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25 Color & Monochrome Lasers for Every Need and Budget
We tested 10 color and 15 monochrome laser printers for just about every requirement, be it for personal use, or for small, medium, or even large workgroups in an organization.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Last month we brought you a comprehensive buying guide on laser printers.
This time, we bring you a comprehensive range of options to choose from. We
received a mix of 25 different color and monochrome laser printers for small,
medium, and large workgroups. These included 10 color and 15 monochrome laser
printers between a price band of 10K to Rs 2.30L. That pretty much covers just
about every type of laser printer that's out there today. We would also like to
point out that 50% of the models we received this time were from HP, which isn't
surprising given that HP has the largest market share in this segment. So they
whole-heartedly participated in the shootout. In fact, there were so many HP
printers, that some of them could not be ranked because we didn't receive a
competing model to compare them with.
The models we did receive were categorized in various price bands, which
would suit various budget points. We ensured that the printer prices within each
price band had minimum variation.
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Trends
Before we get into the reviews, we'd like to take you through a few trends
we've observed in laser printers, followed by the procedure we adopted for
testing. Nowadays, all workgroup lasers are print servers in themselves, so a
dedicated computer is not needed to act as a server. Once these are installed on
a network, the other systems on the network can fire a print directly to these
printers. Plus, most of them can be remotely managed by administrators. Some
printers come with separate monitoring and management software that allows you
to manage all printers on the network. Some third party tools are also available
for central monitoring of network printers. These tools can be used for
coordinating and administering an enterprise printing network efficiently. Plus,
they can help an administrator to monitor the supply status of all network
printers and also set user restrictions. Some of the vendors have introduced
printer maintenance services. Under these services, the printer is provided to
you on lease and the vendor charges you on the basis of printer usage and takes
care of the consumables and maintenance. We'll now take you through how we
tested the laser printers that we received this time.
How we tested
We used our three axis model of performance, price, and features for
evaluating all the printers. We used the Brown-Gibson model to arrive at the
weightages for the various parameters that we used for scoring. This time, as
we'd received a wide variety of printers, there were some categories where there
were only two models. In such cases, we didn't apply the Brown Gibson model, but
did a one to one comparison between the models.
Performance tests
Once the categorization was done for monochrome and color laser printers we
set up the test-bed for printer testing. Since all printers were meant for
networked workgroups and had Ethernet support, barring one (the Epson
EPL-6200L), we tested them over an isolated network so that there was no
unnecessary traffic to hinder our tests. We performed tests to check for quality
and speed of printing for each printer. The tests were done using Word 2000 and
CorelDraw 9. Each test was repeated thrice and its average was considered. If
the difference between any two readings was more than 10 percent, the test was
repeated. The printer was set to print directly rather than do spooling at the
host machine. This way the memory of the printer could be stressed. The
following tests were done for getting the performance score of the printer.
The speed Tests: We measured the printing speed for the following
types of documents:
1. Time taken to print first page of a multi-page document.
2. Time taken to print a multi-page document.
3. Time to print multiple copies of the same page.
4. Time to print a single page with a small graphic.
5. For color lasers, a 16 MB full-page photograph was printed and the time
recorded.
Print quality: After setting each printer to the maximum print resolution it
supported, we checked for the following:
1. Smallest readable font.
2. Full-page monochrome graphic.
3. Line art and curves.
4. Grayscale test: This image has gray shades variation done on a
rectangular ramp of 21 and 51 steps. It is also in form of concentric-circles
where gray shades get lighter to darker from center. We checked how well defined
and distinct these steps and concentric circles can be seen.
5. Quality of fountain fills: This is a smooth gradient of shades of
gray. We checked how accurately each printer was able to replicate this without
any banding.
6. Quality of full-page color image: Here, we took a full color image
print on plain paper as well as on photo paper and then compared the quality.
All the above tests were done on A4 Xerox paper. For color photo printing, we
used 173 GSM photo paper.
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running costs Earlier, most printers used to
have a separate drum unit, which had a much longer life than the cartridges.
Nowadays, you'll notice that a lot of vendors have fused the drum with the
toner cartridge. So you end up replacing the drum every time you change the
cartridge. One key advantage of doing this is that one doesn't need
technical support to replace the drum, which is the case for printers with
separate drum and toner cartridge units. But is it really cost-effective for
the consumer? To check that we took two printers of the same category. One
had a separate toner and drum (namely X) and the other had a fused cartridge
unit (namely Y). The drum of printer X had a life of 30,000 pages. We
calculated how many toner changes would be required to print 30,000 pages
from each printer. The cost of toner unit of printer X was Rs 4,400 with a
yield of 7,500 pages and the cost of cartridge of printer Y was Rs 7,497
with a yield of 6,500 pages. The printer X would have consumed 4 toner units
before its drum would need replacement. So, the total price would be for 5
toner units and drum, which comes to of Rs.28,050. Printer Y would need five
cartridges to print 30,000 pages, raising the total cost to Rs 37,485. So
the running cost of Y is much higher. We suggest that you do also do these
rough calculations before buying a printer to understand its running cost.
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Features
This time, we compared the monochrome and color lasers for 15 and 16
different features respectively. The features we compared for monochrome lasers
included maximum supported resolution of the print engine, the availability and
functionality of a control panel on each printer; auto-duplex capability;
cartridge/toner life; maximum memory supported, types and sizes of paper
supported, manageability features, number of trays and tray capacities,
availability of hard drive, the Operating Systems for which drivers were
available (online as well as with the product), types of print jobs supported,
secure printing capabilities, and additional features if any. For color lasers,
we used the above parameters, plus a 16th parameter for standards supported like
PCL, PS, and Pantone certification.
For each of the features, we actually counted the supported parameters. In
case of printer accessories for instance, w e looked for the total number of
input trays available, whether additional paper trays could be accommodated, etc.
We also looked for things like ease of upgrading. For this, we looked at how
easily you could access different parts inside to upgrade the printer, like
adding a hard disk, compact flash memory, RAM or a wireless network card. We
also looked at ease of setup and configuration, printing modes, recovery from
paper jam, support for multiple platforms and other features, if any. In case a
printer category didn't have some of the features, then those features were
removed from the scoring to ensure they didn't affect the printer scores.
Pricing
Here, it's not just the price of the printer that's important, but also its
warranty, support, and running cost such as cost of toner cartridge, drum, RAM
upgrade, etc. Out of all these, support provided by the vendor is extremely
crucial. However, judging the quality of that is not something that can be done
in a lab. You would need to make your own judgment on that. Some guiding
parameters to help you decide can be the total number of service centers, the
type of warranty offered by the vendor, assurance on next/same day replacement
of bad parts, etc.
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