Laser Printers

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.

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. 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. 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.

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.

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

The Colour LaserJet CP1215 is HP’s latest entry level LaserJet lineup. The price tag on this laser printer cannot be guessed with its looks alone. The CP1215 is one of HP’s most affordable printers in the market. It is a very simple single function colour printer that is designed to be used in a small business environment. Though it turns out to be a great alternative to the costlier HP Colour LaserJet CP2025n with its unobstructed footprint and excellent quality of colour and black and white printer, it has a lot of limitations too. For instance, its incompatibility with any of Mac OS, extremely slow speed and very scarce features.

A reasonably Compact printer:

The CP1215 LaserJet Compact printer from HP possesses a design that is very similar to that of the CP2025n. The printer has got the “Compact” tag with its dimensions of just 10 x 15.7 x 20” (H X W X D) inches. The unit weighs 38.9 pounds which is considerably light weight than most of the laser printers out there in the market. These low values are obtained by omitting the internal auto duplexing and networking hardware.

Buttons and controls:

It also has a grey and white shades that covers the exterior, but the HP CP1215 Duplex Laser Printer does not have a LCD display. Instead, HP has included a main control panel towards the side of the face plate that contains all the buttons that are required to manipulate and trouble shoot the laser printer. The buttons and lights in the control panel includes paper feed button, power button, ready light, resume light, paper jam light, attention light and an array of status lights that indicate the low toner levels etc. These LED status lights work fine but it would have been much better if HP had just included a two line LCD display. If only they had employed an LCD display, then the display of very specific details on specific trouble shooting and printing job could have been given.

The other parts of the printer are quite simple with just a small power button on the left side and a power plug on the lower rear side of the printer. All of the paper accessing and toner handlings are in the front of the printer in form of several fold out drawers. They are lined in the order of output tray on the top, followed by the toner drawer and an input tray at the end. The input tray has a capacity of 150 sheets.

Installation and set-up of CP1215:

The process of installing the drivers and setting up a connection is very simple and hassle free as this is an USB only printer. For now HP has got no offer of any networking attachment for the printer and so, if you have any idea of networking, then a direct attachment is mandatory. We appreciate HP for providing the basic instructions in a very simple manner. The driver also runs and installation guide automatically that will be of great help for installation purposes.

Driver options:

The driver offers you a few options that allow you to customise a few settings but it is no where near the comprehensive CP2025n. The CP1215 colour Laserjet Printer is in a fixed 600 x 600dpi for both black and colour prints. You are given options to choose between four colour or black neutral greys in order to save ink, yet there is no way that you will be able to adjust the resolution of the prints. The driver options are formatted in such a way that it suites the windows operating system and hence there is no option for the Mac users, which takes out a wide spectrum of users out of the market.

Price reducing strategy:

Now a days, as we had mentioned in some of the other reviews, manufacturers offer a starter set of toner cartridges that are only a fraction of what you get in the shops. This is done in order to strategically keep the prices of the printer low. And the worse is that for most of the consumers, this surprise comes only after purchasing the printer as it is not clearly mentioned in the package itself. And, the Hewlett Packard Colour LaserJet CP1215 is not an exception, all the four toner cartridges, cyan, magenta, yellow and black contain approximately just the half of a standard volume toner.

Quite an expensive operation:

When the price of the prints are roughly calculated, they are slightly expensive than the HP CP2025n. The LaserJet CP1215 has got a monthly duty cycle of 1000 pages, where as, its competition laser has a cycle of 40,000 pages which makes the fact clear that it is suited only for the small office uses.

Awful print speed:

Coming to the part of performance, HP Colour LaserJet CP1215’s speed cannot be well described by any other word than “Pathetic”. It gave around 6ppm for colour graphics, 5 and a half ppm for presentation, 5.36 for colour text and a little more than 8ppm for black text. When put in comparison with the other printers, you will be find that the difference is totally unacceptable, and will get frustrated by waiting for a colour print to appear from the printer.

Excellent quality though:

Though the speed had let you down, the quality of the prints do not do the same. They are excellent with well formed black and colour text. Even the edges are sharp and shading is dense. Though some banding can be witnessed in some of the fine details, majority of the photo elements comes out well with nicely saturated natural colour. Overall, the print quality of HP Colour LaserJet CP1215 Single Function Printer is good for a small office that has occasional presentation to be thrown in but for the larger offices that have heavy photographic works would like to have a quality of print that can be offered only by inkjet printers.

