|
|
To print: Select File and then Print from your browser's menu
-------------------------------------------------------------- This story was printed from ZDNet Australia. --------------------------------------------------------------
|
Affordable colour on the network February 19, 2003 URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/reviews/hardware/printersscanners/soa/Affordable-colour-on-the-network/0,139023422,120271981,00.htm
 Networkable laser printers have dropped significantly in price. But it still pays to know what you're after before your organisation goes colour. Colour laser printers are a smart and affordable way to add high-speed performance printing and high-quality colour printing to your workplace. If you regularly need to produce colour training manuals, brochures, flyers, newsletters, or reports and are quite sick of paying print shops huge amounts of money, then why not consider doing all your colour printing in-house and start saving money? With the units we've tested for this feature, you can do all these sorts of things over the network as well. Consumables
Some printers come with starter toner cartridges, which don't hold as much toner as do the standard cartridges that you would replace the starter toner with. We don't like the idea of starter toners but one of the reasons manufacturers do it is to reduce the upfront cost. The Epson was the only printer in this review that used starter toner for both black and colour. Page coverage This is true because colour printers use black toner to darken colours. This also makes black the highest single consumed colour on a colour page. Duty cycles All the big printer manufacturers make large workhorse printers that would be more suitable for printing more than one million pages per year. We suggest you use a more realistic number like 8500 pages per month, or 10 percent of the claimed duty cycle. This will give you a better idea on whether this printer is suitable and whether it will comfortably be able to handle your print volumes. Features All the printers we received shipped with a 10/100 internal Ethernet card, which will enable you to connect your printer via TCP, IPX/ SPX, NetBEUI, EtherTalk, NDS Support, IPP, and SNMP. You will also find most printers fitted with a bi-directional parallel port as well. Paper handling We didn't receive any laser printers that were capable of printing in A3. The Canon N2000 inkjet was, however, able to print in A3+. The Fuji-Xerox on the other hand was able to print posters. It worth knowing that the type of paper you use will also affect how long certain components in your printer last. If you use coarse or recycled paper then chances are the drum will not last as long. Speed and output quality Today, most colour laser printers are capable of delivering resolutions of 600 x 600dpi. Of the printers we received, most were able to print at 2400dpi by means of interpolation. Button layout/control panel software Total cost of ownership Going back almost a year ago manufacturers were claiming that the cost per page for a typical colour page is 20 cents. This is based on 15 percent coverage, which is the industry standard used by many manufacturers. On the other hand printing a typical black page costs about two cents per page at five percent coverage. Today manufacturers are claiming the cost of a typical colour page is 15 cents at 15 percent coverage and the typical cost of printing a black page at 5 percent coverage is less than two cents. It is quite obvious from these figures that colour laser printers don't cost as much to run as they used to. In this roundup we evaluated five colour laser printers from the leading manufacturers. You can shortlist your choices by looking at the feature tables, which provides information such as the number of pages per minute the unit is capable of producing. For this roundup we were particularly focused on the total cost of ownership of these printers (as well as their print quality). Speed and output quality One of the ways you can improve colour matching is by using the Pantone Matching system. Some manufacturers provide details on how to use the Pantone system with your printer. It's basically a colour reference manual that display colours, with precise printing formulas for achieving these colours using your specific printer. Epson AL-C1900
The Epson Acu Laser C1900 still uses four-pass technology unlike all the other colour laser printers we received (which use single-pass technology). For the Epson this means it prints colour pages at one quarter of the speed it normally does in monochrome. Epson claims this printer can print in monochrome at 16 pages per minute and colour pages at four pages per minute. Epson was pretty much spot on with its ratings as we were easily able to replicate the claims in our tests.
We found this printer to be the noisiest of the lot, which could be a bit of a distraction in the workplace. The control panel was very small which meant it took us a little longer to go through the menu system and configure the printer. Print quality on the other hand was very good. Epson uses a number of exclusive technologies like RIT (Resolution Improvement Technology) that offers printing resolutions equivalent to printing at 2400dpi. It pro-duced the sharpest looking text as well as the sharpest colour photos. However, we were a little disappointed in its colour fidelity. None of the colours seemed to be very vibrant and vivid but rather flat and washed out. The Epson was also very fast at printing full colour photos. This has to do with the large amount of RAM it had pre-installed.
