Epson EPL-N2050

When it comes to inkjet printers Epson's record is second to none, but its mono lasers have received only average ratings in past reviews. In this cut-throat group test we were interested to see whether the EPL-N2050 would change its fortunes.

The printer is practically designed, with everything self-contained in a tidy cube with no protruding paper trays unless you fold out the manual tray, and even then the footprint doesn't increase dramatically.

The majority of lasers in this test have no trouble matching their claimed print speed, and the Epson is no exception. It goes one further, however, by being the only mono laser apart from the Xerox DocuPrint N4025 to remain at top speed through the mixed-load DTP and Excel tests, as well as in text. For the price this is exceptional performance, taking 143 seconds and 66 seconds for the text and DTP tests respectively.

The single-page quality test took 88 seconds to complete, and the EPL-N2050 warms up and print its first page of any job in an impressive 21 seconds. The Excel test was produced at the optimal speed and in just 33 seconds. It was also correctly reproduced: despite the shaded colours in the tables, numbers were readable at any size. Elsewhere quality was suspect, however. Text was crisp at all point sizes, but printing fades resulted in a small degree of stepping, and photographs looked streaky and dark.

The replacement toner is integrated with the drum and costs £128. Its life of 15,000 pages equates to 0.9p per page, as expected of a laser in this category. Networkability and remote management over a LAN or the Internet are facilitated by Epson's proprietary NetWebManager, WebAssist and WinAssist software. There's also a Mac version and, for cross-compatibility, software plug-ins for Novell NDPS and HP's WebJetAdmin OpenView tools are available.

By only featuring A4 and Legal sizes, this is another SME-focused printer that could find its way into a growing office or small business. The basic 12-month warranty is on-site as standard and can be extended to three years for £275. So with a typical street price of £772 it's well placed to take on the Brother HL-2060 and the Oki OkiPage 24dx/n, with better output quality than both and faster output speeds than the Brother. It's worth shortlisting for those wanting a brand name on a tight budget.