Epson AcuLaser C1100

If you're willing to spend more than £200 on a laser printer, it's pretty likely you'll have more than just the one PC to print from. Therefore, the lack of a network port on the Epson AcuLaser C1100 gets it off to a bad start from which it struggles to recover.

You do get a parallel port instead, so those with legacy systems may still see value, but with no duplex unit there isn't a great deal to get excited about. The C1100 scores a few points for the available optional extras - a duplexer will set you back a £135 and Wi-Fi/ethernet a further £88, but at those prices they're not realistic alternatives to printers with the features already integrated.

Unfortunately, the Epson doesn't improve with its printing. The problem is that it's a four-pass printer, so the gulf in speed between mono and colour tasks is huge. It raced through our mono tests, printing 50 pages in just over two minutes, yet with colour the stopwatch ran for ten minutes before it finished.

Other colour documents were similarly slow, and this disappointment was heightened when we saw the quality of the output. Blacks were deep enough, but visible dithering and substandard image reproduction put the Epson at the foot of the table for quality. Running costs aren't great, either: while your page count is low it's fine, but as you pass 15,000 pages the C1100 gravitates towards the dearer end of the group.

If you print mainly mono documents the Epson's speed may appeal, but its colour printing is far enough off the rest this month that we just can't endorse it in this company.

Author: Darien Graham-Smith