Why You Can Trust CNET Dell Laser Printer 1100 review: Dell Laser Printer 1100
This compact machine brings laser printing to a new price low and fits home offices and students who seek a basic text printer.
The Dell Laser Printer 1100 is a home-office bargain, providing good-quality text and graphics printing at a decent speed. While we take our hats off to Dell for dropping the official price below $100, figure in another $50 for a USB cable and extending the 1100's warranty from 90 days to one year. This isn't the only bargain laser printer on the block, so if you don't mind spending more up front for a full year's warranty and an enclosed paper tray, take a look at the Samsung ML-1740. Check out the Okidata Oki B4250 for faster speeds or the Brother HL-2040 if you need a machine for your Mac.
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The bright white and soft gray Dell Laser Printer 1100 weighs only 12 pounds and takes up about as much space as a jumbo toaster oven. It measures a small 16 by 1 by 8.5 inches (LWH) with the trays extended. One drawback: the input paper tray of the Dell 1100 remains open, which exposes sheets to dust. Atop the printer there's capacity for 50 sheets of outgoing paper alongside an easy-to-use control panel. One button signals the printer to feed or cancel jobs, and two LEDs flash if the printer is busy or jammed. Behind the printer's main door, the toner cartridge offers a long handle for smooth installation and removal; open the machine's top cover to clear paper jams. The Dell Laser Printer 1100 is easy to install once you buy a USB cable; just follow the setup poster to connect this printer to your PC, then let the drivers self-load.
This printer's 600x600dpi resolution is average for a device in its class, and the 150MHz processor bests that of the Samsung ML-1740. Other introductory lasers come with 8MB of RAM to manage images and multiple fonts, but the small 2MB of RAM limit the Dell 1100 to personal use, such as printing text, spreadsheets, and low-priority grayscale graphics.
Unfortunately, the 1100 comes with a small 1,000-page "starter" toner cartridge, which you'll need to replace with a $65 standard black toner cartridge built to last 2,000 pages. At that rate, a page of text will cost you about 3.3 cents per page--high for a laser printer. By comparison, the $150 Brother HL-2040 prints a page of text for 2.4 cents, and the Samsung ML-1740 for 2.7 cents--according to vendor estimates.
Speed
The Dell Laser Printer 1100's text and graphics print speeds should be fast enough for home or student users, though they're slower than those of other low-end laser printers with higher price tags. We clocked 12.48 pages per minute (ppm) for text and 10.68ppm for graphics--a bit slower than the pricier Samsung ML-1740, which printed text at 13ppm and graphics at 13.3ppm.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
 | Black graphics speed | | Black text speed |
Quality
Overall, the quality of the text printed by the Dell Laser Printer 1100 in CNET Labs' tests was good and crisp, though not dark enough to be excellent. The text was well formed and easy to read in all font sizes, despite faintness at 6-point size and below. Graphics prints were also good--better than those of the Brother HL-2040 and the Samsung ML-1740--despite anemic-looking gradients lacking dark gray tones.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
| Black graphics | | Black text |
Click here to learn more about how CNET Labs tests printers.
The Dell Laser Printer 1100 comes with a 90-day limited warranty and one year of 24/7, toll-free technical support. If your printer proves to be defective within 90 days, Dell will replace it by the next business day. You can extend the limited warranty and the exchange program for one year for $29, for two years for $39, or for three years for $49. Dell's Web site offers a knowledge base, FAQs, chat with fellow customers, and an e-mail link to tech support. A printed owner's manual provides additional setup and operational information as well as a brief troubleshooting section.
Dell deserves kudos for including a prepaid DHL shipping label, which you can use to send your old printer (any model under 100 pounds, from any vendor) to Dell's Recycle Center for free disposal.