Of course, any monochrome laser printer is meant for workhorse letters and reports instead of the suitable-for-framing photos of today's elite color inkjets. But we were frankly disappointed in the quality of our digital-camera image in the 1,200 by 600 dpi default mode -- although it took a swift 30 seconds to print, it was a little dark and grainy for our taste.

Also, both photos and solid areas in Acrobat PDF files and PowerPoint slides showed noticeable banding. Tinkering with the software driver's brightness and contast sliders helped a little, but we've still got to rate the PagePro's graphics quality a step below that of the low-cost black-and-whites we've tested from Samsung, HP, and Lexmark lately.

That said, text was dark, sharp, and smooth for banner headlines, tiny footnotes, and body copy alike. And while, despite its onboard Naltec N1 processor, the Konica Minolta seemed highly sensitive to sharing the CPU of our host PC -- the difference between leaving Word alone and loading Internet Explorer during a 20-page job on our plodding Pentium III/550 desktop was about a 40-percent increase in print time -- its 21-ppm engine indeed outspeeds the abovementioned LaserJet 1012 and Lexmark E220 for heavy-duty work.

Though its 17-second stopwatch time narrowly trailed those nominally slower printers when producing our one-page letter with letterhead, the PagePro (in default 1,200 by 600 dpi mode) purred through our 20-page Word document in a swift 1 minute and 24 seconds, and printed six PowerPoint slides in 1 minute and 20 seconds. Interestingly, while its time of 3 minutes and 50 seconds easily bested its under-$200 rivals in our 55-page Adobe Acrobat test, it was more than a minute slower than a midpriced Lexmark rated at 22 ppm which we tested a year ago.

Not-Too-Costly Consumables

Once you get past the grumble of the half-empty starter cartridge, the Konica Minolta also tops its peers when it comes to keeping a lid on consumable costs, probably because of the two-piece imaging-cartridge design that lets you replace the toner cartridge without throwing away the imaging drum.

The drawback is that it's a bit more labor-intensive -- it took us maybe five minutes to learn the trick of flipping a latch lever and separating and reuniting the two pieces (it's a little awkward to deal with the toner cartridge when apart from the drum cartridge and the latter's carrying handle, and you're not supposed to leave the latter exposed to light for long).

The payoff is that a toner cartridge rated for 3,000 pages is a slightly thriftier-than-thou $78, with a 6,000-page long-life toner available for $126. The imaging drum, rated for 20,000 pages, costs $105. Konica Minolta confesses that your mileage may vary, in that rated page counts drop 10 to 20 percent if your work involves more stop-and-start printing (one- or two-page rather than continuous jobs).

Paper-handling is simple but adequate -- the fold-down front tray holds up to 150 sheets, with smooth-feeding horizontal rather than inkjet-style vertical paper loading, and pages perform a near-U-turn to exit face down on top of the printer, propped by a plastic tray that, like other entry-level printers', strikes us as good for somewhat less than its advertised 100-sheet capacity. There's no special slot or straight-through path available for envelopes or exotic stock.

Overall, the PagePro 1350W is a solid addition to the ranks of petite, under-$200, best-for-text monochrome workhorse lasers, earning points for its higher monthly duty cycle and more fiscally and environmentally sound two-piece toner/drum design. On the minus side, its visibly banded graphics and slightly noisy operation keep it from blowing away the competition. Could the line between cutting fat and muscle lie somewhere between $199 and $180?

Pros:

• Low price, swift performance, superb text quality
• Nice horizontal paper tray, software control panel, and two-piece toner/drum replacements

Cons:

• Not-so-great graphics quality, even in speed-sapping 1,200 by 1,200 dpi mode
• Memory and paper capacity not expandable

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