Some offices can afford the latest color printers with top of the line features. The plain reality is others can’t. They can settle for an entry-level model or they have the other option of buying a relatively older laser printer for a lower price.




If the second option is selected, you’ll be pleased to know that some old models which now sell for more than affordable prices were top of the line printers just a few years ago and can still handle most if not all of the important tasks that are part of working and printing in an office.

The Dell 5100cn is a relatively cheap laser printer. It’s been on the market for quite a few years and was developed as a workhorse for offices with medium to high printing volumes. While never offering extraordinary features, it positioned itself right in the middle of the scale, between entry-level models and models that break your budget at purchase.

The speed of this printer, for example, is of 21 pages per minute for mono which is quite good. Color is somewhat slower at about 6 pages per minute. What makes it average and not exceptional is the print quality. Text printing is more than satisfying but graphics printing in both gray scale and color could be better.

Since it’s pretty big and hard to lug around, measuring 16 x 23 x 18.2 inches and weighing 84 pounds, you should really consider having at least two people around when first attempting to position it in it’s future sitting place. Using it in a home office is also out of the question. The design is simple and all for the sake of utility. On the front of the device you’ll encounter a LCD that gives some pretty useful information.

A 150 sheet multipurpose tray can also be found on the front. Underneath the printer you’ll discover a default 500 sheet drawer that can handle paper sizes including legal. For more paper capacity you can choose between optional 500 and 100 drawers. Combining them will get you a grand total of 2150 sheets. IF you want to save some paper and print on both sides conveniently you’ll be pleased to know that 5100cn also features a duplexer.

Moving on to consumables, the Dell 5100CN includes individual black, cyan, magenta and yellow cartridges. The black one will last the user for about 9000 pages of printing, while each color cartridge will go for 8000 pages. This makes the Dell 5100Cn relatively economical to run. On top of that, you won’t be bothered to change the consumables very often which is a good thing if your team is preoccupied with some much more important tasks. Setting this printer up to work in a workgroup through Ethernet is pretty easy and convenient. So from a purely functional standpoint this is one cheap laser printer that you could really consider if you aren’t extremely pretentious when it comes to how graphics look.

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