HP Laserjet printers have for many years been my laser printer of choice, they tend to be extremely well built and generally perform better than average in most areas and are above all else supremely reliable.

Hp has always had a leading position in the SMB multi-function laser printing market and I was keen to explore their new Laserjet M2727. Two models are offered, the basic, if you could call this specification basic, M2727nf and the M2727nfs. The higher end 2727nfs has an additional 250 sheet lower paper tray and an integral stapler, although this 20 page stapler doesn't automatically bind pages together during printing, you have to remove the pages post print and shoe into the slot at the side.

Both models offer a good mixture of features with a 26 ppm mono print speed combined with a copier and automatic document feeder (ADF), fax modem and also colour scanning. This product is firmly aimed at the SMB market and is a compact unit built with HP's usual attention to detail using solid looking materials. The combined scanner and ADF sit neatly on top of the printer unit and the control panel stretches the length of the machine offering easy access to all features.

Two volumes of toner cartridge are available for this printer, the HPQ7553a that comes with the printer has a 3,000 page capacity offering print costs of 1.5p per page, and a higher capacity HPQ7553x cartridge that yields 7,000 pages offering print cost of just over 1p per page. For bargain printers there is already a compatible high yield version of the cartridge on sale for under £45 and using

this will reduce print costs to well under 1p per page. This cartridge is already used in other Hp printers so any glitches with the compatible cartridges should be ironed out by now.

At the FastRes1200 setting we were able to achieve print speeds close to the quoted 26ppm with normal text documents, however when we switched to the top ProRes1200 setting to print a heady mix of photographs, graphics and charts slowed the printer down to a snail like 6ppm.

If you were considering a memory upgrade then you would be well advised to shop around as HP will charge a whopping £350 for a 256MB chip, you can easily find a compatible Kinston module online for around £10. HP should be ashamed at this level of greed.

Installation is fairly straightforward although it should be noted that you will have to run a full software install on an XP system to get the HPToolBoxFX utility required to configure the Scan TO button on the printer. The installation loads both TWAIN and TWI drivers to allow you to scan and receive images to your PC directly over the network, using TWI you can scan and insert pictures straight into Word documents. Other features allow you to scan and email as a mail attachment and scan directly to either a local or network folder. For scan to email you merely select this option from the Scan settings on your Pc and it will load your default mail client and attach your image to the new message.
Faxing can be carried out either directly from the control panel on the printer or by using the installed HP Send Driver on your PC. The printer maintains an address book that can be accessed from the control panel and updated from the web management console.

Unfortunately and unusually for an HP printer, it is the print quality where this machine falls down, the overall print quality for text is acceptable although even here close examination can reveal a little smudging at the edges. Photographs are where you really start to encounter problems with both excessive banding and an overall washed out grainy effect being present. The problem appears to be contained to printing as scanning the same documents delivered good quality images with good colour balance and minimal banding.

Overall the LaserJet M2727 is a very versatile printer capable of handling most office printing requirements, it is let down by the quality of its output, which is a shame because for under £400 it offers a lot of very useful features and has potentially low running costs if the correct replacement cartridges are purchased.