If you want a colour multifunction machine but prefer a laser engine to an inkjet, there's an increasing number of devices on offer. Dell's entry-level offering is the 1235cn, a device which offers print, copy, scan, fax and photo print in one compact, all-black unit.

A quick glance from top to bottom reveals a 15-sheet Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) for scanning or copying multi-page documents, built on top of an A4, flatbed scanner. The clearly laid-out control panel includes a number pad for fax dialling (but no quick-dial buttons) and a 2-line, 16-character backlit LCD display, which is adequate for displaying toner status and menu navigation but a bit cramped for working your way around the folders on a USB drive.

We mention the drive because a socket just below the control panel doubles up for both USB drives and PictBridge cameras. It's unusual to have a PictBridge socket on a colour laser device, but handy for producing quick prints from a camera. A 150-sheet paper tray protrudes from the bottom of the machine and has no single-sheet feed for special media. At the back of the machine are both USB and Ethernet sockets: it's increasingly useful to have network connection even on a machine aimed at the home market.

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Set up and maintenance of the 1235cn is straightforward, as the four toner cartridges are stacked one above the other directly behind the front cover. Although Dell supplies reduced-yield starter cartridges with the machine, standard yields are 1,000 pages for colour and 1,500 pages for black.

Print speeds aren't bad and are somewhere near the quoted figures of 16ppm for black and 4ppm for colour. We saw maximum speeds of 13.3ppm and 3.3ppm for black and colour, respectively.

Print quality is more than respectable, with clean, sharp black text, slightly over-bright colours, which are good for business graphics, and even reasonable reproduction of colour photos, which still isn't often the case from a colour laser engine.

Consumable costs are relatively high and include the toner cartridges, a photoconductor drum and the waste toner bottle. When you work through the maths, you get page costs of 4.7p for black pages, which is a little high, and 18.8p for colour pages, which is very high. These pricey consumables costs are partly due to Dell single-sourcing supply, so there are few discounts to be had.

One last point is that the 1235cn is very similar in appearance to Samsung's range of small colour multifunction units (we suspect Samsung makes them for Dell). Samsung's CLX-3175FN, which costs around £30 more than the 1235cn, offers very similar functions but considerably cheaper consumables, bringing the page costs down.

The Dell 1235cn is an effective little multifunction machine which, in a small or home office, should satisfy most standard print and business communication needs. It may not be the cheapest machine to run, but if you're only printing a few pages per day, you may well be able to live with the consumables cost.