Canon's i-SENSYS LBP5050 laser printer: all-in-one toner cartridge doesn't make pages cheaper

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.

• - Recommended -
  Dell's 1320cn laser printer features great quality printing at a very low cost
• - Labs Winner -
  Brothers HL- 4040CN has everything you might need in a home or office printer
• 
  Konica Minolta's 1650EN can't escape the threat of high running costs
• 
  High printing costs keeps Samsung's CLP-315 out of reach
• 
  Oki's C130n printer has the right price, but there are better deals out there
• 
  Lexmark's C540n is a strong contender for best in class for price and printing quality