HP LaserJet Pro P1566 Review

"Recommended"

The entry-level HP LaserJet Pro P1566 has a small footprint, though folding down the paper tray takes up more space. There's only one USB connection, but it prints a speedy 19ppm and text is superb quality. Good greyscales also mean that graphics and photos are printed well. For a price of under £100, Register Hardware believe the 2.75p running cost to be excellent, and maintenance is low.

"... Print quality is generally very good, which is what we've come to expect from HP. Text is dense and cleanly formed even at small point sizes, and greyscales are smooth, albeit with a certain lack of differentiation between different colours ... With print quality and running costs to match its rivals, the P1566 impressed us by churning out single-page prints quickly."

"... Text is nice and crisp with solid blacks; the only noticeable issue is the slight jagged edges when printing extra large text. It has no problem with simple images, such as graphs in Excel spreadsheets but, as with all budget lasers, it struggled to reproduce detail in photos. ... Overall, this is a decent mono laser from HP with a low initial outlay ... Small and cheap, the LaserJet Pro P1566 is ideally suited to low-volume printing. The noise generated when printing at full speed is a little concerning, and the output tray looks a little clumsy, but otherwise it's a solid-performing laser."

Value for money: 9 out of 10 points, "Recommended"

"... Mono laser print has long been one of HP's strengths and the text output from this printer is hard to fault. ... Our test photo print gave surprisingly good detail in the difficult darker areas of our test image ... HP has sorted the principles of mono laser print and can produce consistently good quality print at good speed, even from a printer costing well under £150. Here, it has concentrated on easy installation and quick start-up, which improves overall performance on any printer that isn't in constant use. The LaserJet P1566 would be a good choice for any small or home office with a reasonable workload of general business documents."

"... the P1566 did exactly what we expected of it. Print quality is excellent; we were particularly pleased with accurately shaded greyscale renderings of our colour business documents. ... Print costs are very competitive. ... Driver-free installation is handy, rather than essential, but this is still a great little mono laser."

“The HP comes with a range of practical details, and produces good quality prints at a quick speed. However the costs are too high for those who do a lot of printing.”