Brother HL-2035 review

Not everyone needs 20 or 30ppm output. If all you want is a printer for your home office and you don't need to be able to print thousands of pages per month, Brother's compact HL-2035 is the pick of the bunch this month.

The HL-2035's main selling point is its low initial purchase price. At £50 exc VAT it's the cheapest printer in the group by a distance, and it isn't that costly to run either. After 10,000 pages it's one of the cheapest printers to own at £239 exc VAT, and even if you were to print more than that its running costs are still very reasonable - an impressive feat for such a small printer.

And elsewhere, there's plenty to like. It's understandably slow at this price, but in our raw throughput test it beat three more expensive printers - the Samsung ML-1630W, HP LaserJet P1005 and Canon i-Sensys LBP3100, effortlessly pumping out pages at 18ppm. Quality was okay too: crisp text was a highlight and photos were free from banding, with only gradients betraying the printer's humble budget origins. The only caveat is to get the best quality you have to be prepared to wait - in 2,400dpi mode, the print rate slowed significantly, taking 20 and 30 seconds to print each of our two quality tests.

There's no network connectivity, software utilities are non-existent, and paper input capacity isn't great either, but with a printer this cheap you have to be prepared to accept the odd compromise. Especially when, in every other respect, it's such a solid little laser printer. If your budget can't stretch to either of the other award winners this month, and all you need is a reliable printer for your home office, it's a cracking alternative.

Author: Jonathan Bray