Color Fast
The latest color laser printers promise speed and quality. We lab-test models starting at $799 and do the math on supplies to reveal the best values.Dan Littman is a contributing editor for PC World.
Artwork by Marc Simon
We looked at 13 models, ranging from a $799 Oki Data unit that you could transport in the front seat of your car, to printers weighing 150 pounds or more. We judged them on speed and print quality, operating costs, paper-handling options, ease of setup and operation, and management tools.
Most of the color lasers that we reviewed cost between $1900 and $3000--much more than monochrome laser models, but still not an outrageous capital investment for a workgroup device. We found a number of color printers that matched the crisp black text--and neared the speed--of a good corporate monochrome laser. Plenty of these printers deliver color quality that's even adequate for reproducing photos, if you're not terribly picky. Hewlett-Packard's Color LaserJet 5500n did the best on color photos among our test set. The Xerox Phaser 6250N and Brother HL-4200CN (two versions of the same printer) were among the weaker models on print quality.
Several trends in color laser technology cropped up in this batch of printers. Single-pass printing--in which paper runs through a straight path one time--was a curiosity a few years ago; most printers used a four-pass system, in which a document essentially went through four sequential print jobs. A single-pass design requires fewer moving parts, so the printer suffers fewer malfunctions. Single-pass printers are faster than the previous generation of four-pass printers, though the one four-pass printer we tested, the Samsung CLP-500N, turned in roughly average speeds. One potential drawback of single-pass printers is that they're bulkier than four-pass models. Another trend to note: If you need to make big prints, you'll be happy to learn that more wide-format printers have entered the market as prices for color lasers have dropped.
Clocking Print Speeds
Are color lasers fast enough for everyday use by a workgroup of 10 to 20 people? For text they certainly are, and for color graphics they're faster than any alternative. Most of the printers we tested were specified by their vendor to print color documents at the same clip as black-and-white. But in our tests, the printers pushed out a black text document about four times as fast as they printed color graphics: The average speed for our 10-page text document was 15.1 pages per minute; the average for graphics was 3.7 ppm. Still, 3.7 ppm looks pretty good next to the 1.3 ppm average of the ink jets we tested most recently. More important, color lasers' text speed is nearing that of monochrome lasers: The last set of monochrome laser printers we tested averaged 16.9 ppm for the same document we used to test this group. That means you can find a color laser to replace your monochrome laser without losing much speed--even if you have a large workgroup that prints a lot of text files.
We saw a wide range of speeds and were pleasantly surprised by the results for the two sub-$1000 printers we tested, Oki Data's $799 Oki C5100n and Samsung's $850 CLP-500N. The Oki printed text at 9.9 ppm, while the Samsung printed at 15.3 ppm; still, the Oki's better support hours and text quality kept the Samsung off the chart. Xerox's $4199 Phaser 7300DN was the fastest of all, at 23.3 ppm for text, while HP's $3549 Color LaserJet 5500n printed text at only 13.5 ppm.
The Xerox Phaser 6250N, the HP Color LaserJet 5500n, and the Oki Data Oki C5100n all turned in fast graphics speeds: 6.1 ppm, 5.2 ppm, and 4.9 ppm, respectively. The slowest graphics speed we clocked was from the $2395 Kyocera Mita Ecosys FS-C5016N, an LED model that printed graphics at a sluggish 1.3 ppm (comparable to ink jets).
Inspecting Output
The new generation of color lasers puts another truism out to pasture: that color lasers can't print text as well as monochrome lasers. In fact, PC World's jury gave 8 of the 13 models tested an Outstanding for text quality, and 4 more a Very Good. Only 1 printer, the Xerox Phaser 6250N, did not match the text quality of a decent monochrome laser. Its letters looked slightly hazy around the edges, though they were still good enough for all but the most formal correspondence.
In our line-art test, which monochrome laser printers usually pass with flying colors, we print a page of closely spaced parallel lines. Now, most color lasers make the grade, too: Nine of them rated as either Outstanding or Very Good on this test, printing the narrowest lines clearly, without mucking up the interstices with the random dots we affectionately call "crud." Only two printers, Samsung's CLP-500N and Oki Data's Oki C5100n, received the lowest score possible, printing uneven lines that resembled strings of beads and blending color toner into the black (a common technique for creating a richer-looking black), which made narrowly spaced lines look like plaid fabric.
We also tested the group on printing color and gray-scale photographs on standard paper. Monochrome lasers print notoriously poor gray-scale photos, and color ink jets are too slow for a workgroup to share, so color lasers have a broad niche to fill. And for the most part, we were impressed by how well they fill it. Several printers, especially the two Hewlett-Packards--the Color LaserJet 3700n and 5500n--produced smooth-textured gray-scale photos with fine detail and lifelike shadows and highlights. Several others, including the Xerox Phaser 6250N, and Oki Data C9500dxn and C7300n, printed detailed, lifelike gray-scale images marred only slightly by dottiness or lines. Despite these advances in color laser quality, if you need top-notch prints of color and gray-scale photos, ink jet is still the only affordable technology that really delivers. The print speeds and text quality of these higher-end color laser printers, however, qualify them to replace monochrome laser printers--at least in offices that can afford them.
