With the advent of colour lasers, monochrome printers may seem a little old hat, but they still have their place with a lot to commend the new Laserjet P3005 series to small business buyers.

Gone are the exotic curves of previous Laserjets in favour of a square and somewhat squat grey plastic casing on the P3005.

Controls too have been kept to a minimum on this printer with an equally tiny monochrome LCD display to show you what it’s up to.

Inside, however, it’s a different story with a 1,200x1,200dpi laser engine capable of firing out documents at up to 33 pages per minute. It produced crisp and clear monochrome results with the first page appearing in around 10 seconds on our tests no matter how complex the documents. PCL and Postscript drivers both come as standard, with direct printing of Pdf documents another option.

Several different models are available, all based on the same laser engine combined with a 400MHz Motorola Coldfire processor, starting with the basic P3005 (£325 ex Vat) with just 48MB of memory and no networking interface. However, a more generous 80MB of memory was supplied on the P3005dn model we looked at, which also features built-in networking and a duplexer for double-sided printing. All models can be upgraded to 320MB of Ram using industry-standard Dimm modules.

As well as being very quick, the laser engine is good for up to 100,000 pages per month on each of the models, making the P3005 a good choice for small companies looking for a general-purpose workhorse, or larger organisations wanting a capable departmental laser. It’s also very easy to maintain with a single, quick-to-replace cartridge available in two capacities – 6,500 or 13,000 pages. The 6,500-page cartridges sell for just under £66 (ex Vat) on the web, with the larger capacity cartridges on offer for about £109 (ex Vat).

Paper handling was adequate but nothing special. A 500-sheet paper tray comes as standard with a second available as an optional extra (£79 ex Vat), which is worth having on a printer of this speed. You could also opt for the P3005x (£569 ex Vat) and get it already fitted. Both trays can handle 120gsm A4 sheets with a 100-sheet fold-out multipurpose tray at the front to provide a straight-through path for card, labels and other heavier materials.

Printed pages come out face down into a well on top of the printer, but there are no additional sorting or finishing options, which is a little unfortunate as it limits the appeal of this laser.

A USB2 interface allows the P3005dn to be hooked up to desktop PC or server directly, but most buyers will opt for network connection using the integrated HP Jetdirect adapter provided. This enables the laser to be shared on a mix of Windows, Linux, Apple and other networks with remote management via a browser using the embedded web server or, where multiple printers are deployed, using HP’s Web Jetadmin software.

We had no problems installing the printer or accompanying software, and were impressed both by the quality and speed at which documents were printed. The paper handling lets it down a little, but for a lot of small businesses that won’t be a major issue with the HP pedigree alone likely to make it a top seller.