The package contents includes the HP LaserJet CP1215 laser printer, power cable, 750-page cyan, magenta, yellow, and black cartridges, CD with user guide and printer software and a getting started guide.

Warranty and support:

HP offers HP Colour LaserJet CP1215 with one year warranty. In addition to this, HP also offers 24×7 toll free phone support with instant chatting during week days. HP’s website also has a load of other useful tuffs for your printer such as, downloadable drivers, software, manuals, e-mail tech support and even trouble shooting guide.

Verdict:

HP Colour LaserJet CP1215’s pros include the simple design, ease in installation, good quality colour prints, low price tag and support for manual duplexing. Whereas, the cons list extends to expensive operation, incompatibility with Mac OS, very slow print speeds, absence of a LCD display, very small quantity of toners offered and the fixed resolution.
And so, if you are having a system that operates on Mac or in a situation of printing a large number of sheets, look for a better alternative, a cost effective Dell 1320cn which is another laser printer that offers faster colour prints and also a single sheet manual feed slot. Else if you own a small office and not cared about the print speeds, the LaserJet CP1215 is in fact a good choice.

 

HP Color Laserjet CP1215 (CC376A#ABA) Specification Details

Manufacturer	HP
Model Name	HP Colour LaserJet CP1215 Printer
Printer Type	Workgroup colour laser printer
Dimensions	15.7 x 17.8 x 10.0 in
Weight	38.9 lb
Black print speed	Up to 12 ppm
Colour print speed	Up to 8 ppm
Black print resolution	Up to 600 x 600 dpi
Colour print resolution	Up to 600 x 600 dpi
Duplex printing	Manual
Print technology implemented	HP ImageREt 2400 Ultraprecise toner HP edge-enhancement technologies
Printer memory	16 MB
Processor	264 MHz Custom RISC Processor
Supported paper sizes	Letter, legal, executive, envelopes (No 10, Monarch)
Duty cycle	25000
Input tray capacity	150-sheet input tray
Monthly duty cycle	250 to 1000
Networking	None
Connections	1 x Hi-Speed USB
Supported operating systems	Windows 2000; Windows XP Home; Windows XP Professional; Windows Server 2003; Certified for Windows Vista(R)
Print languages	Host-based
EPA Energy Star Compliant	Yes
Warranty	1 year

The prices of the laser printers are falling continuously and people are thinking to add a second printer to the inkjet all in one printers that they might already posses. The reason being, monochrome laser printers are still very cheaper and quicker than that of the monochrome inkjet printers. The Kyoera Mita builds over this cost difference. The following review is on the Kyocera Mita FS-1100 Monochrome laser Printer. This squat, functionally-designed printer is designed for day-to-day business printing and has good eco-credentials for its low consumable count.

A design with lot of gimmicks:

Kyocera Mita FS-1100 Mono laser Printer has a grey and cream theme. A couple of highlights have been made in the cream and black theme in order to depict its individuality. It has simple but a smart design.

Media and ports:

The capacity of the main paper tray is 250 sheets and there is also a single sheet feed just above the main paper tray for the sake of special media. This can be used to feed letterheads, envelopes or other oddly sized media. Rear of the printer has a socket for the USB connection. When you flip open the top cover, you get easy access to the 4000 page toner cartridge which is the only consumable in the machine.

Simple, straightforward design:

Physical setup is straightforward, as the printer only requires a toner cartridge to get it running. The initial set-up of the FS-1100 printer is very easy. The first time printing alone makes you wait for a while as the toner charging cycle has to be done which lasts for around seven minutes. This delay occurs when you clip in the printer’s toner cartridge and switch it on for the first time.

Software and Language:

Kyocera Mita’s Mac OS X driver comes on a supplied CD. A Leopard-specific driver is also available from its website. The driver includes emulations of both PostScript Level III and PCL6, as well as Kyocera’s own Prescribe page description language. Other languages that can be downloaded include Kyocera, PCL + TrueType format and Type 1 + 3 format.

The unique drum technology:

Kyocera Mita FS-1100 Laserjet printer possesses an unique drum technology that lasts the full life of the printer. Kyocera Mita uses a patented coating for its photoconductor drum, which lasts the lifetime. With this kind of a technology, you will never need to change the drum on this budget mono printer and hence, you need to pay only to replenish the toner.

Processor and memory:

FS-1100 uses the PowerPC 405F5 processor that works at 360 Mhz. It has a standard memory of 32MB along with ECOmemory. The controller language is PRESCRIBE Iie.

