Labs

Canon's iSensys LBP5300 sits at the bottom end of this month's business printers: it costs just £384, and its 600 x 600dpi print engine offers this month's lowest resolution. Its input paper bin is skinny, too, swallowing just half a ream of paper.

What's more, it's the only business laser to lack an LCD panel, which makes it harder to troubleshoot problems as they occur and find out important info. Manageability isn't impressive, either: there's an embedded network server, but it lacks sophisticated facilities such as email alerts, and businesses won't like the return-to-base warranty.

But there's one nice surprise in store: the LBP5300 includes a duplexer

ADVERTISEMENT

for double-sided printing. It's good to see at this price level, and could save you money on paper. We were also satisfied with the Canon's output quality, if not quite bowled over. Colours looked a little washed out and chalky, but, despite the relatively low resolution, we found gradients were reproduced very smoothly and text was clean and sharp at all point sizes.

The Canon gave a mixed speed performance, too. The LBP5300 took two-and-a-half minutes to complete our 50-page mono and colour tests - the slowest time of any printer in this group.

Performance was better in our shorter tests, with the LBP5300 attaining respectably average scores when printing our Excel document, photo montage and mono quality sheet. Since most print jobs are only a few pages long, that makes its speed acceptable.

Ultimately, though, the Canon falls short this month not only with its lack of features and management functions, but also with its ongoing costs. Although the unit itself is cheap, once you start replacing toner cartridges the expense mounts quickly. Once you print more than 20,000 pages - well within the lifespan of a business printer - you've paid just as much as if you'd gone with a more fully featured device and missed out on the benefits.