Brother HL-5250DN

Reviews say the Brother HL-5250DN is a great value among black-and-white laser printers for PCs and Macs, offering excellent print quality for text, duplex printing (both sides of a page) and speeds competitive with printers costing much more. Reviews say you'll also get good quality on graphics and fair quality on photos, and one estimates your cost per page at about 2.2 cents, which is very low. These printers are not designed for heavy office use – the Brother HL-5250DN has a maximum duty of 20,000 pages per month. User reviews are overwhelmingly positive, with the usual complaints – paper jams and curls, difficulty printing on envelopes and power surges at startup. One feature that's missing is Wi-Fi; for that, look to the upgraded Brother HL-5280DW (*est. $355).

There are solid reviews of monochrome laser printers at Better Buys for Business, which rates almost every brand-name printer and tests them thoroughly. You'll need at least a free online trial subscription, however, to read these reports. PC World is thorough enough to have timed the Brother HL-5250DN at 21.6 text pages per minute and 9.6 graphics pages per minute. We found good coverage at PC Magazine as well. About 200 user reviews at Amazon.com and more than 100 at Newegg.com are overwhelmingly positive.