Great all-around printer, economical, love the duplexing

Author's Rating:

Pros: Low per-page cost for B&W, two-sided printing, comes with full toners

Cons: Slow to produce the first page, heavy

The Bottom Line: 
A great value for most homes and small offices. It is flexible, reliable and inexpensive to operate.

Author's Review
This is a great printer. I love the two-sided printing, because it reduces that amount of paper I have to deal with. Some people comment about the fact that pages come out of the printer and are then pulled back in for printing on the other side, but I am used to that. It does seem a little funny that it does this when you print a single page, but that may be necessary to keep you from printing on the wrong size when you manually insert stationary.

I do mostly B&W printing, so per-page cost is very important to me. According to my calculations, this is one of the least expensive B&W printers around. For color, it’s much less expensive than an ink-jet, and you don’t have to worry about the ink cartridges drying out like you do with ink jet printers. Furthermore, it comes with full toner cartridges, and the printer often sells for very little more (or maybe even less) than the value of the supplies that come with it. (That’s why you see new ones for sale on eBay without the toner cartridges.) The absolute cost of a complete set of four toner cartridges (around $400) may seem high, but the per-page cost is not.

It does take a long time to warm up and spit out that first page. To me, this is the biggest drawback. I also hear complaints about the quality of the color printouts, but my untrained eye can’t see any problems. If you are concerned about this, go to CompUSA and see a sample printout. Another minor problem is that I keep opening the wrong door when I’m trying to insert an envelope, because two are right next to each other.

It does take a lot of space, and it’s heavy. You really should have two people to move it very far, and don’t lift it if you have back problems.

Setup does involve quite a few steps, and I failed to remove the paper from the drum, producing horrible first results. Fortunately, tech support quickly set me straight, and there was no trouble getting to talk to them. Also, it smelled a little strange at first, but that seems to have gone away.

Like all things technical, this printer has a few quirks, and I’ve tried to mention them all. Nevertheless, it’s the best printer I’ve ever had for the money. The initial cost is slightly higher than some, but full toner cartridges more than make up for this, resulting in an all-around great value for most homes or small offices.