The latest printer in Kyocera Mita's popular ECOSYS range is the FS-1010 mono laser printer, which offers good value for money, combining high performance with a low price. Although labelled as a personal laser printer, with the addition of a network card it would be suitable for a small company looking for a fast mono laser.

With a 200MHz PowerPC 405 processor and 16MB of memory supplied as standard, the FS-1010 is quite swift, delivering the first page in less than 12 seconds and printing at up to a claimed 14ppm (pages per minute) on A4 paper. If this is still too slow for you, the memory can upgraded to 144MB using the single DIMM slot, although this is really for handling larger documents.

The printer has both parallel and USB 1.1 ports and can be fitted with an optional 10/100Mbps network card or serial port card, which makes it pretty flexible. Size-wise the FS-1010 is quite compact for a laser; just 222mm high by 377.6mm wide and 374.5mm deep.

Basic resolution is 600dpi (600 x 600dpi) while the other options are Fast 1200 (1800x600dpi) or, by using KIR2 (Kyocera Image Refinement 2), a 'perceived' 2400 x 600dpi. As standard the FS-1010 comes with a 250-sheet paper cassette and a 50-sheet multi-purpose manual tray feed. An additional 250-sheet paper feeder is available as an option.

The FS-1010 shouldn't cost the Earth to run either, featuring a long-life drum and developer package which Kyocera Mita guarantees for 3 years or 100,000 pages, along with a standard toner cartridge that lasts for approximately 3,000 pages (with 5 per cent A4 coverage). Also available is a long-life cartridge which lasts for approximately 6,000 pages at the same coverage rate. The FS-1010 can handle a healthy monthly duty cycle of up to 8,000 pages.

The usual LCD menu display normally found on Kyocera printers has been replaced on the FS-1010 by a simpler arrangement of four indicator LEDs plus cancel and start buttons - all other functions are handled by the driver software. Kycocera Mita supplies the FS-1010 with a two-year RTB warranty.

Kyocera Mita's FS-1010 combines small size and low cost, which makes it an ideal mono printer for the home. With the addition of the optional network card, its fast speed also makes it a suitable laser printer for a small office.