Fuji-Xerox Docuprint C1618
The Fuji-Xerox is a high-speed, high- quality colour laser printer. This printer uses a micro-tandem engine that enables the printer to transfer CMYK colours in a single pass rather than in four separate passes, which means this printer can achieve higher print speeds. The Fuji-Xerox can print up to 16 pages per minute in colour and monochrome. The C1618 sports a whole new design. It's quite large in size and features a clear plastic cover where the output tray is. This cover can be easily removed to reveal the four ink toners, which are very small in comparison to the other printers.
The C1618 features a 500-sheet paper tray and a 100-page multi-purpose tray. You can, however, expand the total paper capacity to 1500 sheets by purchasing two additional 500-sheet paper trays. The C1618 features 64MB of RAM and can be expanded to 320MB. A 10GB hard disk and Adobe Postscript 3 Kit are also optional. The C1618 also comes standard with a trayless duplex unit, which lets you print on both sides of the paper. The control panel was quite easy to use but not as easy as HP's. The C1618 also didn't seem to take as long as the other laser printers to warm up. And it didn't take long to print a first page. It does this by using a second processor. With regards to print quality, plain text appeared nice and sharp however when it came to printing full-colour photos it was a different story. Photos appeared very rich in colour, which made some photos look unrealistic.
Lexmark C720n
The Lexmark C720 (the n designates the network version) is a large workgroup printer that uses single pass technology. It is capable of printing black-and-white pages at 24 pages per minute and colour pages at 6 pages per minute. The Lexmark was the fastest out of all the printers in monochrome but it was quite slow in colour. It was only slightly faster than the Epson four-pass printer. The Lexmark was fitted with 32MB of memory,
One thing that really annoyed us with this printer was the time it took to warm up. None of the other printers took anywhere near as long. In terms of print quality the Lexmark was very good. Plain text generally appeared razor sharp but photos appeared a little too rich in colour. We also noticed some banding but nothing too major to really be concerned about.
HP Colour Laserjet 4600dn
The HP Colour LaserJet 4600 Series printers are HP's first range of printers to use single-pass technology which enables them to print 16 pages per minute in both monochrome and colour. All the 4600 models offer the same high speed and print quality but the different models offer different options. We received the 4600dn, and it really means business, to put it mildly. It comes standard with 96MB of RAM, which can be expanded to 512MB. It also features a single 500-sheet paper tray and 100-sheet multi-purpose tray as well as an auto duplexing unit. A 10GB hard disk drive is optional as well as a 500-sheet paper tray.
HP printers have always been generally easy to operate. This printer was no different. The 4600 offers a graphical control panel, which displays text and graphics simultaneously and provides up to four lines of text. The printer also offers front panel access that enables you to easily replace ink toners and clear paper jams, which HP have nowadays reduced by using a simple print path. The 4600dn also ships with HP's Web JetAdmin, which is a browser-based management tool that is typically installed on a network to manage printers. It's a great piece of software that's also well supported by HP. Print quality was very good. The HP does a good job printing text as well as warm and natural-looking photos. There was, however, slight banding across all our graphics, which was a little disappointing.
Canon N2000
The Canon N2000 isn't a laser printer like the other printers in this review but rather an inkjet printer. It's capable of printing in A3+ and combines a good mix of speed, quality, and cost-efficient operation. Canon suggested to us that their N2000 BubbleJet printer would be more cost-efficient than a laser. We found out that this actually was true. However, the case for laser printers in the past has been print speed. Canon claims the N2000 is capable of printing 20 pages per minute in monochrome. We only managed to get the N2000 to print 10 pages per minute in monochrome and just
The N2000 features a 250-sheet paper tray, manual feeder and if you want to increase your paper capacity you can purchase an optional 250-sheet paper feed unit. You can't however purchase a hard disk drive, duplexing unit or more memory for this printer. This is a very simple printer and for that reason it has a very simple control panel. One of the good things about this printer is that it's virtually maintenance free. The print head is quite durable and lasts 50,000 or so pages. So all you will really be replacing are the individual ink tanks. The print quality of this printer wasn't too bad. The print quality wasn't very good when we were printing at full speed and on plain paper. Text appeared fuzzy and photos appeared a little washed out. We were, however, able to dramatically improve the print quality by using glossy paper. Images then appeared realistic. Ink drops were barely visible to the naked eye and as a result the detail was crisp. Some banding was evident at first, but after we ran a series of cleaning tests we were able to get rid of the bands.
