Epson's personal laser printer is designed for those with very little desk space. Although its volume is around the same as that of the other printers tested here, it's taller than most and has a small footprint. Its paper trays also fold onto the top and front of the unit, keeping dust out and taking up less room.

This isn't all good, though, as you have to unfold and load up the paper feed tray each time you use the EPL-5900L, or live with a much larger footprint, as the paper loads horizontally. There's also no separate tray for envelopes or special media, so you have to take your A4 paper out and use the main paper feed for both.

There's a pair of lights, indicating power and printing, and sockets at the back for parallel and USB connections, but no direct physical control of the printer. The Windows drivers are competent and jobs are quick to be processed and just as speedy to print. The EPL-5900L is rated at 12ppm; under test it managed around 8ppm. Even so, both text and image documents came through very quickly.

Print quality was good, with smoother toning on the bitmap and vector images than from the Canon, for instance. Text was dense and black, using Epson's MicroGray 1200 technology. This is claimed to give 1,200dpi quality, though the engine itself is only capable of 600dpi.

Print costs are low, with an £81 toner cartridge which only needs replacing every 6,000 sheets and a separate drum unit which lasts for 20,000. It gives an overall cost per page of 1.7p, second best in the group.