TallyGenicom 9050N

Not everyone believes the world needs another mono laser printer, but TallyGenicom certainly does. And it's aiming the new models that form its 9050 series at offices which demand high-volume printing, a strong upgrade path and a wide range of paper-handling options.

The 9050N on review offers a top true resolution of 1,200 x 1,200dpi and a maximum speed of 50ppm, and our performance tests show the latter is quite achievable across a range of printing demands. The printer whisked through our basic 50-page Word document in precisely one minute and only made us wait seven seconds for the first page.

It hardly paused for breath either with our 24-page DTP style document; at both 600dpi and 1,200dpi this was despatched in 29 seconds for close on 50ppm. A3 speeds are nothing to sniff at either, with a 15-page document delivered at 28ppm.

Output quality is often sacrificed in the quest for speed but the 9050N isn't guilty, with standard documents benefiting from pin sharp fonts across all standard sizes. Closer examination of our test prints showed a very slight deterioration at the smallest font sizes but this was largely remedied at 1,200dpi.

Photos were impressive too, with pictures at 600dpi showing reasonable levels of detail and minimal banding. At 1,200dpi there was a significant improvement as any graininess present at the lower resolution disappeared and the level of detail, even in darker areas, was on a par with the best mono lasers.

Standard paper capacity can be upped with two more universal lower trays, a 2,000-sheet A4 feeder unit or a version that holds a mixture of A4 paper and envelopes. The duplex unit as found on the 9050DN can be added and paper handling options include a finisher with hole-punch and stapler.

Lasers aren't known for their environmental friendliness but power usage is within the quoted figures: TallyGenicom states maximum consumption as less than 1.3kW and our inline power meter confirmed this with it showing a peak of 1.23kW during printing.

You can request email notifications on job completion from the printer driver, although you'll need to enable this feature from the printer's web interface first and provide details of your mail servers. The eForms firmware feature allows documents of up to 20 pages to be stored on the printer, where they can be merged into other prints from the standard driver options.

You can also activate job accounting. This keeps an eye on who's using the printer, with the information automatically gathered into a CSV file which can be downloaded from the printer.

Employees enter the username and ID you've given them and this information is added to the accounting log. Jobs can also be printed but held until you've walked to the printer and activated them, or you can secure them by assigning a PIN which must be entered at the printer.

TallyGenicom's 9050N initially looks better value than HP's 9050N as it offers the same print speeds, costs marginally less, has quadruple the memory and a higher true print resolution. However, it can't match HP's printing costs (which are around 0.2p per page less), but throw in the superb print quality and high performance and the 9050N looks an ideal choice for big, busy workgroups.

Author: Dave Mitchell