Small Office Printers

Better color laser printers for small offices

Stepping up from an entry-level printer gets you more speed and a greater duty cycle. Printers that are more business-oriented have larger paper trays than the 200- or 250-sheet paper trays found on home-office color laser printers. They also have more RAM, which enables them to handle larger and more complex print jobs. Reviewers also indicate that cost of use for color lasers usually goes down as the purchase price rises. Many cheap laser printers either come with starter cartridges or can only accommodate low-capacity cartridges.

Judging from reviews, print quality is often better with color laser printers that cost at least $500, but paying more than that nets speed and features without necessarily improving quality. This section covers printers with the best quality; the next section covers the fastest printers. Without exception, reviews indicate that quality and speed are tradeoffs when it comes to home and small-office color laser printers.

Lexmark's C500 series of color laser printers has been popular with reviewers for some time, and the Lexmark C544n (*Est. $450) appears to be living up to its predecessors. Initial reviews are positive. The printer earns an Editor's Choice rating from PCMag.com, just edging out the Xerox Phaser 6180N in terms of speed. Reviewer M. David Stone finds output quality "one step short of stellar," noting that while graphics and photo quality aren't the best, it is better than most.

Macworld's James Galbraith agrees, rating the Lexmark C544n's output quality as "superior" in comparison with other color laser printers. He likes the unit's easy toner replacement as well. A duplexing option is available on the C544dn (*Est. $500), but Galbraith points out that the double-sided printing mode drastically cuts into the printer's speed. The Lexmark C544dn uses what he calls a "peek-a-boo" method: One side of a sheet is printed and deposited on the output tray, then is pulled back inside to print the second side.

The Oki C6150dn (*Est. $750) is another contender in the small office color laser category. Oki printers are unusual in that they have LED (light-emitting diode) printheads, so technically they aren't laser printers. LED technology means that the printhead itself may not be as prone to breakdown as on conventional lasers, because there are less moving parts, but there is no real difference in toner operating costs. Reviewers at CRN and Macworld both find the C6150dn to be a quick printer, but they didn't feel it was the best in terms of output. While CRN's Edward F. Moltzen finds its colors "vibrant," he feels the Oki is outperformed by Xerox models. And although Chris Holt at Macworld judged the Oki printer's text to be of superior quality, he rates the color reproduction, especially in fine lines and gradients, unexceptional.

We found seven reviews for the Xerox Phaser 6180N (*Est. $450), recently replaced by the Phaser 6280N (*Est. $500), and all recommend this older printer. Monochrome text printing is judged excellent, but some reviewers say color printing isn't as nice; PC World's reviewer found photos to be grainy. Speeds are good, in general.

The Phaser 6180N and its replacement, the 6280N, have Adobe PostScript Level 3 compatibility; most printers in its price range just have PostScript emulation. PostScript is the format developed by Adobe for professional printing, and having it will enable your printer to properly print PostScript fonts. So this feature is important for professional desktop publishing. The standard tray holds 250 sheets of paper, and the multipurpose tray holds an additional 150 sheets. A front panel toner gauge is another helpful feature. Duplexing isn't included, but you can add it later.

The newer Xerox Phaser 6280N (*Est. $500) is an improvement upon its well-received predecessor, according to its specifications. Measuring 15.7 inches by 19.3 inches by 18.6 inches, it is nearly the exact size and style as the 6180 series. The 6280 models have similar features too, such as a small LCD display, but they also come with more RAM (256 MB) and a greater paper-handling capacity (400-sheet input tray, expandable to 950 sheets). An auto-duplexer (*est. $100) and 40 GB hard drive are other optional add-ons. According to Computer Shopper, the hard drive can be used to "install additional fonts, buffer large printer jobs, and store logs and data about the printer," but they recommend buying a printer that already has this feature rather than paying extra for the upgrade.

Like the Lexmark C544n, the new Phaser's early press is excellent. The 6280N is rated at up to 26 pages per minute for color and up to 31 pages per minute for black prints. Kat Orphanides at Computer Shopper confirms that text comes out at 25.9 pages per minute (ppm) with "flawless" quality, though graphic speeds are significantly slower. She finds no significant problems with graphics quality, and even printing photos produces good results. While the Lexmark C544n outperforms the older Phaser 6180N in some regards, the new 6280N appears to make a Xerox printer once again the overall better buy.

