Labs

If you're paying a hefty £183 for a mono printer then, quite rightly, you expect plenty for your money. Speedy performance and a wide range of features should come naturally - and so should top-of-the-range print quality.

The TallyGenicom 9330N achieves the first of these requirements, but its print quality lets it down. Across all our tests, it was the poorest performer. Pictures of people appeared washed out and blocky, while greyscale and colour gradients were stepped

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rather than smooth.

It's a shame, because in other areas the TallyGenicom is more impressive - it's one of the quickest printers we've tested this month and is well equipped as well. The 9330N whizzed through 50 pages of plain text in a table-topping time of 1min 51secs - equalling the Samsung ML-3050's performance - and was almost as quick printing more complex jobs. The only blemish is its warm-up time, which at 34 seconds from standby may put you off if you expect fast prints at longer intervals.

Ethernet is included for easy network connectivity, and the 64MB of memory can be upgraded to 320MB thanks to an easily accessible slot in the side of the case.

Toner cartridges stretch to a generous 8,000 pages, but the cost of £85 for each forces running costs to above average within the group.

Despite the features, and the handy inclusion of an LCD screen, the TallyGenicom isn't really good enough in this company to stand out from the average. It may be impressively quick, but the print quality at this speed simply isn't up to scratch.