Kyocera Mita Ecosys FS-C5015N Network 16 PPM Color Laser Printer # 1102HJ2US0
The simple control panel includes buttons for starting and stopping print tasks,
calling up the menu and navigating through it. The two-line, 16-character LCD
display is backlit, but there's a distracting shadow at its right-hand end and a
lot of reflection from the high-gloss surface of the display panel.
At the rear are sockets for USB and Ethernet, both of which are standard on
this model.
Setting the printer up is very simple. Fit the four toner cartridges into
their respective slots under the top cover and slot the waste toner bottle in
behind a cover on the left-hand side. You can drop the cartridges into the wrong
slots, which is distracting, though you can’t lock them in place.
Software installation is straightforward, with the Kyocera Mita driver
providing all you need from the printer. It includes support for multiple pages
per sheet, poster prints, scaling, printing documents with covers and adding
watermarks.
Kyocera Mita has a reputation for producing mono laser printers with a very
low cost of ownership. It also produces colour machines though and the FS-C5015N
is one of its latest small workgroup machines, designed for business. The
Kyocera Mita website actually says the machine is not intended for graphics
professionals, but then most graphics professionals would go for an ink-jet
anyway.
The FS-C5015N is a tall, deep machine, with the height resulting in part from
a substantial 500-sheet paper tray and the depth from the in-line, colour laser
engine inside. As well as the main paper tray, to which you can add a second of
the same capacity as an option, there's a pull-down, multifunction tray, which
can take an extra 100 sheets of special media and you can add a duplexing unit
as a second option.
Kyocera Mita rates the FS-C5015N as a 16ppm printer on both black and color
modes. On our test documents, it produced speeds of 7.7ppm and 7.3ppm for black
and colour pages, respectively, under half the claimed speeds. Kyocera Mita
isn’t alone in over-rating its print speed – most companies do it, so they
compare favourably with their competitors.
If the printer is in sleep mode, though (by default, after 15 minutes), you
can add 27 seconds warm-up to the time for the first print job. You can reduce
the frequency of hitting this waiting time by setting a longer delay before
engaging sleep mode, but then the power usage goes up – a quicker warm-up
cycle would be a better solution.
The quality of prints from the machine depends on what you want them for.
Text print is very good indeed; sharp and precise with no noticeable spatter and
well formed characters. Solid color for business graphics is also fair, though
in our sample prints there was some mis-registration between block colors and
overlaid black text.
Our color photo print sample was none too good, with noticeable dither
patterns and an overall fuzzy look to the finished image. It's probably good
enough for a positional proof, but you wouldn't want to use it in a brochure or
customer document. It's getting to the point now where many business
applications require color photographic reproduction, so to say ‘not suitable
for graphics professionals’ isn't really a suitable let out.
As with all Kyocera Mita printers, the only consumable is toner. The standard
cartridges offer 6,000 black pages or 4,000 color ones, though the printer comes
with ‘starter’ cartridges offering 3,000 and 2,000 pages, respectively. Is
it really necessary to provide partly filled cartridges in a machine costing
over $500?
Assuming the standard cartridge fill rates and the cheapest prices we could find
for Kyocera Mita toner and including 0.4p for a sheet of plain paper – as we
always do – gives running costs of 1.67p and 7.04p for 5 percent black and 20
percent colour pages. These figures are good, but not the lowest we’ve seen
recently. Dell’s 3110cn, which also uses a lifetime transfer belt and fuser,
beat the FS-C5015N on both counts, for example, with corresponding figures of
1.42p and 6.36p.
Verdict
With the monochrome lasers we’ve tested from Kyocera Mita, there's little
argument over the cost of ownership. With only the toner to consider, they are
very cheap to run. Things are not so clear-cut with this colour machine.
Although, again, toner is the only consumable, it doesn't produce exceptionally
low running costs, because of the price of the toner cartridges themselves.
Some aspects of the printer, such as its large paper capacity and
well-written software, work in its favour, but others, such as its patchy status
display and long warm-up time, act against it. It's a good machine, but this is
a heavily competitive market and it doesn't stand out
Kyocera Mita Ecosys FS-C5015N Network Color Laser Printer # 1102HJ2US0,
FSC5015N, F-S-C-5015-N, F-S-C-5015N, F-SC5015N, FSC-5015N, FSC5015-N
Specifications :
- Output Speed: Up to 16ppm Colour/Mono
- Processor: 400MHz PowerPC 750 CXr
- Resolution: 600 x 600 dpi (multi bit)
- Memory: 128MB Std, upgradeable to 640MB
- Time to First Print: 16 seconds
- Paper Handling: 100 sheet MPT + 500 sheet cassette std (A4, B5, A5,
letter, legal paper sizes)
- Standard Interface: 10/100TX Network + High Speed USB 2.0
- Drum Life: 100,000 pages
- Maximum Duty Cycle: 50,000 pages per month
- Warranty: 2 year On-site Warranty
- Options:
Hard Drive
Duplex
500 sheet paper feeder (Max 1)
Additional Memory
Compact Flash Card
Face Up paper output tray
Kyocera Mita Ecosys FS-C5015N Network 16 PPM Color Laser Printer # 1102HJ2US0, FSC5015N, F-S-C-5015-N, F-S-C-5015N, F-SC5015N, FSC-5015N, FSC5015-N
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