Specifications
What to look for when buying a colour laser printer:
Sample scenarioCompany: Shelby Recruiting
Scenario 1: This company wants to roll out colour printers for each branch office. Approximate budget: $5000 per printer. Branches have up to 10 staff each, so print volumes are expected to be low, but highquality output is still important. Requires: 25 colour printers that are network ready. Concerns: Running costs are a concern and need to be evaluated. Best solution: The HP Color LaserJet 4600dn stood out from the rest of the field because it offered an excellent balance of performance, print quality, features and options. For example, it can print in monochrome and colour at very high speeds. Its print quality was generally very good, it's inexpensive to run and it featured heaps of memory, an auto duplexing unit and a 500-sheet paper tray as standard. Furthermore, if you were to increase your print volumes around the office this printer will be able to handle the extra workload much better than any of the other printers. The Epson AL-C1900 also deserves a worthy mention for its excellent print quality and so does the Canon N2000, which offers a significantly lower TCO however if we were to print more that 2500 pages per month it won't be as cost efficient as the HP. How we tested colour laser printersWe tested each of the colour laser printers in a number of ways to gauge
We tested all the printers from our Gateway desktop PC, which was equipped with an AMD Athlon 1GHz processor and 128MB of RAM running Windows 2000. All of the printers were tested one at a time and were connected to RMIT's network through a D-Link 10/100 Fast Ethernet Switch. The following is a breakdown of the testing methodology. Printing Word Complex 4-page Test (600dpi). This test comprised 4 pages of complex word processing and includes: 18 different fonts some in multiple sizes, eight images ranging from simple clip art to high res TIFF photos and multiple column styles. Fontkey.PDF (600dpi). This test confirms the printers ability to correctly and accurately render multiple font sizes from 4-point up to 48-point in two font styles: Times New Roman and Gaudy Handtooled. Laserkey.PDF (600dpi). This test exercises the printers ability to produce smooth greyscale gradients (both linear and greyscale); smooth straight, oblique, and radial fine lines; and smooth solid black fills. Colorkey.PDF (600dpi). This test is similar to the previous test but also includes smooth colour gradations, ink mixing, fine yellow grid lines on a solid green background and a JPEG image of a small child. Photo Realistic Graphics Test Photo (Max Resolution). The very large 44MB (once "flattened" by PhotoShop) test image was created and printed using Photo Shop 5.0 LE. The diversity of the graphic content allowed us to evaluate a whole range of printer abilities such as skin tones, sky colour fidelity, accuracy with fine white on colour details, accuracy of dithering (particularly in areas of low contrast), handling of low contrast shadows and overall color or greyscale accuracy. This was also timed. We had started to time this test after the PC had processed the job. This meant we had to pause the printer and wait for the PC. Printing Quality Assessment Fonts were assessed for accuracy of formation, smoothing of radial and oblique edges and any evidence of toner "spatter" particularly in the white-on-black font test. Smoothness of colour/greyscale gradations and dithering was assessed, as was the accuracy of fine radial and oblique lines. Ratings Interoperability: We looked at the interfaces that were supported. Futureproofing: With futureproofing we were basically concerned about the expansion potential of each of the printers. We looked to see what the maximum amount of RAM each of the printers could hold. Whether you could buy a second or third paper tray or any sorter bins and also if you could fit a duplexer or a hard disk to the printer. ROI: We looked at the initial cost of the printer as well as the total cost of ownership. We also considered the print speed and print quality.
Service: With service we looked at the length of the warranty and the support hours that were offered for each of the printers.
Copyright © 2009 CBS Interactive, a CBS Company. All Rights Reserved. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
