Brother HL-4040CN
RRP: $599 Distributor: Synnex
Compared to the other printers here, the Brother HL-4040CN is the Rolls Royce of colour lasers. It isn't just the price or weight - although at 29kg it's the most expensive and heaviest here. It's beautifully built.
The superlatives continue with its paper handling. The main tray can hold 250 sheets, which matches the best here. You also get networking as standard, and there's a PictBridge-compatible USB port on the front for printing documents directly.
The benefits continue, with best-in-class print speeds. The 4040CN averaged 17ppm across all our tests. It was the fastest printer on test with mono jobs at 22ppm and it also held a handy lead as the quickest colour printer. Its single-pass colour engine means colour copies printed at the same rate as in monochrome, and 22ppm for 20 copies of the standard ISO test document is an excellent result.
We only experienced a significant drawback with our complex 24-page DTP document, which includes a mixture of text, graphics and photographs. 7ppm is a surprisingly poor result - it isn't significantly worse than any other printer here, but it's disappointing nevertheless for the most expensive printer on test.
At least we can't complain about quality. The Brother produced highly respectable results in our business graphics test. White text on a red background printed magnificently, and we were pleased with our monochrome photographic test as well, which produced smooth gradients. The only disappointment was our colour photo test - the Brother's test page was paler than that of any other printer, and badly lacked vibrancy.
The Brother is a cheap printer in terms of both standard and high yield cartridges, so if you and your small band of co-workers will be frequently producing colour prints it's a decent choice, and it will also suit low-volume printing at home.
Canon i-SENSYS LBP5050
RRP: $449 Distributor: Topstar Computer
The LBP5050 has an ingenious design - pop open the front and the toner cartridges slide out on a spring-loaded drawer. It's this clever kind of design touch that allows the Canon to be one of the smallest and cheapest
in the group.
That compact design is partly due to the fact that the LBP5050 has all-in-one toner cartridges, whereas every other printer here has an image drum that will eventually need replacing. Disappointingly, this doesn't reduce the cost per page - it's in the middle of the pack for both mono and colour.
Surprisingly, though, it's an excellent performer. Canon claims print speeds of 12ppm and 8ppm for black and white and colour prints respectively, but we were surprised when the LBP5050 beat both of those claims by a page per minute. The drawback was the time to the first page, the longest of any printer: 26 seconds for a black and white page and more than half a minute for colour.
The quality of our tests was generally fine. For business graphs the LBP5050 is excellent, although it stumbled on our A4 colour photo. Colours were otherwise bold and accurate, and they emerged at a rate not far off those of black and white prints.
The LBP5050's size, price and competitive colour printing speeds all make it tempting. However, for anyone considering a printer for an office, the Dell 1320cn is the more obvious choice. And the Samsung CLP-315 offers such a small number of compromises that it's clearly a better buy for the home than this Canon. Sure, the Canon edges it for quality, but it can't keep up in colour printing, and its TCO consistently places it in the middle of the pack. The LBP5050 is a good printer, but it isn't a winner this month.
Dell 1320cn
RRP: $229 Distributor: Dell
If you'd told us from the outset that one of this month's winners would be a network-capable, single-pass printer that would top the charts for quality and near the top for speed, we'd have had no trouble believing you. If you'd told us the same printer would retail for just $229, we'd have laughed you out of the room.
While the Dell 1320cn might look uninspiring, our tests revealed it to be nearly infallible. In print quality, for instance, it scored perfectly. Our business graphics printed crisply and evenly, and with white text on red we experienced no background bleeding. Gradients in bar graphs were smooth and consistent, and solid blocks of colour never appeared to be raised from the page, thanks to the weight of toner used.
Even our photographic test - the kiss of death for so many laser printers - was absolutely fine. Our mono photographic test was equally good.
It also managed our tests against the clock terrifically well. Over the course of our testing it averaged a fantastic 15.4ppm, trailing only the more expensive Lexmark C540n and Brother 4040CN. It was second in the group when it came to our demanding 24-page DTP document as well: despite a difficult mixture of graphical, photographic and typographical elements, the Dell shrugged off the challenge and turned in a performance of 13ppm.
It's almost enough to earn an unqualified recommendation, but there are a few problems. First is its TCO. With high-capacity colour toner cartridges running to $119 each, and a 20,000 page image drum setting you back $259, the 1320cn is one of the more expensive printers in the long run.
If you expect to print more than a few thousand pages over the life of the printer you should look at cheaper-to-run options, particularly if you're in the market for a single-user machine. It's also worth noting that at 380mm high, it isn't very compact. However, if you're only going to print occasionally and want to bag a fast, quality printer for just a shade under $230, it's a bargain.
Konica Minolta 1650EN
RRP: $469 Distributor: Alloys
As the Samsung CLP-315 and Dell 1320cn demonstrate, it's possible to get a spectacular amount of printer without spending much more than $200. The Konica Minolta 1650EN therefore has a tricky task on its hands, needing to balance performance and print quality without breaking the bank.
In terms of desk space, it's more intrusive than the Samsung CLP-315, but it offers more features. Top billing goes to the Ethernet port, which makes the 1650EN a decent choice for workgroups.
It can't match the Dell 1320cn for speed, however, thanks to its four-pass colour printing. Black and white printing was respectable, at 21ppm, but pages with colour printed at just 5ppm.
