HP LaserJet Pro CP1025
This is HP’s entry-level colour laser printer. It’s classy black and white lines and simple, but adequate control panel give it a good look as a personal desktop machine. A 150-sheet paper tray is the only feed source and a single USB socket is the only data connection. It uses a carousel print mechanism, which slows down colour print to around 3.3ppm, though it can still manage 13ppm printing black. Text and graphics prints are sharp and bright. The killer is again the running costs, with a black page coming out at 4.1p and a colour one costing 17.8p. Both are high, but the colour cost in particular is a big deterrent.
Reg Rating 60%
Price £139
More info HP
Kyocera Mita FS-C5250DN
A workgroup laser printer, even a colour one, should handle more than 250-sheets and this one can handle 550 sheets as standard, with optional trays giving up to 1,500. The control panel has over-modest buttons, making jobs like USB drive file selection a little awkward. USB and Ethernet are standard, though wireless is only an option. As you’d expect at this price, it’s a quick machine, measured at 21ppm black, 15ppm colour and 12ppm duplex; duplex is standard. Print quality on text and business graphics is good, but photos can be a bit fuzzy round the edges. Page costs are very economical, at 1.4p for black and 7.6p for colour.
Reg Rating 85%
Price £549
More info Kyocera Mita
Next page: OKI C310dn
COMMENTS
Solid ink, right...
While the Xerox solid ink printers produce nice looking printouts, they also produce a bad smell and need to placed in a well ventilated area. Also, if you only occasionally print with them, they waste a lot of ink on start-up and it's a slow printer anyway, especially if the printer was off.
The whole roundup is stupid anyway. The prices range from 139 to 634, and the blurb on the first page states "Here are ten, capable colour lasers you should consider for a short list" but the reviewer has given 60% verdict to two printers. Why would I put the Xerox 6010 on my short list if the reviewer states that "it may be OK". That HP is noisy, slow and the previous cheap HP carousel models were also prone to break.
Clearly the reviewer works in a retailer or distributor and reviews whatever he has handy there. And that's just fine. But these reviews should be more consistent. Comparing a £200 laptop to a £2000 model makes no sense, why do it with printers?
No mention of OS compatibility.
Even the ones running on Ethernet are not necessarily postscript compatible, and some Linux drivers are crap (or non-existant)
Noise
It's all well & good listing the running costs for the printers, but of equal importance for a small office is noise.
I've found that many colour laser printers can be incredibly noisy, especially the carousel models that rotate the toner cartridges between passes.
Any chance of adding a noise level next time you review printers?
Add to review..
Theres several important factors that are missing from the printer reviews on thereg lately, and i feel they would make the reviews far more useful.
1, Standards support - does the printer require proprietary drivers (and if so for what platforms are drivers made available), or can it work with postscript or pcl? I would always prefer a postscript printer simply because it works with everything and will continue working even long after the manufacturer has given up making drivers... Some devices (eg hp touchpad) only support pcl, some things only support postscript.
2, Airprint - lots of people want to print from iOS devices, would be good to know which printers support it.. Worth noting tho that with a small linux box you can make an airprint server for any printer that linux supports (i do this with my old laserjet)..
3, Noise - for home or small office use noise is important... some printers are even noisy when idle!
4, Startup time - from cold, and from going into powersave mode (assuming it has one)
5, Available prints in the default toners - for some people not wanting to print a lot, the default toners may last a long time... Especially true with lasers which don't dry out like inkjets, it may be more economical for some people to buy cheaper printers with generally higher running costs for very occasional use.
6, power consumption and heat output
Also a table at the end summing things up...
10,100,500,1000 pages per month
that's way beyond the duty cycle of all these printers put together...
