white laser the company makes, but still has a number of interesting features which show that some thought has gone into its design.

With an ice-white design, the printer’s top cover folds forward to become the paper output tray, while the front cover folds down to form the input tray. Unlike almost all other laser printers at this price there's a hinged, fold-down cover inside this which covers the input paper stack, protecting it from spills and dust.

There's no control panel as such, just a green lamp to indicate power and data, and a power button at the front. At the back a single USB socket is the only connection to the computer. The combined drum and toner cartridge slots in deep inside the machine once you've folded up paper output tray and hinged up the top section.

The cartridge is available in a single capacity of 1,500 pages giving a typical cost per page of 3.6p. This is a little higher than the average for this kind of printer, but only by a fraction of a penny per page. It works with Windows and Mac computers, as well as Linux by downloading a driver from Canon’s website.

Canon rates the i-SENSYS LBP3010 at a speed of 14 pages per minute (ppm), and in our real-world tests we reached 12ppm, which is unusually close to the claimed speed and very respectable in a printer that costs well under £100.

The printer’s resolution is a reasonable 600dpi. Print quality was very good, with dense black text well up to the kind of quality we would expect to have seen from a more expensive printer. Printing of grey shades, useful for printing graphics such as charts, was also good, with enough shades to reproduce colour originals well. It even made a fair attempt at photographic prints, with which black and white lasers usually have problems.

With good results for text and graphics, the LBP3010 is a superb document printer for people who need to print office or school documents and don’t need colour output.