Kyocera FS-1120D

Kyocera is known for office laser printers (and, rather oddly, for its ceramic knives, but those don’t concern us here), but its FS-1120D is designed for home users.

Like most laser printers at this price it will print in black and white only, so it’s not much use for photos, but for documents it did well.

Text quality was enormously impressive, with well-shaped characters and no ink bleed visible; photos were not good, but graphics (such as charts) came out well.

The printer has an ‘eco mode’, which did not cut down on print speed but did reduce quality significantly, below what we would consider acceptable for all but the most ‘throw-away’ documents. Eco mode will increase the number of pages you get from one toner cartridge, though.

However, speeds were impressive. The printer managed a 10-page document in normal mode in 36 seconds, with the first page appearing in 11 seconds. That works out at 17 pages per minute, with similar speeds in eco mode.

It has what’s known as a ‘duplex unit’ built in so it can print double-sided automatically. That increases printing times: it took 20 seconds to output the first double-sided page and 90 seconds to print 10 double-sided pages.

The 300-sheet paper tray below the main unit has a useful mechanical indicator of how much paper is left, and a spare tray can be added, which clips below, though it’s expensive at nearly £100. And a dropdown tray at the front can be used to load letterheaded or other paper.

It was easy to fit the supplied toner cartridge; replacements cost £50 and will last roughly 2,500 pages, working out at a decent 2p per page excluding paper. And it connects easily to a PC via USB connection.

The FS-1120D is not an overly large device, and though the design is boxy and unfashionable, it’s not bad looking. It has only two buttons and a six-light status display, which was quite confusing. Disappointingly, the manual was even more confusing on the subject.

This is a good laser printer that costs a little more than others, but the fast, high-quality prints at a good ongoing price make up for that.