Print speed:

Kyocera Mita FS-1100’s printing speed is rated to be 28 pages per minute in draft mode but during normal printing, it manages to produce only 16ppm for text and a little less than this while printing both text and graphics. Printing of a single 15 x 10cm photo takes around 15 seconds. With this speed rate, we can say that these are average for that of a laser printer in this price range, but then is quite fast when you consider a typical inkjet printer at a similar price. This monochrome laser printer takes a warm-up time of 19 seconds and the time for the first print is just six seconds or less than that.

Print quality:

Having a resolution of 1200dpi, the quality of the prints are good. The texts are dark and there cannot be any signs of spatters of jagged edges that could be notices. The grey scales are smooth too, but slight banding is noticeable. They look a bit on the lighter side when compared with the grey scale prints from the other printers.

Cost efficiency:

The cost per print comes to as low as 2p and so, the Kyocera Mita FS-1100 is a very cost efficient printer too.

Warranty:

Kyocera Mita offers Kyocera Mita FS-1100 a warranty of two years.

Verdict:

Kyocera Mita FS-1100 is a monochrome printer that has a design that does not interpret its budget cost and performance is good too, having and average speed and the quality of the prints, dark and legible. As we has discussed in the main review, the cost of operation is very less too. Looking for an attractive, low budget and good quality printer? Kyocera Mita FS-1100 is the one for you. We recommend it for the SOHO market.

Kyocera Mita FS-1100 Laser Printer – Technical Specification Details

Manufacturer	Kyocera mita
Model Name	Kyocera Mita FS-1100
Printer type	Monochrome laser printer
Dimensions (H x W x D)	9.8″ x 14.8″ x 15.5″
Weight	22.0 lbs
Processor	PowerPC 405F5 / 360 MHz
Memory	Standard 32 MB + ECOmemory, max. 544 MB in 1 SDRAM DIMM slot
Controller language	PRESCRIBE IIe
Emulations	PCL 6 incl. PJL, PCL5e incl. PJL, KPDL3 (Postscript 3 compatible) with automatic emulation sensing (AES), Line Printer, IBM Proprinter X24, EPSON LQ-850, DIABLO 630
Fonts	80 outline fonts accessible in all emulations, 1 bitmap font, 45 types of one-dimensional barcodes plus two-dimensional barcode PDF-417; Downloadable fonts: Kyocera, PCL + TrueType format, Type 1 + 3 format
Standard Interface	USB 2.0 (Hi-Speed), KUIO-LV slot
Technology	Kyocera ECOSYS
Engine speed	Up to 28 pages per minute A4
Resolution	1200×1200 dpi
Duty Cycle	20,000 pages per month
Time to first print	6 seconds or less
Warm-up time	19 seconds
Media Handling	250-sheet input tray, 1-sheet manual tray
Media Sizes	Letter A Size (8.5 in x 11 in), B5 (6.93 in x 9.83 in), A4 (8.25 in x 11.7 in), Legal (8.5 in x 14 in), A6 (4.13 in x 5.83 in), A5 (5.83 in x 8.25 in)
Max Media Capacity	500 sheets
Output Trays Capacity	250 sheets
Consumables Included	1.0 x Toner cartridge ( Black ) – up to 2000 pages
Windows Vista Readiness	Yes
Power Device	Power supply – Internal
Power Consumption Operational	439.0 Watt
Noise Level	53 dBA
Warranty	2 years

The ML-1640 model is the successful model of Samsung’s budget monochrome printers. The ML-1640 is a sleek and compact solution for all your speed, performance and design needs. In the following review, we have a detailed look at each of the feature of this laser printer.

Compact design:

The main campaign feature of the printer is in its design. It looks very sleek and compact and also possesses a very stylish design. It has a matte black finish which is the current trend in the market. Its elegant looks adds beauty and style to the place where it is kept. The simple looks of the laser printer with no gimmicks compliments its ease of use. It has just three controls and indicators, it has a light for power and data, another light for indicating “Low Toner’ and a button for canceling the print operation.  One-button print job cancellation helps you correct even volume.

Connectivity and set-up:

The only way by which an external source like PC can establish a connection with the Samsung ML-1640 Mono Laser Printer is via the USB2.0 interface which is located in the left panel in the rear side of the laser printer. In the right hand side of the rear is the kettle head power connection.  The set up of the printer is extremely easy and the installation of the given software can be done very quickly as it is simple and fast. Samsung has equipped ML-1640 with a combined drum and a toner cartridge and it has also included a long articulated handle using which you can manipulate the cartridge to the back of the printer within the case. This system does not make you feel much comfortable.

