Review In a Printing market awash with colour products, here comes HP with an A4 black-and-white business laser. But far from seeming dull, the LaserJet P3015d serves to remind us of how good HP lasers are – and how much better they can be than much of the flashier competition.
Compact in its plain casing, but not particularly small at 316x400x448mm, this 15.9kg printer is well-built and designed to withstand plenty of use. It might look boring but the absence of detail and irregular mouldings should make it easier to find a home for in a cramped office. Thankfully, HP also designed the case to incorporate a pair of cut-ins on either side of the base to make the printer safer to pick up and carry.
The ‘d’ in the product name indicates that this model supports automatic double-sided (duplex) Printing. A 500-sheet paper cassette slots into the front of the unit at the base. The entire cassette fits flush with the main body of the printer: nothing sticks out the back. A paper level indicator at the front warns you when to add more stock.
The front of the case, above the paper cassette, folds down to form a multipurpose input tray with a capacity of 100 sheets. Inevitably, this tray needs to be extended with a combination of hinged and telescopic flaps, which are, altogether, more fragile than the rest of the machine. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Dell’s 2145cn is a mid-range multifunction device, designed for small office and modest workgroup use, but includes several, big-machine functions. Unusually, it’s also built around a colour laser engine.
Dell’s 2145cn: multifunctional with duplex Printing and scanning
There’s only one thing you can be pretty certain of with a Dell printer – it’ll be black. It could come from a variety of sources – Lexmark and Samsung are favourites – and be either good or poor value, but it’ll not have coloured covers. The 2145cn is tall enough to be slightly awkward on the desk, particularly if you add the optional, 500-sheet paper tray.
In fact, you’re probably going to need this, as the machine comes as standard with capacity for only 250 sheets, which is barely enough. Even with the 100-sheet multipurpose tray, which swings down from the front, you’ll still be filling the main tray too often. Read the rest of this entry »
Review All inkjet makers are trying to persuade us that their printers really do offer an alternative to colour lasers. HP has been a leader in this push and, to its credit, has produced machines more likely to tempt people than most. Surprisingly, running costs are also claimed to be lower than from equivalently priced colour lasers. Can this be true?
HP’s OfficeJet 6500 Wireless: better running costs than a colour laser?
The OfficeJet 6500 Wireless is designed as a general-purpose inkjet and includes Printing, scanning, copying and faxing as its core features. Reflecting the fact that more and more visual material is used in offices, there are also two memory card slots. While it’s not intended as a photo enthusiast’s machine, it can be pushed into basic photo duties without much effort.
HP’s industrial design is in a ‘big curves’ phase, with its contrasting black and white colour scheme broken up by a range of them, smoothing the case lines in almost every direction. Even the input tray of the auto document feeder (ADF) has a subtle bend at its end.
The 35-sheet ADF is nearly horizontal, though, so it doesn’t increase the height of the machine as much as gravity-fed ADFs and it’s still easy to recover a scanned document from the lid of the A4 scanner. Read the rest of this entry »
Review The multifunctional device (MFD) has arguably been the killer corporate business machine of recent years, so the appearance of affordable A4 versions for smaller offices is extremely welcome. With the FS-C1020MFP, Kyocera continues to speed up performance in this demanding market.
Clean lines and compact appearance, Kyocera’s FS-C1020MFP is a thoughtful design
It is a smart-looking but large device at 420 x 493 x 476mm, weighing a considerable 30kg. With such a tall product introduced into a modest office environment, the temptation is to situate it on a low stand or even on the floor. Just bear in mind that you will still need easy access to the paper cassette, which slots into the base.
In one product, the FS-C1020MFP acts as an A4 colour laser printer, colour copier, scanner and fax machine. Indeed, in terms of visual design, Kyocera has done a nice job, as most other small-office MFDs are utterly hideous. Read the rest of this entry »
Review It is to Brother’s great credit that the all-in-one MFC-6890CDW packs in as many wishlist features as reasonably possible without hitting buyers with an unfriendly price. This combined A3 colour inkjet printer and A3 scanner with a full-size glass plate is a big unit at 540 x 488 x 323mm, but not particularly heavy at 15.6kg. You asked for A3, so live with it.
Brother’s MFC-6890CDW
As standard, the MFC-6890CDW is fitted with an automatic sheet feeder, dedicated fax functions, automatic duplex (two-sided) Printing, a choice of Camera card slots, and 10/100 Ethernet and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi connections. And, as we found out, both the print quality and scan quality are excellent – far better than you would normally expect from an MFD. Read the rest of this entry »
