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HP's Micro LaserJet does not take up much desktop space, but the high printing costs offset all its other advantages.
Monochrome laser, 16ppm printing speed, USB, 194x347x305mm
The LaserJet P1006 is one of the smallest desktop printers around, measuring only 194x347x305 mm, although its paper tray will take up more space when it is longer. Like most personal mono lasers, it is not designed for particularly heavy use, with a maximum duty cycle of 5,000 pages per month, which usually means 500 to 2,000 pages per month are recommended. This is much lower than the maximum duty cycle quoted by most single-laser devices.
Usually for cheap devices, it has only one USB connection. Driver installation is simple, and the installation CD even contains an animated guide on disconnecting and connecting the printer. It becomes a bit confusing at the end, because you have to allow Windows' own hardware detection wizard to perform the last step of locating the driver, but the process goes smoothly.
The output tray is just a plastic cover that folds out from the top of the printer. Although it does a good job of containing piles of printed pages, the first page is usually pushed aside by people behind. This is more due to poor design than the absolute speed of the device, because the P1006 is much slower than most similarly priced monochrome laser printers. It only reached 15.8ppm in our monochrome text printing test, and reached 15ppm when we printed a set of illustrated business documents.
Monochrome text is clear and dim, just as perfect as we expect from HP laser equipment. By default, P1006 uses its FastRes 600 mode with a resolution of 600x600dpi. The higher quality mode FastRes 1200 can use resolution enhancements to fill difficult areas such as fine curves and small fonts. We tried it in a photo printing test, but found that it produced a more grainy image, and at 22 seconds, printing two 10x8 inch photos on A4 took longer than the default 600dpi mode. The reader only printed 17 seconds.
In terms of size, quality, and ease of use, the P1006 is an excellent small printer, but its price is not enough to justify its price-you can get similar results from a monochromatic laser that costs only half. The printing cost is also ridiculously high, 3.3p per single page. Between them, these costs make the total cost of ownership of the P1006 almost as high as that of a color laser device. Three years of light usage-100 pages per month-will cost you £211. Our medium usage estimate is based on 750 pages per month for a total of 21,000 pages in three years, which is as high as £823. At least it has a low maintenance cost: there is only one consumable, a £51 CB435A cartridge, with an integrated photosensitive drum and enough toner to print about 1,500 pages.
If you can find P1006 at a lower price, or you can arrange to supply cheap toner cartridges, then this would be a good choice. As this is not the case at present, and there are more valuable printers available.
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