Product Reviews

Dell's Laser Printer 1110 replaces the Laser Printer 1100 reviewed in What's New, Shopper November 2005. Superficially, there's little to distinguish the 1110 from its predecessor. It's a smart white colour, weighs just 5.5kg and takes up little room on a desk, so it's easy to find it a home.

This is a simple printer to set up, with only a single consumable to install before it's ready to print. The supplied cartridge slots quite far into the printer, and we found it a little reluctant to click in properly. The starter supply lasts for only 1,000 pages, so you'll need to buy a new one after printing only two reams.

Dell's software and the driver it installs are simple enough for novice users to understand. We weren't overly impressed with the driver's progress window, however, which shows the amount of toner remaining but has no options other than a prominent Order Supplies button. With

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each standard-yield cartridge lasting only 2,000 pages, you may need to order fairly often. Long-term running costs work out at 2.3 pence per page, which is uncompetitive even for a budget printer.

Plain paper is stored in a 150-sheet tray, which extends from the front of the printer. This is uncovered, so dust can gather on the top sheet between occasional print jobs. Printed paper is retained by a simple fold-up guide that is wide enough to prevent pages curling. We found that the printer would sometimes draw two or three sheets of paper through at once, but this stopped when we removed around 20 pages from the nearly full input tray.

The biggest difference between this printer and the outgoing model is the engine speed, which has increased from 14ppm to 16ppm. The 1110 came very close to its rated speed in our test, although printing our graphical Normal speed test reduced it to just shy of 13ppm. Laser printers with a 600dpi resolution are often swift to print our test photos, and the 1110 completed two 10x8" prints on two sheets of A4 in an impressive 22 seconds.

Print quality was generally good, with crisp black text and clear graphics. The printer's dithering gave images and grey text a granular appearance, though, and some light banding was visible on photos.

This is a good entry-level mono laser, but it's more expensive to buy and run than we'd expect. We'd recommend spending another £15 or so on Samsung's ML-2250, which is much cheaper to run.