Labs

At first glance, Brother's new HL-2140 doesn't stand out from the crowd. It's compact and solidly built, but there's nothing unusual about that among lasers (though we like its chunky curves). It's fairly sparse on features, but so are most of the others on test. The onsite warranty is nice, but again hardly unique.

What's special about the HL-2140 is the price. £88 would be a great deal even for a bargain-basement laser, so it's quite amazing that Brother have managed to put together a printer that looks and feels every bit as professional as, say, the HP model

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here, for nearly a third less.

At this point you might be looking for the catch, but the good news is that there isn't one. The Brother wasn't this month's fastest laser, but it was comfortably ahead of the average, turning out 22 pages per minute.

And the HL-2140's print quality shamed far more expensive printers. Text was exemplary: our documents came out clean and crisp, printed in a rich, solid black that made them a pleasure to read. Images were very clear too, with nice, even grey shades. They weren't quite as smooth as the HP's, but still more than satisfactory.

The Brother's only slight weakness is its running costs, which come to 2p per page with standard cartridges. Only the Canon works out more expensive. But then, you're saving so much on the printer to start with that it's still an excellent deal overall unless you print an exceptional number of pages. And even then, it's cheaper to run than an inkjet, as well as hugely faster.

If you want a fully fledged office printer, you might prefer the Lexmark's speed and features. But if you simply want a fast, affordable laser, you really can't go wrong with the HL-2140.