The Dell 1100 is an affordably-priced monochrome laser printer designed for the personal user. Its extremely compact size and affordable price make it a great choice for someone upgrading from an inkjet printer.
The design of the Dell 1100 is extremely compact for a laser printer. Its footprint is about the same as the inkjet printer it will likely be replacing. It weighs only 12 pounds, so it is easily movable by one person. The 1100 is designed for personal use, and though it could be shared across a network through a host PC, it will likely not suit this purpose very well, given its smaller paper tray and toner capacities. It is better suited to a dorm room or home office environment.
Though it is designed for smaller spaces, it is still big on performance. Print speeds are a quick 12 pages for text and 10 pages for graphics, certainly not the fastest printer on the block, but impressive at its price point. Print quality is generally very good and readable at small font sizes. Text tends to be a little lighter than some of its competition, but not so much as to be particularly noticeable. Graphics quality is good, with only a few flaws and some of the same lightness as text. For the price, print quality is very impressive overall.
The Dell 1100’s affordable price comes with some downsides, however. Two cost-cutting measures are particularly annoying. First, the printer comes with a “starter” Dell 1100 toner cartridge containing a capacity of 1,000 pages. This is half the capacity as what is available for purchase. The full-size Dell 1100 toner cartridge has a page yield of 2,000 pages. Second, the printer comes with no USB cable. Both of these issues are becoming increasingly common in the marketplace, but it represents additional costs to the user that may not be anticipated.
Overall, the Dell 1100 is a great choice for a compact, affordable laser printer that is easily transportable without sacrificing too much in speed or quality. Expect to pay a little extra for a cable and a toner cartridge, but otherwise, it is an impressive printer.
