Brother HL-820

I couldn't quite reach the claimed figure of 8ppm. Text-only pages popped out at 7ppm, text and graphics at the same rate, and graphics-only pages at around 6ppm. As far as print quality was concerned, text was entirely satisfactory, with sharp edges at all point sizes, and dense, even black fills on large fonts. The clean edges applied equally well to line-art, which also reproduced very well, with minimal stepping on curving and angled lines.

Unfortunately, things weren't quite so rosy when it came to shaded graphics, which didn't reproduce particularly well. The main problem here was banding, which was clearly visible in photographic images but also showed up on anything with more than the most basic shading.

It's a shame, because apart from this deficiency the Brother HL-820 is a decent personal laser printer. It's reasonably quick, has good text output quality and a good price of just £209 as well as affordable consumables.

Author: Dominic Bucknall