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Print quality from Kyocera Mita printers has always been high and that's true here. Black text is crisp and dark with no signs of toner spatter around characters, which can produce fuzziness. Colour business graphics are also well reproduced with a good range of vivid colours producing attention grabbing documents. There were some slight registration problems with black text over colour backgrounds, but you have to look closely to see this.

Print quality is good for colour as well as black

A photographic print came out particularly well. Colour laser printers have a much smaller colour range than a typical inkjet, and photo prints can look over gaudy with a sort of ‘seaside postcard’ effect, but improvements to the toner in this machine give it a wider than normal gamut, resulting in a more natural colour mix.

There's a move among several printer manufacturers to improve the regularity and shape of colour toner to give better colour control and this has made quite a difference over the last year to the quality of colour laser print-outs. More toner is ‘grown’ these days, rather than being chipped or ground off large chunks of base material.

Assuming the drum is a lifetime component, running costs on the FS-C5200DN come down to the toner cartridges which, at internet prices, are around £75 mark for colour and £95 for black. This gives costs per page figures of 5.9p for colour and an impressive 1.1p for black text. Given the relatively high capacity of the toner cartridges and paper trays, maintenance costs should be low, too.

Verdict

Kyocera Mita is aiming the FS-C5200DN at small workgroups, but with its high capacity consumables and paper trays and the range of optional extras, it should be able to grow with a successful team over time. Good quality print, reasonably quick throughput and built-in duplexing make this printer which starts as, and should remain, good value. ®

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