Review: Dell 1710N laser printer

Dell's 1710N is an ideal laser printer for the smaller office on a tight budget, offering fast print speeds, low running costs and plenty of different connection options.

You get a standard 10/100 Ethernet connection along with USB2 and parallel options. If fiddling around with wires is far too messy for you, for £70 extra you can get Dell's own 3300 wireless adaptor.

With a compact design, the 1710N looks stylish (if a laser printer could ever really look stylish) in the now standard Dell grey and silver finish.

Just two buttons are situated on the top of the 1710N to start and stop print jobs. Joining these buttons are a total of five indicator LEDs that will keep you informed as to what the printer is up to, and warn you of paper jams and low toner.

As for speed, the 1710N spits out paper at a quoted 26ppm (pages per minute). When it comes to printing text, this drops, but not by much.

We managed 25ppm when outputting A4 pages of text at a resolution of 1,200 x 1,200dpi.

Print quality for text was both clear and sharp, but we were a little disappointed with photo output, as banding was particularly noticeable.

Having said that, you're very unlikely to be printing many photos with the 1710N and, if you are, you should really invest in an inkjet printer.

Running the 1710N shouldn't break the bank. Toner comes in either standard (3,000 pages) or large (6,000 pages) sizes. To replace the standard unit costs £64, while the larger cartridge costs £81.

If you take advantage of Dell's Use and Return scheme you can save £15 on the small cartridge and just over £20 on the large model.

If you want to save even more money, then the standard 1710 without networking costs just £133.

All in all, the 1710N is a great printer for a small-office environment.