A nice small footprint, which is an advantage in small office spaces, is the order of the day with HP's offering to the mono marketplace.

The LaserJet 1300 produced high quality text, with above average readability even on a grey background and at small point sizes. The embedded image on the test page was slightly over exposed, but still had good definition and solid well-formed black text, helping it to score highest overall in neutral text readability. Our monochrome test page turned up some minor blemishing and driver banding, but a reasonably smooth gradient helped the printer finish in first place overall here too.

While the LaserJet has a sub-$1,000 purchase price, we found in our TCO calculations that it turned out to be one of the more expensive printers over time. This means the LaserJet 1300 represents good value for a low print volume environment, but will end up costing you more if you plan to print a lot. For high volume, the Samsung ML-1510 is better value for money.

Opening the pull-down cover on the front of the machine reveals and draws the toner cartridge, making for easy replacement. Once the toner is removed, paper jams are easily accessed and can be rectified with no need for further unit disassembly. An average 125 page output tray is balanced by a large input tray, with a 250 163gsm page capacity, while the manual feeder is conveniently located on top of the auto feed tray.

Even though the Recommended Award winning Samsung ML-1510 is half the initial cost, and has lower TCO, the HP managed to trump it in the areas of print quality as well as speed. One of only two printers to break the ten second spool and print time for our stress test, the HP is quick off the mark, making it useful in a small business environment. Be warned, you will pay more long term for consumables, but the LaserJet is second to none in terms of speed and quality.