A good simple laser printer is often quicker and cheaper than the equivalent inkjet and Epson's Aculaser M1200 comes in at a very attractive entry-level price. Although it has basic facilities, these could be all you need for correspondence printing in the home or small office.

Shaped something like an enlarged bread loaf and encased in textured black plastic, the printer has a surprisingly small footprint on the desktop, until you open its two paper trays. The front panel folds down to make a 150-sheet paper feed tray and the smoked plastic top panel folds open to make the output tray. There's no feed tray cover, so you may want to close the printer up and stow paper in a drawer when not printing.

There are just two indicator lights at the right-hand end of the heavily curved front edge of the machine: a blue one for power and a yellow one for status conditions. There's no LCD display and no control buttons, as all functions are controlled through software. A single USB socket at the back is the only data connection.

Drivers are provided for Windows and OS X, though there's no indication of Linux support. Physical set-up involves a two-part drum and toner cartridge, where the toner clips into the back of the photoconductor drum. The combined consumable slots in behind the front cover and is quick and easy to install.

Epson claims a print speed of 20ppm and, although we're usually sceptical of these speed specs, we did manage to get 15.8ppm out of our review sample, when printing a 20-page text document. Although the 5-page document only returned 9.7ppm, the five-page text and graphics test took the speed up again to 11.5ppm.

These speeds are impressive for a mono laser printer costing under £50 and are more than adequate for the kind of use it's aimed at. Print quality is also well above what you might expect for a 600dpi entry-level printer. Black text is sharp and shows no signs of any jagged edges, and greyscale graphics, while slightly patchy in areas of solid fill, maintain enough different shades of grey to reproduce colour originals adequately.

Epson offers standard and high yield toner cartridges, in normal and return programme versions, with the return programme consumable noticeably cheaper. Taking the best prices on the high-yield components gives a cost per page of 2.3p, which is again more than reasonable for this class of printer.

Verdict
Epson's Aculaser M1200 is just about all you could expect for an ultra-inexpensive mono laser printer. While there are few bells and whistles, it produces good quality print, quickly and without stinging you every time you buy toner or drum. A cover for its paper input tray would be a bonus, though.

Company: Epson

Contact: 0871 222 6702

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