Dell Laser Printer 1100 review

This compact mono laser printer from Dell is about as small and simple as they come.

The Laser Printer 1100 weighs just 5.5kg and takes up as much desk space as a typical inkjet. It's an inoffensive milky white colour, which seems to be the fashionable hue for user-friendly devices.

Setting up the printer requires the installation of its single consumable, which combines toner and an imaging drum in one cartridge. Dell supplies a 1,000-page starter unit, so after just two reams you'll need a new one. Replacements cost £46 and will print 2,000 pages, giving the 1100 high running costs of 2.3p per page.

It's simple to open the cover on the front panel, extend the cartridge's handle and slot it into place, after which the printer is ready to go. Installing Dell's driver is quick and easy, so even novice users should encounter no problems.

Paper is stored in a tray that takes up to 150 sheets. This is uncovered, which isn't ideal in an occasionally used home printer as it allows dust to gather on the top sheet. Printed paper collects in a 50-sheet, face-down output tray. This is too short for an A4 page, but a fold-up guide keeps things tidy. It's wide enough to stop paper from curling.

The 1100 came fairly close to its modest 14 pages per minute (ppm) rating in our text tests. It printed our document test at 13.5ppm, approaching a heady 13.6ppm when printing 50 copies of our single-page letter. Printing our mixed-colour test, which contains some complex graphics, it slowed to 11.9ppm.

As we'd expect from a mono laser, the 1100 produces good-quality black text. Character outlines are sharp and smooth, and even two-point text remains well defined. Graphics aren't a laser printer's forte, though, and our greyscale test prints suffered from some banding. Photographs in particular looked grainy, and the printer's dither patterns are obvious to the naked eye.

The 1100's performance would be acceptable for a budget device, but at this price it faces much stiffer competition. For just £5 more, you can buy Samsung's ML-2250, which is much faster, can be upgraded and produces better prints, which each cost about 1p less.