HP Laserjet Pro CP1025 Color laser printer

Cheap colour laser printers are getting smaller and smaller, and this HP device is one of the smallest laser models around.

The high-gloss white and textured-black case includes a 150-sheet paper tray at the bottom front, though sadly without a dust cover.

The control strip down the right-hand side of the printer's top cover has Start and Cancel buttons and four warning indicators, one for each of the coloured toners. The CP1025 has just a single USB connection at the back, but the CP1025nw, £40 more, includes both wired and wireless network links too.

HP rates the printer at 16 pages per minute (ppm) for black text and 4ppm for colour – the slower colour speed being the result of the rather old-fashioned carousel print mechanism that builds up each colour in turn before printing the page.

Our speed tests gave black speeds of 13ppm and colour of 3.3ppm, so the company is fairly realistic in its claims. The black speed is good for an entry level printer, though the colour speed is sluggish, compared with other printers such as Dell's 1250c (see sidebar), which reached close to 7ppm in our lab tests.

Print quality from the Laserjet Pro CP1025 Color was good in most respects. Black text was clear and sharp with the printer's high resolution ensuring crisp characters, and colours on plain paper were bright and engaging.

Registration – printing of black text over colour, and something that can cause problems on carousel printers such as this one – was also good. Some of our test photo prints were a bit light on red and too dark in shadowed areas, but were still passable.

The real problem with the printer is the cost of running it. The four toner cartridges are only available in one size and there is a photoconductor drum to maintain too.

When you do the maths it comes out at 4.1p for a standard black page and 17.8p for a standard colour one.

Both of these are high compared with entry-level colour laser printers from other manufacturers: charging almost 20p for a colour page is way over the top when an equivalent inkjet print can costs less than 7p. Even at its Amazon price of £102, this printer's running costs are a turn-off.