Also very competitive in this price range is the Dell Color Laser 3130cn (*Est. $550). This model is slightly larger (16.7 inches wide) than the cheaper Dell 2130cn, but it offers faster print speeds and a duty cycle of 70,000 pages per month. The Dell 3130cn earns some of the most unanimously high praise from reviewers of any color laser printer. It tops PC World's 10 best printers list, and Melissa Riofrio calls it a "near-perfect" starter printer for the small office. She finds speeds for text and graphics quick, while print quality is very good, even for photos on plain paper. She also notes that toner is comparatively cheap.

The 3130cn is also on PC Pro's "A-List" of computer products. The website gives this Dell printer a perfect score of six stars, and Dave Mitchell finds that not only is the quality of printouts excellent, but also that the 3130cn tests very close to Dell's claimed speed ratings of 31 and 26 ppm in color and black and white, respectively. Like other Dell color laser printers, the 3130cn has a 250-sheet paper tray. It includes a 400 MHz processor and 256 MB of memory, expandable to 1280 MB -- helpful for multi-user offices that need to line up several print jobs.

However, reviewers note that a duplexer is not standard, and users complain that the cost (*est. $200) of the duplexer upgrade is too high. Because the 3130cn is already slightly more expensive than the Xerox Phaser 6280N -- and the two are very similar in terms of specifications and performance -- the Xerox appears to be the better value, especially if you need double-sided printing.

Fastest color laser printers for small offices

If speed is your highest priority, no other color laser printer approaches the speed of the Xerox Phaser 6360 series, which has been on the market for some time. Four network-capable models are available, starting with the Xerox Phaser 6360N (*Est. $1,300), which is a few inches larger than the Xerox 6180N. For about the same price, the Phaser 6360DN (*Est. $1,300) adds automatic two-sided printing. True resolution for all models is 1,200 dpi by 600 dpi. The stock paper tray holds 550 sheets of paper, and the multipurpose feeder holds an additional 150 sheets. The Phaser 6360DT (*Est. $2,300) adds a second 500-sheet tray. The next model up -- the 6360DX (*Est. $2,650), with still another paper tray -- is well out of small office range. The top two models have 512 MB of RAM, while the bottom two models have 256 MB. All models work under Windows, UNIX and Mac platforms.

PCMag.com rates the Xerox Phaser 6360DN an Editor's Choice, and the CRN test center gives it a Recommended award; PrinterShowcase.com gives it top honors as well. Xerox claims the 77.4-pound printer can output 42 pages per minute. Testers don't dispute that. PCMag.com compares it with a couple of similarly priced printers and finds the Phaser is 50 percent faster. Even the first page comes out quickly.

Speed and versatility are the strengths of the Xerox 6360 series. Quality is the weakness. PC Magazine's M. David Stone concedes that text quality is adequate but below average. He says that graphics are equally marginal for business, but that photos are good. Printer Showcase sees print quality as slightly above average. CRN.com says you can enhance print quality by sacrificing some speed.

To put the 6360N's speed in perspective, it is nearly twice as fast as the Xerox Phaser 8860 (*Est. $2,000). However, the latter model is still rated a very respectable 30 ppm for color and black-and-white output. The 8860 also deserves mention for its good output quality and unsurpassed value for consumables. M. David Stone says that the Xerox 8860 costs a mere 3.2 cents per color page and 1.7 cents for each black and white page. This gives it a huge cost advantage in color printing, while still being very competitive with monochrome laser printers for text. It gets an Editor's Choice award from PCMag.com on its economical strengths.

The Oki C710 (*Est. $1,200) also has good speed for a color laser printer. PC Pro reports that the C710 produces both color and monochrome pages at a rate of about 30 per minute. Operating costs are good, and Dave Mitchell also notes that the Oki C710 has a straight paper path, which allows, among other options, printing banners of up to 1.2 meters long. However, while black and white text output is impressive, color prints are reportedly less so.

At the higher end of the market are printers such as the Konica Minolta Magicolor 8650DN (*Est. $3,200). Geared more toward design studios, this large-scale workhorse comes standard with 1 GB of memory, auto-duplexing, a 1 GHz processor and two 500-sheet paper trays. Image quality, according to PC Advisor and Good Gear Guide, is excellent, although Good Gear Guide has some complaints about difficulties in the initial setup of color management options. Despite the Magicolor 8650DN's powerful computing hardware, its speeds are disappointing, about the same as other speedy color lasers costing significantly less. This type of large-business printer is beyond the scope of this report.