HP Laserjet 3015

Given the price of ink cartridges for inkjet printers, a laser printer can be a cost-effective option if you rarely print in colour but churn out a significant volume of mono output.

The HP Laserjet 3015 not only offers laser mono printing but also features integrated scanning, copying and fax capabilities. With a footprint of just 426 x 470mm, it won't be hard to accommodate in even the smallest home office.

A standard fax number keypad is included in the control panel on the front of the unit, along with seven programmable speed dial buttons and a phone book key. A resolution button lets you switch between standard, fine, superfine and photo-quality fax scanning settings.

Over on the right of the control panel, you'll find keys giving fast access to the copying and scanning settings. The scanner itself is a colour sheet feed device as opposed to a flatbed and scans at a maximum optical resolution of 600 x 600spi (samples per inch), while you can achieve maximum 1,200dpi effective resolution from the printer.

The 3015 lived up to HP's claims of 14 pages per minute (ppm) print speeds for text and mixed content pages and managed to churn out our test pdf at a speed of 15ppm. The quality of our test text-only printouts was good overall, with the 3015 producing characters at both ends of the font size scale well. There was some banding to areas of shading in our test pdf document, though.

More concerning is the cost of a replacement cartridge. At £50.59 for 2,000 pages, it's very expensive. Unless you have a very low page consumption, it's worth looking for a printer with lower running costs.

Contact: HP 0870 5474 747
www.hp.com/uk

Specifications:

• 200dpi max print resolution
• 600 x 600spi optical scan resolution
• mono laser printer
• 9.5kg
• 426 x 470 x 445mm (w x d x h)
• Readiris OCR software
• USB2 and parallel connectivity
• 1yr RTB warranty