Brother MFC-7320 laser multi-function printer/scanner

We're big fans of laser printers: if you don't want to print photos, they're fast, efficient and cheap.

The Brother MFC-7320 combines a black and white A4 laser printer with scanner, copier and fax machine.

It's solidly built, though not too heavy, and it's quite compact, being only a touch bigger than the average single-function laser printer. The scanner section is at the top, along with the document feeder for a small stack of paper to be scanned or copied. A section below contains the paper output from the printer, and it lifts up to allow jams to be cleared.

Below that is the paper tray – a proper paper tray as opposed to the flimsy units many cheaper laser printers use. There's a monochrome status screen on the front that relates to all the functions, and the buttons are easy to understand. They're also made of a hardy rubber, which means they'll last.

Print quality was hugely impressive, with sharp clear black text and images, even at very small sizes. It managed some 18 pages per minute, which is likewise impressive. Copies took 12 seconds each, while scans were on the slow side: in full colour they took 43 seconds at the reasonable default settings, which went up to nearly seven minutes at the highest quality.

What with the fax and the lack of colour printing, the MFC-7320 is clearly more suited to home offices and small offices than solely to homes. But smaller businesses and those who work from home will find that the MFC-7320 suits most of their needs.

It's a shame that there's no network connection, which would suit such users. Instead the MFC-7320 connects using USB, and there's a telephone connection for the fax machine part.

It's not cheap – the £260 list price is considerably higher than that of colour inkjet rivals. But at the time of writing it's available online at £160 which is a much better deal. If you need fast, clear prints, and lots of them, it's a great product.