Konica Minolta PagePro 1300W

The PagePro 1300W is a budget mono laser printer aimed at home users. It's the successor to the 1200W and first impressions are that not much has changed. It's still quite chunky and both the input and output trays are pretty flimsy.

However, it does support both USB and parallel connections and comes with the all-important USB cable, which is not always included with low-cost printers. There's the addition of a cancel button on the front of the unit too, but we found its response time a little slow.

In our tests, the print quality on cheap photocopier paper was good with font sizes as small as 2 point being readable. This sharpness is largely due to the 1200dpi resolution; however, don't expect the same sort of clarity from photographic prints.

We found the claimed print speed of 16 pages per minute fairly accurate, which is good for such a low-cost laser printer. Using the supplied toner cartridge equates to a running cost of about 1.8p per page, while using the high capacity cartridge (£77) works out at 1.5p. These running costs compare favourably with other printer brands.

Konica Minolta has focused on speed and running costs over quality with this printer. If you print a lot of documents that feature mainly text and simple graphics, the Konica is your best bet.

Contact: Konica Minolta 01784 442255
www.konicaminolta.co.uk