Laser Printer Megatest: 12 printers tested

From personal printers to home office colour, we put 12 lasers through their paces. Some are lightning fast; others produce dazzling colour. Some are tiny, and some are surprisingly cost-effective.

When it comes to getting real work done, there’s still nothing to compete with a laser printer’s combination of quality, speed and economy. And while the past decade has seen laser technology evolve only gradually, by contrast with the regular generational leaps seen in other areas of consumer technology, today’s lasers offer a remarkable range of capabilities. Some are lightning fast; others produce dazzling colour. Some are tiny, and some are surprisingly cost-effective.

Of course, if you only ever plan to print in low volumes then your most economical option may not be a laser at all. Lasers are cheaper to run than inkjets, but the purchase price is almost invariably higher, so you generally need to print a few thousand pages before the savings start to kick in.

Yet, even for occasional usage, there are plenty of good reasons to choose one. Home users will appreciate pin-sharp text with no risk of streaking or smudging. Offices can benefit from the long life of the engine and parts, which enables a laser to print ten times as many pages as some inkjets before requiring maintenance. And if you’re looking for a workhorse printer to service a whole department, you’ll want professional options such as double-sided printing, extra paper trays and remote management.

In this group test, we look at 12 laser printers: six mono, and six colour devices (We've also posted a roundup of 3 business workhorse lasers over at the PC Authority Business Centre). We subject each to a range of tests to find out just how well it measures up to its intended role, and reproduce the results along with full details of our experiences. So, whether you’re thinking of upgrading your study or kitting out a small home office, read on to find out the best buys in every category.

How we test

We test a broad selection of laser printers designed for a wide range of budgets and roles. As a result, our contenders aren’t all directly comparable: monochrome desktop printers simply don’t compete with fully featured colour business devices – on price or features – and it would be meaningless to compare them.

Mono, and colours

This group test is therefore divided into two groups: monochrome and colour, and printers are compared only within their categories.

In calculating our scores, we consider the typical usage model for each category. For example, monochrome lasers are commonly bought for individual and small-office use, so size and upfront affordability are important in this category. Such a printer will also spend a lot of time in standby mode, so we’re interested in warm-up times and idle power consumption, too.

A colour laser is more likely to serve a whole office, printing many thousands of pages during its lifetime: ongoing maintenance costs thus become a greater concern, as do features such as network connectivity, remote management and paper handling. And, since you’re paying more for colour, we take a close look at the quality of each printer’s graphical output.

Standard tests

While our assessments are category specific, they’re based partly on a standard series of print tests, to which we subject every printer to determine its speed and quality. For our first test, we time how long each printer takes to output 50 copies of the ISO single-page business letter. The document features a small red graphic, but we print it in monochrome even on the colour printers to ensure a level playing field for this test. We then set the colour printers printing ten copies of a slightly more complicated five-page ISO colour newsletter, a test that includes black text on a variety of coloured backgrounds, plus coloured graphs and photos. This second 50-page test exposes the speed difference between printing colour and monochrome documents.

Next, we print a range of tables, charts and DTP layouts from Excel, Word and Adobe’s Acrobat Reader. Unlike the first two tests, these documents don’t involve any repeated pages, revealing whether print speed is affected by the printer having to process each page image afresh, rather than reproducing a page over and over again.

Finally, we carry out our quality print tests, based on our two standard high-resolution montages – one in monochrome, the other in full colour where applicable – which consist of photographs, shades, gradients and text at a range of sizes.

Scores

Each laser printer receives star ratings out of six for Quality, Speed, Features & Design and Value for Money, plus a final Overall score.

Quality is a subjective rating arrived at by two members of the PC Authority team, who independently assess the output of each printer. We award points to each based on how sharply it renders small details, how solid and clean black areas are, and how smooth gradients are. For colour printers, we also award marks for the cleanness and accuracy of colours, and how natural photographic content appears.

The speed score reflects each printer’s performance in our timed tests, taking into account the time that elapses between the tester clicking Print and the last page emerging from the printer.

Our rating for Features & Design is calculated by allocating points to a number of different criteria according to the category, as described above. We consider both technical features – such as built-in ethernet, software functions and front-panel controls – and practical benefits, such as warranties and the amount of toner included at purchase with each printer.

The Value for Money score represents the overall ‘bang-for-buck’ delivered by each model on test. Naturally, we look at the cost of the printer itself, but we also factor in a calculation of the long-term running costs based on typical usage for that category.

This includes not only toner but the cost of any replacement parts that may eventually wear out, such as the image drum or transfer unit. The overall cost of owning the printer is then weighed against its scores for Features & Design, Speed and Quality to give a Value for Money rating out of six.

Finally, the Overall rating is a strict average of the separate category scores, although it may sometimes appear higher or lower than expected due to rounding.

Ratings explained

The star ratings we award to each printer are relative only to the printers within that particular group: a one out of six rating doesn’t mean the product is the worst of its type to be made, just the least impressive in that group. Likewise, a six out of six score isn’t necessarily an indication of perfection.