The LBP-2410’s real strength clearly lay in its speed, as opposed to its print quality. It was the third fastest printer overall, but fell in the shadow of the Labs Winner OKI C5100 for printing times and TCO over both low and high monthly duty cycles.
Coming in as the second cheapest colour laser printer to purchase, it’s immediately suspected that consumable costs will be substantially higher than more expensive units. This is unfortunately consistent with our findings: the LBP-2410 has the second worst TCO value for both mono and colour laser printers, falling only marginally behind the HP LaserJet 1500L. At 50 pages per day (1,200 monthly) the TCO value was noticeably higher than the other models in our roundup -- quite expensive to keep operating even for short run printing. Even less impressive was the printer’s handling of high load volume printing at 150 pages daily (3,600 monthly) skyrocketing to just short of $6,000 over two years inclusive of the initial cost for the hardware.
Lowering the front-hinged flap reveals the paper input tray with its rather small 125-sheet paper holder. No tray to be found here, it rests on a small flap of plastic, although an additional capacity tray is available from Canon. Despite the depth and strange positioning of the output space, it also holds a mere 125 pages, quite behind the other colour laser printer capacities in our roundup which range up to 250 pages of output paper storage.
A fairly easy to load toner system works with a rotating CMY barrel of toner cartridges -- simply squeeze the tabs located in the middle of the cartridges and insert them. Similar to the HP 1500L’s loading mechanism, this easy system makes it ideal for non-technical users to replace consumables easily in their own home or office without requiring technical assistance.
Not the smallest form factored printer, it is quite bulky, weighs a figurative tonne and would consume a fair whack of desk space in any environment. Just shy of average print quality results coupled with speedy text printing makes this an asset to any office that doesn’t mind shelling out for expensive replacement consumables. Again it’s hard not to recommend the OKI C5100 -- although initial outlay is marginally greater, long term printers will find massive savings for both short and long run printing.