Canon i-SENSYS LBP6650dn Toner Review

Speed is among the leading differentiators involving mono laser printers, particularly when you are taking into consideration cost. Anything higher than 20ppm typically draws a premium and as you get to 30ppm you're normally considering a purchase cost of several hundred pounds. Canon's i-SENSYS LBP6650dn could break this mould, though, as it's obtainable for well below £200 and, at least on paper, breaks the 30ppm barrier.

This is a smartly styled and unimposing laser printer, which may be placed on the table whilst not hogging the whole desktop, or sat on a separate stand, if you want to share it conveniently amongst various individuals.

The flat top of the device holds a practical control panel, with a four-way navigation ring and three discrete buttons, which includes direct selection of the three potential paper sources. There is a black-on-white, backlit, 16-character LCD cocked up at an angle right behind these, so it is readily legible.

The three paper sources are a 500-sheet principal tray, a 50-sheet, fold-down, multi-purpose tray above this and an discretionary, second 250-sheet one, which will sit beneath.

At the back are sockets intended for USB as well as Ethernet, the two data connections provided on the unit, and the on / off switch is located at the bottom front of the right-hand side panel, so that it is convenient to utilize.

Actual set up is extremely easy, because Canon supplies a single, integrated drum and toner cartridge, which slots in via the front, when you've dropped down the front panel. Software contains a Canon native driver as well as one intended for PCL 5/6, and supports both Windows and also OS X.

Canon boasts 33ppm for the device and our five-page text print took merely 14 seconds, providing a speed of 21.4ppm. On a 20-page text, this improved to 29.3ppm, so with a longer document this machine could exceed 30ppm, that is certainly close enough. It's very uncommon to get a machine within this price bracket hit this pace.

Not only this, the company's promise of a fast first print time is matched in use, with very little processing time apparent. Consequently even if the printer is asleep, and consuming almost no energy, it will wake up and begin printing extremely rapidly.

Duplex print, which is standard on this particular machine, is approximately half as fast as single-sided, and we measured 15.6 sides each minute on our 20-side/10-page text examination. Our five-page text and graphics print ended up being as rapid as the straight text document plus a 15 x 10cm photograph on an A4 sheet took eight seconds.

Text is thick and with out spatter and additionally, even at little point sizes, there isn't any indication of any jaggedness out of the 600dpi print engine.

Greyscale graphics are Alright, although fills seem a little spotty as well as irregular plus dither patterns tend to be pretty apparent. This shows up in photo images, also, although shadowed areas of those photos nevertheless display a bit of depth, which is actually a lot more than lots of mono lasers can do.

The Canon i-SENSYS LBP6650dn printer toner cartridge comes in two sizes: 2,100 pages and 6,400 pages. The high-yield consumable provides the greatest economy.

Although we've never really seen the value the printer industry sets on out-and-out speed, certainly on a machine which isn't going to be employed anything like continuously, we can understand the worthiness of getting even a moderately sized print job away swiftly. Canon's i-SENSYS LBP6650dn definitely does that and creates decent print at reasonable cost into the bargain. The duplex facilities can help you save cash on paper and bundling all of this into a package costing about £176, definitely makes the machine excellent value. When it comes to high-end single use or even small workgroups, this ought to end up being on the shortlist.

Canon i-SENSYS LBP6650dn printer toner cartridges are available here.