That means the Konica Minolta's chief rival is the smaller Samsung. Despite having similar maximum noise pressure claims - Konica Minolta says the 1650EN generates 50dB(A) at its loudest, versus Samsung's 47dB(A) - over the course of a few hundred pages, the Samsung was the quieter machine. Against the background hum of work and air conditioning in an office, most laser printers are acceptably quiet, but for a single-user home office the Samsung is more manageable.
There are few distinctions in terms of quality. The Konica Minolta couldn't match the likes of the Dell or Brother printers in our business graphics tests. Its output was less elegant and refined, and our test of white characters on a red background showed some bleed. It was in the middle of the pack for colour photographic quality, although it excelled in our monochrome photographic test. In terms of quality it was hard to make a distinction between it and the Samsung.
If you have a home office where a printer will be shared, the Samsung is the better choice, thanks to its wired networking. The 1650EN is pricier than the Samsung to buy outright, but thanks to the availability of a 3-colour toner value pack ($267) the costs stay reasonable.
Lexmark C540n
RRP: $739 Distributor: Altech
The C540n is the best printer for small workgroups this month. Not only is the cost of the unit bearable, but it's also network capable, quick, and offers excellent quality.
Workgroup features run throughout the printer. The paper tray, for instance, has the joint highest capacity on
test at 250 pages, and the single-pass engine means sheets need to run through its cavernous interior only once, no matter whether they're printed in full colour or black and white.
The Lexmark hovered at a steady 20ppm in all our tests. The only time we saw a significantly slower speed was with our 24-page DTP document, whose complexities resulted in a 5ppm drop in speed. Still, at 15ppm for this demanding document, the Lexmark remains the fastest printer on test.
It also produced the most elegant text in our tests, and was superb when printing business documents. Colours appeared as they should and text on a coloured background - always tricky for cheap laser printers - looked great.
With all that power, it doesn't come as a shock that the Lexmark is a little more expensive to run than some of the other printers this month - but not by much. After just a few thousand pages it's been overtaken by the rising costs of most rivals, and it remains lower than most as the page count soars. These costs will be higher, incidentally, if you intend to print on the C540n from an Apple computer - Lexmark's driver currently doesn't support monochrome-only printing.
But that problem aside, the Lexmark is incredibly fast and produces great quality prints. It's also network-ready, well built and reasonably thrifty. The huge 250-page paper tray means you can set it up and leave it, and the initial pain of buying it is less than with more expensive printers. The Lexmark is beaten in the all-round stakes only by our labs winner, the cheap to run Brother.
Oki C130n
RRP: $395 Distributor: Xit Distribution
At less than 30cm wide, the Oki is one of the smallest printers on test. It's also one of the least expensive.
Even at that value price, you get some useful workgroup features, such as a network port and the second-largest paper tray on test, but the C130n's performance suggests that busy offices should look elsewhere. It's four pass, for a start, which means the Oki's colour performance is pretty slow at 5ppm.
Reserve it for black and white printing, though, and you're looking at the third-fastest printer here - we saw 21ppm on our straightforward black and white documents, and a good time to first page of 11 seconds. Print quality was consistently good, too.
It scored perfectly on our business graphics test, thanks to flawless black text and decent quality when it came to printing on coloured backgrounds. It was also close to the top printers in the group for photographic output. The only complaint we had was when the C130n was tasked with printing fine gradients, since there was a small amount of stepping in evidence.
This makes the Oki seem incredibly appealing, and viewed on its own it would be. It's quiet and produced decent quality prints. However, there's the significant question of the competition posed by other printers this month, and that's where it comes unstuck. For instance, its slow colour speed means it will never be a practical choice for any but the smallest workgroup, which is why the Brother has the edge - that's before we even consider the cost of ownership of this printer.
Alternatively, it's hard to ignore the Dell 1320cn, which is faster than the Oki despite costing around $50 less. The Oki is an undeniably good piece of hardware, with stacks of features and good results in our tests, but this month the competition simply outdoes it where it counts.
Samsung CLP-315 (pictured)
Price: $319 Distributor: Ingram Micro
The CLP-315 is the smallest printer here.That puts it in some treacherous company, with the Dell 1320cn waiting eagerly for it to slip up.
But the CLP-315 is the ultimate in civilisation compared to other printers. Where the Dell is a bit too boxy, the Samsung's classy black casing makes it the best-looking printer on test. It sounds like a minor consideration, but for those furnishing a home office, the Samsung's good looks and low noise matter.
And before it could be accused of putting looks before talent, the CLP-315 produced excellent results in our quality tests. Our photographic test stood out in particular, with natural-looking skintones and no obvious banding. Our business graphics tests were also impressive. Our only complaints are that white text on a coloured background printed out a little blurry, and text quality is less refined than it ought to be. Still, viewed in isolation the CLP-315's document quality is easily good enough.
It's quick in monochrome mode. Our black and white test documents printed at a rate of 17ppm, while colour documents printed at 4ppm. That colour figure is less than ideal, but it's fine for occasional use. The time it takes to produce a first page is also good, at 14 seconds for a black and white page, and just under half a minute for colour.
The TCO is where everything falls apart, however. While the CLP-315 is well-priced initially, the lack of high-yield cartridges and the low page-per-toner return mean the costs edge higher than the competition and stay high.
If not for the TCO, the CLP-315 would offer a magnificent combination of aesthetics, speed, print quality and value. If you need a printer that will stand up to a few users throwing frequent colour jobs at it, you should consider the Dell 1320cn instead - it's a less sociable desk partner, but is faster in virtually all areas and offers equally good prints. But if you only need low-volume printing, the Samsung is a good choice.
This review featured in the February issue of CRNTech.
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