IBM Network Printer 12

The Network Printer 12 is one of the more attractive units in this month's Labs. The simple, square case is more interesting than most of the beige boxes on test. A 250-sheet paper tray slots into the bottom of the printer, with an auxiliary tray folding out from the front, which can cope with 80 sheets or ten envelopes. Paper takes a U-shaped path through the printer to end up in the recessed 250-sheet output tray at the top.

Unfortunately, judging from this sample, paper handling isn't one of the Network Printer's strong points. During testing we endured misfeeds, multiple, instead of single, sheets entering the mechanism, and frequent paper jams. Delays in testing is bad for us, but a user with a printer which jams halfway through a large document definitely won't be pleased.

The Network Printer 12 can be configured to run on a network with the optional Ethernet card, in which case you can make use of IBM's Network Printer Manager utility. Sadly, our review printer appeared without software of any kind, so we had to download the PCL 5e-compliant driver from IBM's Web site. The driver installed easily from the 'add new printer' dialog and is quite well featured. There are numerous options to select quality and media settings, and there's nothing too confusing. The driver also supports TonerMiser technology, which claims to reduce toner usage by about half without loss of detail. In fact, the output looked better than the economy mode of most printers. The toner cartridge is claimed to last 6,000 pages at five per cent coverage, and the printer's control panel has eight membrane buttons which, once off-line, can activate several features, including the handy Jam Recovery.

With a 600dpi engine and TrueRes smoothing technology, the IBM produced solid results in our quality tests. The poor showing in photo images was made up for by some good work with graphics. Text output was more impressive, with good results in all three text tests. It was a similar story in our speed tests. The Network Printer 12 finished with a mid-range overall score, with high-speed throughput during our gruelling 23-page text and graphics test, but an unimpressive performance in the other categories. It's not a bad printer, but there's really little on offer to justify you purchasing this rather than the Oki, Epson or Lexmark models.