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This is not quite as small as the ‘2P’ but it does an awful lot more, a lot quicker, and costs a lot less. It is 35x35x26cm and weights a little over ten kilos.

Paper is stored in the base of the unit – face down – and is delivered – face down – onto the top of the unit. The storage tray can take up to 250 sheets while the output shelf is stated to take 125 sheets, the latter seems a little high to me. There is also a manual feed for letterhead, envelopes or thicker card stock.

To the right of the output there are four LED’s and two buttons, however the only one you are likely to need is the on/off switch and that is located towards the bottom of the right side of the printer. The inputs are on the rear of the unit, the power lead back right and the USB or parallel cable back left of the unit. It is USB2 but works fine on USB 1.1 machines.

See also: Laser printers

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The stated speed is 19PPM and as long as you are printing standard text pages you should get that as long as there is paper in the tray. First page out – textual – is less than 10 seconds. With graphics you will not get that figure but still several pages a minute and not several minutes a page as with most inkjet printers.

It comes with 16MB of memory and I found that more than enough for any graphics that I printed, this included several A4 pages and also pages made up of multiple images. Greyscale images often give full colour images a run for their money, and, in some cases highlight the point better.

It is likely that this unit will be compared with the HP 1320 that I reviewed on 7/1/05 in size and shape it is almost identical. In fact the 1320 is the next model up and costs around £150 more, it also has built in duplex and jet direct – Ethernet - printing so if either of those options are required then that would be the unit for you.

The HP1160 has USB or parallel and should you require the latter units being produced today with it are not that common. The printing speeds are very similar at 21PPM for the HP 1320 and 19PPM for the HP 1160. Paper storage is identical.

I was happy with the printed output from both so it’s very much how you intend to use the printers that determines if you pay around £200 or £350. The HP 1320 also supports wireless communication. However for anyone wanting a standalone directly connected laser printer then the HP 1160 should suit.

www.dabs.com have it for £199, a web search found www.morecomputers.co.uk (I know nothing about them) has it for just a few pence over £186.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF06a/5043-5343-5347-5347-5411-8734121.html