No dust protection:

In order to print, you will have to unfold the output paper support from the top surface and fold down the front flap which acts as the paper feed tray. There is one disadvantage with this kind of design that is, if you will need to keep Samsung ML-1640 Mono Laser Printer ready for printing at any time, the input tray has to be kept open without any dust cover. Many of the low budget entry level printers come at least with a detachable cover and the cheap Canon i-SENSYS LBP-3100 comes with a built-in dust protection.

Compatibility:

Supports a wide range of operating systems, including Windows, various Linux OS and Mac OS 10.3 ~ 10.5.

Tray capacities:

The capacity of the input paper tray is 150 sheets and the capacity of the outlet tray is 100 sheets. You will be able to notice lot of quirks with the printer. One of them is that, the Samsung ML-1640 catches the trailing edge of the preceding sheet and pushes it out of the tray when the pages are fed to the top paper tray.

Good print speed:

Samsung claims the printing speed of the machine to be 16ppm for A4 and 17ppm for letter size. This specification is quite true, but you will not get this rate of printing straight away. The print speed of ML-1640 increases as the job increases. For instance, ML-1640 prints 5 sheets in 30 seconds but 20 pages in 84 seconds and so on. You will be able to achieve the speed that is specified in the specs when you have a job of around 100 sheets. In a situation where few minutes passed from previous printing, you will have to spend some time waiting for first sheet of next printing job to be printed. Reason for this is that, after every pause in printing process ML-1640 needs a noticeable period of time for warming up.

Excellent print quality:

For a monochrome laser printer costing less than £100, the print quality is very good. The text quality is very precise and there is very little signs of any shaky texts. Coming to the grayscale graphics, they are well reproduced too and offers clear classification of the colours. In case of grayscale slight banding can be seen but you would not be able to notice it as it is, it can be seen only if it is searched for. The texts over greyscale fills show up well. Samsung ML-1640 Mono Laser Printer has a maximum print resolution of 1200x600dpi which makes the mono images printed very grainy. But the details produced by the printer is so good that the prints can be used for both internal and external documentation purposes.

The package:

Usually a standard cartridge prints 1500 pages but Samsung, like many other manufacturers of low cost printers has just offered a started cartridge which has a capacity of just 700 pages. We cannot actually complain over this because ML-1640 Mono Laser Printer is a budget home office printer, but what we do have to say is that Samsung could have mentioned the toner capacity, right over its page. The software that is bundled with the printer includes the Dr. Printer diagnostic and a driver that supports watermarks and overlays and instructions for manual duplexing. All the documents provided are very easy to use and understandable too.

Warranty:

Samsung ML-1640 Mono Laser Printer comes with one year standard warranty.

Samsung ML-1640 Laser Printer – Technical Specification Table

Manufacturer	Samsung
Model Name	ML-1640
Product Code	MLT-D1082S
Printer type	Laser – Monochrome
Dimensions (H x W x D)	209 X 353 X 298 mm
Weight	5.7kg
Enclosure colour	White
Display	None
Interface	USB2.0
Print Resolution	Up to 1200 x 600 dpi effective output
Print Speed	Up to 16 pages per minute
Time for the first print	Less than 10 seconds from Ready Mode
Language Simulation	SPL (Samsung Printer Language)
Duplex	Manual
RAM Installed ( Max )	8MB
Input tray type	Multi Purpose Tray
Input tray capacity	150 sheets
Output tray type	Sheet Face Down
Output tray capacity	100
Compatible Operating system	Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 Server / Vista Various Linux OS Mac OS X 10.3 ~ 10.5
Media types supported	Plain, Thin, Recycled, OHP, Label, Card
Media sizes supported	76 x 127mm (3″ x 5″) to 216 x 356mm (8.5″ x 14″)
Monthly Duty Cycle	Up to 5000 pages
Ink type	Black toner
Software Included	Dr. Printer diagnostic
Package contents	Samsung ML-1640 monochrome Laser Printer, toner cartridge, a power cord, a printed setup guide, and an installation CD
Noise level	Printing: Less than 50 dBA Stand-by: Less than 26 dBA
Power consumption	300W
Warranty	One year- Back to Dealer type