Top 3 Color Laser Printers

1.Dell 5130cdn Color Laser Printer

 

Fast and Furious, Dell's 5130cdn Color Laser Printer Can Handle a Busy Office's High Volume

The Dell 5130cdn color laser printer aims high--and on nearly all counts, it succeeds. It has the speed and features that a high-volume office needs, and it's also on target with its nearly perfect print quality. The price is high ($1549 as of February 16, 2010), but over the long haul its superlow cost per page will save you money.

The 5130cdn is the fastest printer we've tested to date by a significant margin. On plain paper, it printed text at a rapid clip of 25.2 pages per minute (ppm). Graphics speeds ranged from 8.3 ppm for simpler graphics to 3.2 ppm for high-quality photo printing. On the Mac, using its PostScript driver, the 5130cdn was slightly less speedy: Printing plain text, it averaged 22.5 ppm, while on graphics it averaged 3.1 ppm. On both platforms, the print quality was the same. Text quality was black and crisp. Overall color quality was very good, with natural colorings and some light graininess, which was more pronounced in grayscale graphics.

The 5130cdn's hulking, dullish-black exterior may look intimidating, but it houses a well-equipped and well-designed machine. The 256MB of DDR-2 standard memory is upgradable to 1.2GB. The standard paper handling includes a 550-sheet main tray and a 150-sheet multipurpose tray. If you need even more capacity, 550-sheet ($249) and 1100-sheet ($599) additional trays are available, as well as a $999 component for stapling (up to 50 sheets at a time) and stacking up to 1000 sheets. You fold down a front panel to access the toner cartridges and the separate drums, and the entire right-side panel also folds down for clearing jammed paper paths (of which we had none).

The front control panel's cursor and navigation buttons, as well as the monochrome LCD, are intuitive, as is the printer's internal HTML configuration site that allows you to change settings via a Web browser. What all of that adds up to is a sense that this printer is meant to work, not play. Its 110,000-page monthly duty cycle would seem to confirm that.

The 5130cdn ships with standard-size supplies: a 9000-page black cartridge ($107 to replace) and 6000-page cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges ($195 each to replace). That's about 1.2 cents per black page and 3.3 cents per color--or 10.9 cents for a four-color page--out of the box. High-yield supplies offer greater savings: The $137, 18,000-page black cartridge costs less than 1 cent per page, and the $245, 12,000-page color cartridges cost about 2 cents per color, adding up to a superlow 6.9 cents for a four-color page.

2.Lexmark C792de

 

Lexmark C792de Offers Excellent Performance and Expandability

The Lexmark C792de color laser printer ($1599 as of October 12, 2010) is one of the better workgroup printers we've tested to date. It isn't quite as fast or as economical as the Dell 5130cdn, but it is much better equipped than the HP Color LaserJet Enterprise CP4025dn.

Measuring 22.3 by 20.2 by 20.3 inches and weighing 110 pounds, the hulking C792de is ready for just about anything. It comes with a 1.2GHz processor; its memory is expandable from 512MB standard to 1.5GB maximum. Paper handling includes automatic duplexing (two-sided printing), a 550-sheet input drawer, and a 100-sheet multipurpose feeder, as well as a 500-sheet top output bin. Add-ons abound, from 550-sheet drawers ($349 each) and a 2000-sheet high-capacity feeder ($899) to stacking, stapling, and other finishing options. The printer even has room to add a hard drive. The monthly maximum duty cycle is 150,000 pages, though Lexmark recommends working within 2500 to 17,000 pages. Connections are the usual USB and ethernet. The standard warranty lasts one year; extensions up to five years range from $329 to $1149.

The 4.3-inch color LCD touchscreen on the printer's front control panel seemed occasionally slow to respond, but otherwise it made menu navigation very easy. You can customize the background or create a recurring slideshow, but the display's most compelling purpose is to be a flexible interface for enhanced printer features such as forms on demand or programmable routines--it's a far cry from the classic monochrome, text-only display with curt or inscrutable messages. The control panel also sports a USB drive port and an alphanumeric keypad.

