The price of a mono laser printer is determined almost entirely by its speed. The 28ppm LaserJet 2420d is more than double the price of, for example, the LaserJet 1320, which has a rated speed of 21ppm. The 2420d is aimed at high-end single users, and allows for a duty cycle as high as 10,000 pages per month.

This is a substantial, rectangular box of a printer, in two-tone grey with coloured highlights on some of the buttons. Paper feeds from a 250-sheet tray, which slides out from the bottom, and is ejected onto the printer's top cover. 250 sheets seems a little low for a high-end laser, though you can boost the capacity with an optional 500-sheet tray if you need to. A multi-purpose tray folds down from the front panel and can take a further 100 sheets.

The control panel on top sports a two-line, back-lit display and an extra help button shows useful tips if you have problems while printing.

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Set up is pretty easy, with a single-piece drum and toner unit and simple software installation from CD. We were a little surprised that the printer's built-in duplex unit was not enabled by default and we had to go into the driver and click on the appropriate option. Only then were we able to print on both sides of the paper.

Print speeds, while not up to the quoted 28ppm, rounded out at around 14ppm for text. All printer makers hopelessly overquote print speeds, based on the bare print engine mechanism, and a true 14ppm is a good speed for a laser printer in this market.

However, we weren't as impressed by the print quality of the LaserJet 2420d as we had expected to be. HP laser printers have traditionally been among the best for dense black text and clean, smooth fills, but we only saw the former here.

Drawn lines and, to a lesser extent, fill patterns showed noticeable irregularities. Straight lines, as in tables and frames, had a spatter along them and dithered fills were uneven. This also affected areas of photo images, such as skies. We have to hope that this is an isolated fault with our particular test sample, but it's an unusual shortcoming.

Print costs from the all-in-one toner and drum cartridge come out at about 1.6p per page, which is average for this type of printer. Fitting a new cartridge is a bit more fiddly than on some lasers, but with a standard capacity of 6,000 pages per cartridge, you shouldn't have to fiddle too often.

Over £400 for a personal mono laser with a 250-sheet paper tray and no network capability is asking a lot. The LaserJet 2420d is reasonably cheap to run and prints fast, but, even assuming the print quality problems we saw are isolated to this unit, this printer looks over-priced.