Calculating Costs
So many elements add to the cost of owning a color laser printer that it's tough to estimate the cost of printing a page--but we tried. The PC World Test Center limited itself to gauging toner consumption and estimated a cost per page (see the chart for specific numbers).
We created a test page consisting of a spreadsheet and two bar charts, to approximate a typical business-presentation page. Printer makers calculate their page yields using a document with 5 percent coverage each of black, yellow, red, and blue toner--which is meant to approximate the typical rate of consumption; however, we did not scientifically measure the toner coverage for our page (see our test page).
We printed our file, and counted pages, until either the printer stopped or we deemed the print quality no longer acceptable. Interestingly, though every printer output the same document, there was no consistency in which of the four toners ran out first. In all but two cases, the printer stopped when the first toner cartridge hit empty. The IBM Infoprint Color 1354n and the Lexmark C752n continued printing long after the toner had run so low that the prints looked weathered, and long after we stopped counting the pages as usable. After printing--and counting--almost 80,000 copies of the same document, we concluded that if our test file is representative of typical business documents, the manufacturers' figures for per-page toner cost are significantly too low. Although our page yields and estimated costs per page varied widely, on average page yields were one-third lower than the vendors' specs.
Our average toner cost per page was 13 cents, ranging from a low of 6 cents per page for the Kyocera Mita Ecosys to a high of 18 cents per page for the HP Color LaserJet 3700n. We used standard toner cartridges in all but two printers. Lexmark and Xerox supplied high-yield cartridges for the C752n and the 6250N, respectively. We found their high-yield cartridges no more cost-effective than other printers' standard cartridges: The Xerox's cost per page was just below average, at 12 cents, while the Lexmark's was 15 cents per page.
A set of toner cartridges for any of these printers is a hefty investment, though the sets vary widely in price. A set of four standard-capacity cartridges for the IBM Infoprint Color 1354n costs about $700--almost one-third the price of the printer itself. Standard cartridge sets for some of the large-format models surpass $1000. Some vendors, such as Kyocera and Samsung, hasten the day when you'll shop for replacement cartridges by shipping their printers with partly empty "starter" cartridges.
Several other consumable components, such as imaging drums, add to a color laser printer's ongoing expenses, though they last a lot longer than toner cartridges. The part-ceramic, part-metal drums in Kyocera Ecosys models, for example, are designed to last the lifetime of the printer. The Oki Data C7300n's drums cost $144 for the black and $155 each for the color, and Oki Data rates them to last for 30,000 pages. On some printers, however, the imaging drum is part of the toner cartridge.
All printers have a replaceable fuser, an element that heats toner to affix it to the paper. The Xerox Phaser 6250N's fuser costs $200, for example, and is rated to last for 100,000 pages. Most color lasers also have a component called a transfer belt or image transfer unit. On HP's LaserJet 3700n, the transfer unit costs only $80 and is designed to produce up to 75,000 pages, depending on how many four-color files you print; the LaserJet 5500n's transfer unit costs $200 and is designed for up to 120,000 prints. In total, the per-page costs for color from a color laser are several times higher than those of black pages printed on a monochrome laser.
Checking Paper Capacity
All of the printers we tested have at least two paper sources as standard equipment. The HP Color LaserJet 3700n and the Oki Data Oki C5100n are the only printers on our chart that don't hold at least 500 sheets in the main tray. Three of the printers on our chart include a duplexer, as does the $850 Samsung CLP-500N, by far the cheapest printer in our group with this feature. Two of the duplex models print large-format banners: The Oki Data Oki C9500dxn can handle sizes up to 12.9 by 47.2 inches, and the Xerox Phaser 7300DN sizes up to 12 by 36 inches. The HP Color LaserJet 5500n prints at up to tabloid-extra size (12 by 18 inches).
More paper-handling options abound: You can add up to three 500-sheet trays to Lexmark's C752n (at $412 each) or one 2000-sheet drawer ($1249), a 650-sheet output expander ($226), and a 3000-sheet stapler/hole-punch finisher ($2499). IBM sells the same add-ons for its version of the printer, the Infoprint Color 1354n, at similar prices. The Brother HL-4200CN accepts an extra 500-sheet paper tray ($549) or an extra 1000-sheet tray ($999).
Popping the Hood
Fortunately, color lasers continue to get easier to use. The control panels on most of our printers are designed well enough to let even a casual user quickly accomplish basic tasks. But more-advanced functions are another story: We tried the printers' utilities for tasks such as tracking usage and specifying which users can print in color. We concluded that these chores are best handled by a network-savvy manager.
