Epson Aculaser M1200

Epson’s Aculaser M1200 has a recommended price of £100, but can be found for around half that online.

It’s a black and white laser printer with good performance. About twice the size of a large loaf of bread, and with a similar shape, it's quite discreet, with paper trays that can be put away while the printer is not in use.

The paper output tray folds out from the top of the printer and the input tray folds down from its front, though there's no cover to the input tray to protect the paper.

There are no control buttons either, just two large lights indicating power, data and events such as paper jams.

At the back are a USB socket and an older-style parallel port, though there's no network socket or ability to connect to wireless networks. Pull down the front panel and you have access to the combined drum and toner cartridge, which slides out easily. The toner section clips into the drum section of the cartridge – each will last a different amount of time.

The supplied software was little more than the print driver, which was adequate given that the M1200 doesn’t have many features for it to control. Epson rates the printer at a speed of 20 pages per minute (ppm), and in tests we saw a maximum speed of just under 16ppm for a 20-page document. This is very respectable for a printer at this price.

Print quality was likewise impressive, with clean, well-formed text and plenty of shades of grey to cope with printing colour graphics. Even photos printed on the machine look reasonable, though the maximum resolution of 600dpi means that dots can be seen on photo prints.

The noise level when printing is 54dB at a distance of half a metre, typical if you have the printer on a desk beside the computer. This level isn't very noisy and most people won't be distracted when it’s printing.

The toner cartridges are rated at 1,800 and 3,200 pages and the drum should last for 20,000 pages. Adding the costs of these consumables together gives a cost per page of 2.3p, which compares well with other budget laser printers.