The Dell 1720dn offers fast prints and good print quality, making it an excellent mono laser printer for small offices or work groups.

Design
The Dell 1720 is a blocky, charcoal grey printer with no-nonsense, all-business looks. It stands 39.6cm wide, 34.5cm deep, and 25.4cm tall, and weighs just over 11 kilograms. It ships with a 250-sheet paper tray, though you can expand the input capacity with an optional 550-sheet drawer. A slot just above the tray serves as the manual feed tray, in which you can feed single sheets of media. It has adjustable paper guides to facilitate feeding different sizes of paper. The 1720 lacks a straight pass-through, which is great for thicker media that may be problematic for the printer's rollers. The printer's control panel is simple: just a continue button and a cancel button, as well as several LEDs to alert you to problems such as paper jams.

Dell offers both standard and high-capacity toner cartridges for the 1720 and has a use-and-return program that offers a discount to users who return spent cartridges. The standard cartridge yields about 3,000 pages and the high capacity version yields about twice that number. The 1720 printers have a monthly duty cycle of about 25,000 pages, which makes it a good fit for a small to medium-size work group.

Features
The Dell 1720 mono laser printer family offers two models: the base model costs AU$369, while the 1720dn (which we tested) costs AU$599. The 1720dn includes built-in networking via Ethernet and a built-in duplexer for automatic double-sided prints. Both models feature a 366MHz processor. The 1720 ships with 16MB of RAM, while the 1720dn ships with 32MB. Both are upgradeable to 144MB and 160MB, respectively. Both models also include USB and parallel connectors. Dell offers an optional wireless printer adapter for printing wireless over your network.

Performance
The Dell 1720dn kept pace with the competition. It produced black text pages at a rate of 13.46 pages per minute (ppm). The slightly less expensive Lexmark E250dn was a bit slower, and the Samsung ML-3051ND was a bit faster. The Dell beat both the Lexmark and the Samsung at graphics prints, though, churning them out at a rate of 21.59ppm. It produced PowerPoint prints at a rate of 11.79ppm.

CNET Labs' mono laser speed tests (pages per minute)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Black graphics

Black text

Samsung ML-3051ND

18.16 

19.2 

Dell 1720dn

21.59 

13.46 

Lexmark E250dn

20.95 

11.15 

The Dell 1720dn didn't disappoint with its print quality, either. Text was flawless, as it should be with mono laser printers. The mono graphics page was also sharp and detailed, though some cross-hatching marred the photo elements a bit. This flaw is not uncommon for laser printers, though. Overall, the print speeds and quality of the printer make it a great fit for small office or work group environments.

CNET Labs' mono laser quality
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Black graphics

Black text

Lexmark E250dn

Excellent 

Excellent 

Dell 1720dn

Good 

Excellent 

Samsung ML-3051ND

Good 

Excellent 

Note: Products in this test are for comparative purposes only and are not necessarily available in the Australian market.

The standard warranty for the Dell 1720 lasts one year, but it can be upgraded. Dell provides free phone support 24-7, but it recommends trying the live online chat option first. For less urgent inquiries, you can email Dell's support team or check out its user forums. Dell's website also has product-specific support in the form of online user guides, drivers, and software downloads, and a troubleshooting tool. You can find basic tips on common how-tos, as well, such as how to change the toner cartridge.