The C792de was a top performer in our tests. Printing monochrome pages--mostly plain text, with a few simple grayscale graphics--the printer averaged a fast 22.7 pages per minute on the PC and 19.4 ppm on the Mac. On the PC, it printed snapshot-size photos on letter-size plain paper at a rate of 4.2 ppm, and at 2.2 ppm on glossy stock--both peppy times. The larger, more complex full-page photo that we print using the Mac emerged at 0.8 ppm, a decent speed.

Print quality is among the best we've seen from a color laser. At the default 2400-by-600-dpi resolution, photos looked nearly as flawless as text, with very few rough spots and mostly true colors; flesh tones were a little orangey sometimes, and we spotted occasional oversaturation in other areas. At the maximum true resolution of 1200 by 1200 dpi, everything looked even better. This is a printer that could handle finer graphics work, let alone your everyday pie charts and spot color.

Usually the printers that cost more to purchase offer cheaper ongoing toner costs in exchange. The C792de strays from that trend, though not too far. It ships with an 8500-page black cartridge and 11,000-page cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges. The costs for its standard-size 6000-page replacements are average: $189 for black (3.1 cents per page) and $286 for each color (4.8 cents per color per page). A page with all four colors would cost 17.4 cents. The higher-yield costs are much better: The 20,000-page cartridges include a $298 black (1.5 cents per page) and $515 colors (2.6 cents per color, per page), making for a four-color page that costs 9.2 cents. However, the HP Color LaserJet Enterprise CP4025dn's sole set of toners cost nearly the same as C792de's high-yield supplies, and Dell's 5130cdn offers far better pricing on all counts.

Lexmark's C792de is a formidable contender among workgroup printers, with performance and features to spare. Only the middling toner prices seem uncompetitive.

3.HP Color LaserJet Enterprise CP4025dn Printer

With Fast Moves and Smooth Print Quality, HP’s Color LaserJet Enterprise CP4025dn Is One of the Best We've Tested

The HP Color Laserjet Enterprise CP4025dn is a workgroup color laser printer with speed and features to spare. Though not quite as fast as the Dell 5130cdn, the HP costs a little less ($1300 as of February 24, 2010) and offers smoother print quality. Its toner costs are economical, too.

The CP4025dn is one of the fastest color laser printers we've testedto date. In our tests, plain-text pages flowed into the tray at a sprightly 19.4 pages per minute (ppm), while graphics speeds ranged from 6.2 ppm for simpler images to 1.8 ppm for photo quality on special paper. Print quality was generally very good. Photographic images tended to have a darkish or greenish tinge, which was more pronounced in a grayscale sample.

When we moved the CP4025dn to our Mac testbed, it slowed drastically to an average of 7.7 ppm printing text and 2.3 ppm printing graphics. Print quality was consistent with what we saw on the PC platform: smooth and natural-looking, with a few overly dark areas.

Built for high-volume use, the CP4025dn has a monthly duty cycle of 100,000 pages and comes with 512MB of memory, upgradable to 1GB. If the standard 500-sheet input tray and the 100-sheet side multipurpose tray aren't enough, for $499 you can add a wheeled base unit that includes another 500-sheet input tray, plus a cabinet for storing paper. The 500-sheet output tray has a spring-loaded bottom panel that lowers automatically as more paper accumulates--a fun design, though on our unit the panel was short on lubricant (according to HP) and squeaked a bit. A front panel opens to provide easy access to the integrated toner cartridges/drums, and a panel on the right provides paper-path access (though we did not experience any jams). The on-board controls are intuitive, and the menus displayed on the four-line color LCD are easy to navigate. The Web-based interface is also top-notch.

The Color Laserjet Enterprise CP4025dn ships with the only toner cartridges made for it: a $158 black that lasts 8500 pages (1.9 cents per page), and $268, 11,000-page cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges (2.6 cents per color, per page). That translates to a low 9.7 cents for a page with all four colors. These are very economical costs, especially considering the integrated drum-and-toner design used in this model. (The Dell 5130cdn uses separate toner supplies and drums, and its costs are even lower.)

Most busy offices would be happy with the HP Color Laserjet Enterprise CP4025dn's speed and features, and its smooth print quality is a nice bonus. Those who need even more horsepower and capacity (and can tolerate a little graininess in photos) should consider the slightly more expensive Dell 5130cdn Color Laser Printer.