Epson AcuLaser C1100N Laser Printer

Epson had always been known for their range of ink-jet printers but they have been lately manufacturing the laser printers too. Said that, the Epson AcuLaser C1100N is very close of being an entry level model of Epson colour laser printers, but then it surprised everybody with its high print speeds and quality, that too with its very low costs. This printer came in as a step-up from the Kyocera FS-820 and Brother HL-2040 personal lasers. So let us see in the following review, if the AcuLaser C1100N gets you the bargain.

C1100N - A bulky laser printer:

Design wise, the AcuLaser C1100N Colour Laser Printer does not belong to the compact category. It is quite a bulky printer, which would need the space of an old model desktop PC. The paper feed is available from a tray at the bottom of the machine and the paper comes out via the top cover and a pull out paper support has been offered for the support of longer sheets. The feed tray is quite unique as it is a 180 sheet multi-purpose tray. In order to feed the paper in, the front cover has to be removed and another thing that has to be noted here is that, there is no removable tray to fill, which is a major disadvantage. If you are looking for some extra capacity, then you can add an optional paper tray of 500 sheets capacity, which can be fitted underneath and this makes the device even taller. An automatic duplexer is also an option.

The control panel:

The control panel is surprisingly very simple to use and it has been angled into the front lip of the printer. It consists of a single line, 16 character LCD screen along with four small buttons to its right and another small circular cancel button to its left and a large Go button with an built-in action LED. A second line could have been added to the LCD display and it would have been much better if Epson has provided with a backlight for the display. The menu system is very simple and is extremely easy to traverse.

Connectivity:

Coming to the connectivity options, there is a USB2.0 port and a parallel port. Being a sophisticated version of the AcuLaser C1100 model, this “N” version has Ethernet connectivity option which the former lacks.

The initial setup:

Setting up the AcuLaser C1100N Duplex Laser Printer is not that complicated. In order to fit in the all in one photo conducter, the top cover of the printer has to be opened, and the same applies for fitting in the fuser unit. The other front slot paves way to insert the four cylinders of toners into the rotating carousel mechanism. Since this is placed deep inside the printer, fitting in the cartridges can be quite a fiddly job. During the process of printing, the C, Y, M, and K images are built up in turn on the drum before it is being transferred to the paper. As a four-pass laser, the paper passes through the print process four times for colour pages, but black-and-white prints zip through in a single pass. And hence, the monochrome prints come out much faster than the colour documents.

An advantage with the separate cartridges:

One of the advantageous facts about this laser printer is that, since it uses four separate photo sensitive drums and toner units, it works much faster than the ones that work with a carousel. The principle involved is that, the time taken to turn the carousel and apply each colour individually will be longer than making up all four colour images on separate drums and applying them all to the paper in one pass. The only consumables are the photo conductor unit, which has a service life of 42,000 black pages or 10,500 in colour, and toner. Black toner comes in a 7,000 page cartridge, with each of the colours available in standard (5,000) or high (7,000) capacities.

Print speed of AcuLaser C1100N:

The Epson AcuLaser C1100N is having an extremely impressive print speed, in fact it is one of the quickest colour printers that we have ever tested. The 67MHz processor seems to be doing a great job. It managed to five pages of black text in just 24 seconds, which gives a true rate of 12.5 pages per minute. The C1100N manages to print mixed text and graphics in 18 seconds and 5″x3″ photo in just 19 seconds. This rate is amazing when compared to the other latest laser printers such as the OKI C3100 which takes 25secs and the Samsung CLP-550 that takes 29 seconds, which implies the C1100N is about 20% faster than the rest.

Print quality:

The AcuLaser C1100N LaserJet Printer does not let you down in terms of print quality too. The black text is very clear and clean, the fonts are very even and are reproduced accurately and in a good proportion. They look very solid without being shiny or glossy with reflected lights. The grays are smmoth and clean but slight ghosting is visible over black lines. Graphs and charts look neat and tidy, and hence, professional reports will have the required impact. The colour pictures are good but cannot be said as excellent as there are some variations in large areas of solid colour. Overall, the prints look smart and professional. The pages come out nearly flat sans any curling issues.

Photo printing:

Coming to photo printing, the AcuLaser C1100N excelled as a laser. Though there was occasional hint of purple cast in the monochrome prints, they have great contrast and detail, with no signs of banding. The photo reproduction is quite vivid and faint banding is visible, but we must confess that the foreground detail’s quality was extremely good and the graduated tints are smooth. Although image printing isn’t a primary strength in lasers, the C1100 will let you add images to professional projects with confidence. It’s rather noisy at times though, and it can take a while to settle down again after a long print-run.

The software bundle:

Epson has offered a pretty comprehensive software bundle which includes Photo Quicker and Print Image Framer, as well as the driver. Providing with two different photo specific utilites with a laser printer is quite odd. We are aware of the fact that printing of photo images will be one of the tasks of a colour laser printer but photo reproduction will not certainly be the primary job of the laser printer. The driver utility possesses the standard set of features such as watermarking, etc, but the issue here is that, it does not have any specific control of colour or measures that attempt colour matching. And hence, you will have to rely entirely on the application software that you must be having for this.

Warranty:

Epson offers AcuLaser C1100N one year standard warranty, but you can also opt to get 3 years extended warranty.

Verdict:

The Epson AcuLaser C1100N is a well constructed printer that does not have a great design, but excellent print speeds and great quality. If you are looking for a laser printer for your office and really care about the print speeds and quality, there cannot be a better option other than the C110N. The Ethernet connectivity option is of course an added advantage.

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Epson AcuLaser C1100N Laser Printer - Technical Specification Table

Manufacturer	Epson
Model Name	Epson AcuLaser C1100N
Printer type	Laser printer
Colour	Grey
Dimensions (H x W x D) in mm	445 x 445 x 439 mm
Weight	28kg
Technology used	Epson AcuLaser Color 2400 RIT Epson AcuLaser Resolution Improvement Technology
Print Speed	Up to 25ppm in monochrome and 5ppm in colour (A4)
First Page Out	9 seconds in monochrome
Maximum Monthly Volume	45,000 pages
Network printing protocols	TCP/IP: LPR, FTP, IPP, PORT2501, PORT9100 Microsoft Network: SMB; AppleTalk
Network Management Protocols	TCP/IP: SNMP, HTTP, TELNET, DHCP, BOOTP, APIPA, PING, DDNS, mDNS(Rendezvous), SNTP, SSDP,MMicrosoft, Network(NetBEUI): SNMP; AppleTalk: SNMP
Printer Interface	IEEE 1284 parallel interface
Standard Paper Input	180 sheets (180 sheet Multi-Purpose tray), Manual Duplex
Maximum Paper Input	680 sheets (180 sheet Multi-Purpose tray +, 500-Sheet Paper Cassette)
Supported paper sizes	A4, A5, B5, LT, GLT, HLT, EXE, C5, C6, COM10, DL, MON, ISO-B5; 90 x 139.7mm to 216 x 297mm
Duplex	Manual
Paper Weight	64 to 210 g/m2
Optional Paper Handling	500-Sheet Paper Cassette Automatic Duplex Unit
Paper Output Standard Maximum	200 sheets face-down
Windows Support	Windows 95/98/Me/XP/2000/Server 2003, NT 4.0
Mac Support	Mac OS 9.x or later and Mac OSX 10.1.2 or later
Printer Control Language Emulations	ESC/Page S (Host based)
Memory	32MB with Epson MITech
Standard Warranty	1 year on-site
Optional Warranty	3 year Extended Warranty