Canon Laser Shot LBP-1120 review

While all the headlines of late regarding lasers have been grabbed by the improving quality and lowering costs of colour units, there's plenty of room for conventional mono lasers to handle the meat and potatoes office printing tasks. To that end, Canon recently released the LBP-1220 designed for a small office, while this printer, the LBP-1120, is very much a personal laser.

There's no networking capability and connectivity is limited to a single USB 1.1 port. The print engine offers a maximum resolution of 600 x 600, though Canon says that the horizontal resolution is equivalent to 2,400dpi thanks to its Automatic Image Refinement technology. It claims a print speed of 10ppm, which on the whole was borne out by our tests.

The paper tray is limited to only 125 pages, so you'll have to keep an open ream of paper handy. Design-wise, the LBP-1120 is something of a triumph, which alone may be enough to make it sell. It's small, thanks to its 'U-bend' paper path, with the paper starting and finishing in an upright position. Its depth is only 307mm and without the cartridge it's a light 6kg. The bread-bin curved styling is sleek and modern and is enhanced by a cool blue status light on the fascia, with the only other switch being one to adjust the paper path.

Installation of the toner cartridge was a simple matter of opening the front and sliding it in, while the driver routine went without a hitch. The LBP-1120 also seemed quiet during printing, making for a printer that's easy to live with. The driver is straightforward too, offering print resolutions of 600 x 600 or 600 x 300 and a choice of three halftone patterns.

The first test we subjected the Canon to was our 50-page plain-text test at the default settings, which was at the full 600 x 600 resolution. It completed this in less than five minutes, which works out at 9.8ppm, a shade under the claimed 10ppm. Text quality was decent, but the lettering wasn't the strongest or darkest we've seen, with output from A-Listed HP Laserjet 4100n (see Labs, issue 84, p102) delivering more visual impact.

The next test was our 12-page Excel spreadsheet with its demanding shaded background. At the default settings, this background was printed too heavily, making the spreadsheet almost unreadable. We were able to remedy this in the driver, after which the LBP-1120 produced very acceptable output. During the test, however, it paused inexplicably, dropping to 8.5ppm.

The Canon did well in the 24-page DTP test, revealing plenty of detail in the images, although these were slightly grainy. It completed the task in two minutes, 21 seconds, which works out at 10.21ppm, slightly faster than its rated engine speed. The final timed test, the 20-page PDF, finished in just under two minutes at a rate of 10.1ppm, again with decent text and slightly grainy images.

At £47 for a replacement cartridge, running costs are acceptable at 1.8p per page, while the printer itself costs a reasonable £152. We've some reservations about how it handled Excel graphs by default, but these are correctable with minor adjustments. Considering its excellent price, the LBP-1120 is an attractive option for those looking for a stylish personal laser.

Author: Benny Har-Even