Xerox's control panels deserve special mention, because they provide an assortment of help documents that you can print without needing a PC or a network connection. And while there aren't separate buttons for each level of the control panel menus, as there are on the Oki Data control panels, the LCD always provides prompts so that you don't get lost in the menu hierarchy.
Single-pass designs have made replacing internal components and clearing paper paths easier than before, since all the components are aligned and clearly visible. In the Sharp AR-C200P and Oki Data Oki C7300n, all of the toner cartridge/drum assemblies sit in a rack or basket that can be completely removed, exposing the entire paper path.
All of the printers we tested have an ethernet port, which should, in theory, enable you to manage the printer remotely. And remote management is a heavily promoted feature for most of the units: Most vendors offer an embedded Web server that makes it easy to check the printer's status from anywhere on the network when, for example, it stops because someone left a paper tray pulled out. But for the most part, we found that installing these printers and using their management software are beyond the skills of a PC-savvy but not networking-trained person. For example, as we tested the printers under Microsoft Windows Server 2003, we couldn't install Oki Data's PrintSuperVision tools because Oki printers lack an embedded Web server; instead, they require a Web server (Microsoft's Internet Information Server) running on the network server and the SNMP network status tracker. Few of the utility installers told us when or how to create a TCP port, without which the printers wouldn't show up on our network.
On the other hand, both HP's WebJet Admin and Xerox's CentreWare Internet Services installed without much fuss and readily displayed the printer's embedded Web pages. If you aren't familiar with managing printers, however, you'll likely still face hours of experimentation as you set up e-mail notifications and configure user permissions. If you lack sufficient training as a network manager, you should leave these features to the experts.
Calling on Tech Support
Standard warranties for color lasers are far shorter than those for some other peripherals (monitors, say). All of the models we tested come with a one-year warranty. Oki Data and Sharp cover their units' LED array for five years but cover the rest of the components for only one year. Xerox, on the other hand, offers only one year of coverage for all components. Most vendors sell warranty extensions and service contracts, such as the three-year warranty extension for the Lexmark C752n, which includes on-site repair service and costs $1999.
Most of the vendors provide good support policies, such as on-site repair service. All of them field toll-free tech support calls during the warranty period. Brother, HP, and Oki Data run their telephone support 24 hours daily; all of the companies also answer tech questions by live Internet chat, by e-mail, or by both means. HP and Xerox provide especially thorough information on their Web sites in searchable knowledge bases and FAQs.
In our tests, color lasers matched the print quality of monochrome lasers, and most of them printed photos well enough--and at decent speeds--to permit users to include them in business presentations. But our printing yields for color pages were lower than the vendors specified; so if the amount of color on our test page is typical of the documents you print regularly, you'll likely spend more on toner than the vendor's specs suggest. Still, despite demanding a hefty initial investment and significant ongoing expense, color laser printers are becoming less exotic and more of a vital business tool.
Print Quality: Best and Worst Prints
Most of the color lasers that we tested printed razor-sharp text, as shown in the example below from the $4600 Oki Data Oki C9500dxn. The Xerox Phaser 6250N, which costs half as much, printed the least attractive text. That's not to say that text quality closely followed purchase price. The Oki Data Oki C5100n, the least expensive printer on the chart at $799, printed letterforms that were just as sharp as those from models costing at least twice as much. It was less impressive at printing color graphics, however. Colors looked oversaturated, skin tones were very reddish, and textures appeared grainy. In contrast, the $3549 HP Color LaserJet 5500n printed color photos with extremely fine grain and smooth color transitions; colors seemed accurate, and skin tones looked natural.
Print Quality: Printers for Perfectionists
HP Color LaserJet 9500n
Along with our batch of general-business color lasers, we looked at two costlier models as well ($6800 to be exact). Xerox and HP say that their high-end models--the Phaser 7750DN and Color LaserJet 9500n, respectively--produce color output that graphics pros wouldn't hesitate to show to clients. We tried the units out on the toughest of images to print: color photos. Using default modes, both models produced impressively sharp images, even on plain paper. We also tried each company's glossy stock, but it's likely not worth the extra money unless a glossy sheen is critical. When printed on glossy paper using high-quality settings, our test images didn't show a discernible improvement over the prints on plain paper. Nonetheless, when compared with a prepress proof of the same image used at PC World, both printers' images impressed our panel of in-house graphics professionals with their sharpness, though neither was a clear winner. Which set looked better ended up being a matter of personal choice.
Color Laser Printers Page-Yield Test
In estimating the cost per page for color laser printers, the PC World Test Center limited itself to gauging toner consumption; our results do not factor in costs of paper and other consumables. We created a test page consisting of a spreadsheet and a couple of bar charts, approximating a typical page in a business presentation.
Printer manufacturers usually calculate their page yields using a document with 5 percent coverage each of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black toner. Instead of creating a document with these coverage percentages, we created a document that looked typical for an everyday business presentation.