Samsung ML-3050

Samsung's ML-3050 may have a mid-range price tag, which places it snugly alongside most of the mono models in our Labs testing, but the generous dimensions and scale-tipping weight of 10.6kg will make sure it demands a prominent position in your office.

It's one of the fastest printers in the group this month, needing only nine seconds to begin printing from warm (although, disappointingly, this jumps to an excruciating 35 seconds from sleep mode) and churning out 50 pages in less than two minutes. And its speed in the other tests puts it on a par with the quickest mono printers in the group, such as the Brother and the HP.

This quick pace isn't backed up by an extensive range of features, though. You get a 50-page multipurpose feed, and an extra 250-sheet input tray can be added to double the existing 250. But it's lacking perks that other mono printers boast, such as an ethernet port, LCD panel and duplex capabilities.

Print quality is average, too, and not up there with the best on test this month. Text is as sharp and crisp as any other mono printer we tested, but gradients and photos were scored towards the bottom of the group. As a text-focused machine it will be fine, but don't expect great results if you more commonly print newsletters and images.

But the Samsung is a capable office workhorse, with a huge toner output of about 8,000 standard pages for a reasonable £63 per cartridge: this makes the Samsung consistently cheap to run, whether printing sporadically at home or more regularly in an office - only the victorious Brother comes anywhere near it in this respect.

The bulky Samsung ML-3050 might be a squeeze in a small home office, but if you have the space it's quick to print and running costs are impressively low. For running off text documents or in offices where expensive bells and whistles aren't needed, it may be just the job.

Author: Darien Graham-Smith