Kyocera FS-C5015N

We'd always encourage you to look past the price when buying a printer, since this isn't normally an indication of how much a printer really costs to own. Nowhere would you find a better illustration of this than the Kyocera FS-C5015N.

This printer may be the most expensive to buy in this group at £317, but you'll soon reap the benefits of the extra investment: it's the cheapest colour laser to run by some distance and the more you print, the more money you'll save. That's thanks in the main to its high-capacity toner cartridges, which cost just £50 and yield 6,000 pages - more than any of the other printers here.

It's reasonably well equipped, too. On top of network connectivity and an LCD panel for quick access to settings, there's a highly impressive onboard web server. Not only can you use this to monitor consumables, but it can also be employed to set up email alerts when supplies run low, and create restrictions based on IP address ranges. Add a generous two-year on-site warranty and this is beginning to look the ideal home/small office colour printer.

But the FS-C5015N isn't as impressive in other areas, and it's quality that suffers the most. In our tests, colours were accurate, but photos looked very grainy and gradients suffered from stepping. Compared to the other colour printers, text wasn't impressive, either, but you'd struggle to notice the difference without a magnifying glass.

Output speed was better: it still can't match the best here, but it did at least manage to print all the tests at a consistent speed. The 50-page mono text test was printed in 3mins 25secs, and the more complex 50-page colour test appeared in 3mins 45secs. Our complex photo montage printed in an acceptable one minute.

The FS-C5015N stands out as the cheapest colour laser to run in this Labs. Alas, it isn't as impressive elsewhere, which is a shame, because if it had managed to combine that with better quality and faster speeds, we'd have had a winner on our hands.

Author: Darien Graham-Smith