Business laser printers

Staff Writers | 19 Oct 2009

We put a selection of high-capacity office printers to the test. We analyse what printer is best for your workplace and what dosn't work.

If you want a reliable printer, it has to be a laser. Inkjet manufacturers can stress how their latest business models are as quick and cheap to run as laser printers, but when it comes to speed and capacity there’s nothing to beat the printers on test this month.

In the second part of our laser test – in July, we tested sub-$500 products – we’ve put together a group of more serious printers.

To look at, there’s nothing remarkable about them, but you should never judge a laser printer by its cosmetic shell; it’s what’s under the hood that matters.

This month’s printers may cost more initially, but they’re cheaper to run in the long term than lower cost printers. Other advantages include larger paper trays as standard, and higher print capacity per month as well.

In fact, specifications have moved on so much that with today’s mid-range mono lasers, several printers can be replaced with just one relatively cheap model.

In the upcoming article, you’ll find detailed analysis of all our results, a boxout revealing what happened when we looked more closely at our own printer use at PC Authority, and reviews of six of the best value business laser printers around as well. To find out which suits your needs, read on.

How we test and how we work out the ratings:

in this month’s Labs, we’ve focused on mono laser printers for the office costing up to $1500.

As such, the devices are bigger, faster, and offer even better value than July issue’s cheap personal lasers, but there’s still plenty of variety on offer.

And the range of features should satisfy any small-to-medium-sized office.

Printers for business

In considering the awards we give out, we take into account the typical usage for each printer.

All of the laser printers here are intended for business use, so we’ve focused on the features likely to prove useful to IT managers and small-business users.

These printers are high-speed machines, so they should have maximum monthly duty cycles to match, plus capacious paper trays.

There’s no point in a printer being able to churn out the copies at 30 to 40 pages per minute if you have to restock the paper tray several times a day.

We also place an emphasis on expansion options, a good warranty and networking; that said, we don’t mark down printers without a network module too heavily, as all of the printers we review this month can be upgraded with one.

Plus, with all of those pages pumping out, the last thing you want to be doing is replacing toner every week and paying through the nose for replacements, so high-capacity cartridges are a must.

Standard tests

While our assessments are based on a printer’s target market, we put every printer through a standard series of print tests in order to determine each product’s speed and quality.

For our first test, we time how long each printer takes to output 50 copies of an ISO standard single-page business letter.

The document features a small red graphic in the corner, but this is obviously produced in greyscale on these monochrome laser printers.

We then ask the printers to produce ten copies of a slightly more complicated five-page ISO newsletter – a test that includes black text on a variety of coloured backgrounds (again, printed in greyscale), plus coloured graphs and photos – to expose the speed difference between plain-text speeds and more complex graphics-heavy content.

Next, we print a range of tables, charts and DTP layouts from Excel, Word and Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Test data: click on image for larger size

Unlike the first two tests these documents don’t involve any repeated pages, revealing whether print speed is affected by the printer having to process each page image afresh, rather than reproducing a page multiple times.

We print our 24-page Word DTP document using the automatic duplexer (if included) to find out how much speed drops in this mode. Finally, we send our quality print tests to each printer.

These consist of two standard high-resolution montages consisting of detailed photographs, shades, gradients and text at a range of sizes.

Feature table: click on image for full size

Reviews and ratings

Each printer receives star ratings out of six for Performance, Features & Design and Value for Money, plus a final Overall score.

The Performance score is a combination of the quality and speed results. Quality is a separate subjective rating, scored out of ten in four different categories.

We award points to each one based on how sharply it renders small details; how solid and clean black areas are; and how smooth gradients are.

We also look for problem areas: banding is a common affliction in monochrome laser printers, and we mark down printers that show evidence of this.

The Performance score also reflects each printer’s speed in our timed tests. Our ppm (pages per minute) figures are arrived at by subtracting the initial processing time from the overall time to print a job.

Our rating for Features & Design is calculated by allocating points to a number of different criteria.

We consider both technical features – such as built-in Ethernet ports and duplexers, front-panel controls and displays, and input capacity – and practical benefits, such as warranties and the ability to print on thicker paper or card.

The Value for Money score represents the overall “bang-per-buck” delivered by each model on test.

Naturally, we look at the initial purchase cost of the printer itself, but we also factor in a calculation of the long-term running costs based on typical usage for that category. This includes not only toner cartridges but the cost of replacement parts that may eventually wear out, such as the image drum or transfer unit.

This overall cost is then weighed against its scores in the other categories to give a rating out of six.

Finally, the Overall rating is a strict average of the category scores, although it may sometimes appear higher or lower than expected due to rounding.

Quality scores: click on image for larger size

Test Analysis and graphical data

The printers in this month’s Labs are aimed at more intense business use than last month’s cheaper models, so we’d expect higher print speeds. But we’d also expect more consistency.

The most impressive performer in this respect was the award-winning Kyocera FS-2020D, with a speed differential of just 3ppm between our two speed tests. Lexmark’s E360dn was quicker overall, but it couldn’t match its lofty claims of 38ppm with 36ppm in our main speed test.

Running costs are also more important with business printers. And here the Kyocera impressed once again.

For the first 20,000 pages or so, it was in the same ball park as the rest of the printers, but over 50,000 pages it was the clear winner, costing a mere $1298 to own.

Graph of total costs: click on image for larger size

The graphs explained

Our cost of ownership graph shows, for each printer, the projected total cost of printing of a given number of pages.

We take into account the purchase price of the printer and toner, based on current online prices, plus any user-replaceable parts with limited lifespans, such as maintenance kits.