Personal monochrome laser printers are a much smaller market than the equivalent price of ink jets, but there are still many people who need high quality, fast, black print, with the permanence as toner can provide. HP LaserJet new P1006, according to the company, the smallest laser printer it has ever done and it certainly has compact lines.

This printer is clearly designed for occasional use, as you can not see that its impressive dimensions when discrete input and output trays folded closed. The tray folds up on the front of the printer and the output tray folds over the top. At a time in their open positions, the printer is a little bigger than when it is closed and there is no cover to protect the 150 sheets of paper in the tray, which can collect dust and other debris.

Above the tray is a special-purpose food, which can take up to 10 sheets at a time. On the upper surface of the printer is an easy control panel, with lights and power data with a single button to cancel printing jobs. On the back, there is a standard kettle drive socket and a USB 2.0, but we would like to see the USB plug positioned lower, making it less visible to the cable.

HP has taken the courageous decision to put the installation guide on the driver CD, but also the opportunity to create an animated video installation, which shows everything from the removal of packing tape, with the installation of the cartridge, load paper. He pauses automatically at every step for you to follow through the instructions and it is difficult to see how someone could not get the printer installed successfully, provided that they follow closely.

The printer comes with its toner cartridge in place, but you have to remove it to pull the strip joint and remove the spacer. Aside from that, all you need to do is install the software and plug the USB cable during the investigation. There is no additional software, but the usual driver covers all the bases, including several pages per sheet, watermarks and manual duplexing.

HP prices to 16ppm for A4 pages of the LaserJet P1006 and we finished our paper five pages of text in 27 seconds. The text and graphics page, again printed five off, clocked in three seconds faster than this to 24 seconds. This equates to a print speed of 12.5ppm, which is not much less than the claimed speed and is a refreshing change from printers, which often show less than 50 percent of their figures noted.
Our last test tube, a picture 15 x 10 cm, finished in an impressive 10 seconds at 600dpi resolution standard and 12 seconds when we used the exit strengthened FastRes 1200. Six photos per minute is a good speed for a printer like this one.

The pictures themselves are very detailed, with the resolution, though a person, even if only a strengthening of 600dpi, does not give a better result. Graduated tints are clean and there are no signs of banding, which is unusual in any laser. The colors are a little light, and should be adjusted for natural results.

Business graphics are also well reproduced, with a good range of gray levels represent different colors. Text is sharp and well-trained - good enough for external documents, as well as those used in your home or office. Overall, the print quality is as good as any laser printer in this price range, and it is better than many, while the handset and the toner cartridge photoconductor means you get a new print engine at each When you change it.

There’s just one consumable in the LaserJet P1006, a good cartridge for 1500 pages of ISO, which costs about £ 28 Internet prices. This gives a cost per page of 3.06p, placing it in the middle of the field in the sub-£ 100 lasers we tested. The Brother HL-2140, for example, costs 4.47p per page, nearly 50 percent higher, but the OKI B2200 manages just 2.41p, about 22 per cent less.

Verdict

If you are in the market for a personal laser printer, the HP LaserJet P1006 is a good, simple machine that is easy to install and use, does not cost too much to run and produces very good impressions. It has some drawbacks, such as having to open the printer and load it with paper before printing - unless you want to leave the paper dust collection between sessions - but as far, first thing people look for a monochrome printer is HP print quality and he hit right on the nail with this machine. Easy maintenance and rapid response to print its class with a minimum of heating, to complete the picture and add up to a very good personal printing device.