While there are several impressive printers on the market catering for the needs of photographers, or graphics intensive users who need plenty of colour for their presentations and image reproductions, there will always be a need for the solid workhorse in the office that just has to churn out reams and reams of black and white documents.

Epson's AcuLaser range has been meeting this need for a while and the latest offspring, the M4000, is Epson's highest specification mono laser printer yet. Reassuringly heavy at 21.5kg, you'll definitely need a colleague to manoeuvre this into position. Yet despite this it comes in a surprisingly compact, squarish body measuring 404mm (H) x 428mm (W) x 480mm (D).

Once all the retaining tape is removed, it's simply a question of lifting the face-down tray on the top, dropping in the toner cartridge, filling up the two front paper trays and switching on. As well as a centrally positioned paper support, there's a control panel on the front right which enables most commands to be organised via the LCD monitor and the circular control dial. While this is standard fare on most Epson printers now, it might have been useful to have had an adjustable LCD.

The M4000 comes in three versions; the basic standard model, the M4000DN which includes a duplex add-on and the M4000DTN which has both duplex and an additional paper cassette, increasing the basic 700 sheets (150 in the multipurpose tray and 550 in the main tray) to 1,250 sheets.

All three models can also support an optional document stacker (which can sort and separate different jobs) and in terms of output, you can produce up to 500 sheets on the face-down tray at the front, an extra 70 sheets on the face-up tray at the back and up to 500 on the stacker. Memory can also be boosted from the basic 64MB up to 576MB and you can even install an extra 37GB of hard drive space.

You have a network connection via an Ethernet port, plus a high-speed USB 2.0 port and - a rare sight these days - a parallel interface (presumably useful if linking to a particularly ancient computer).

With up to 1,200dpi resolution, the results are crisp and clear and, with a maximum speed of 43ppm for A4 sheets (we occasionally squeezed out 45ppm), you're looking at around 15 minutes to run off 500 sheets at worst. And it's not even particularly loud.

If you're regularly handling large quantity print jobs, this powerful and speedy mono laser printer from Epson could be just the powerhouse you're looking for, complete with a practical range of add-ons.