The HP Officejet Pro 8500 is one of the best office inkjet alternatives for under $350. Being feature packed, small businesses may be tempted to try this over the latest expensive laser printer.

A lack of contrast and a grainy finish to prints added to the awkward photo tray buried deep inside the out tray, making the 8500 very much a document specialist rather than an all-rounder

Impressive print quality, a good turn of speed and decent features, but it simply costs too much to own.

In the text and black assessment, it couldn't quite match the excellence of the Oki B440dn, but it's far from poor. There were hardly any of the satellite splatters that afflict so many laser printers' output and which lend text a slightly soft, fuzzy ...

Ignore the price – incredibly low running costs Make this a winner.

Speed is right up there with the best this month: it isn't as quick as the Konica Minolta, but its raw throughput of 29ppm is great for the price. Even the complex graphics in our DTP documents and Excel spreadsheet failed to trip it up, dropping at ...

Slick looks and astonishing battery life make this the pick of the bunch for travelers, especially for the business person on the go.

The trackpad supports multi-touch that's less smooth than the similar MacBook feature. We appreciate the handy trackpad on/off button

The Xerox Phaser 3125N isn't much to look at, with a design not unlike business lasers from the early nineties. Unlike its ancestors, however, it's only a fraction of the size and significantly more powerful.

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Very compact and incredibly cheap for an A3 all-in-one, but speed and print quality are only average

Where the budget price starts to bite is in the performance of the printer, which is less impressive. When printing our A4 mono document at draft settings, for example, the Brother managed 9ppm – not bad – but quality was lacking, with faded graphics ...

Top colour speeds are only achievable in draft mode, but output quality is quite remarkable

This quality output is also backed up by a good range of print-management tools and a useful print-server web interface, which is also mirrored by HP's ToolboxFX utility. It's a real shame the top colour print speeds are only achievable in draft mode, ...

A compact workgroup laser suited to high-volume colour and mono printing, but delivering average photo quality

A smart feature that Oki adopted many years ago is the use of separate print processes, where the toner cartridges each have their own photo-conductive drum and are placed in-line down the paper path. In the printer lid are four LED arrays allowing ...

Interesting design and plenty of features, but it takes an age to produce mediocre results

But improvements in features are not matched when it comes to speed or quality. With a few minor variations, both Brother printers performed similarly in our speed tests – that is, bottom of the pack, with mono text produced at a painful 3.1ppm. And ...

Plenty of features, but printing and scanning results proved average at best

Of course, you also get the usual USB port and for most people that's still the simplest connection. A 2.4in colour LCD contains a raft of options, and although it at times spreads across a few too many scrolling menus, it's pretty easy to use. There ...