Kyocera FS-5900C-N

Although Kyocera has an extensive range of mono lasers, it only moved into the colour market in November 1998 with the FS-5800C. The release of the FS-5900C is marked less by modest improvements and more by its low price. At only £ 2,225 for the base model, the FS-5900C seems excellent value for companies wanting budget colour laser printing.

Virtually identical to the Tektronix' Phaser 740 (reviewed issue 51, p171), the FS-5900C uses a Matsushita print engine and employs the same cube-shaped chassis. Compared to the FS-5800C, the print speed of the FS-5900C has crept up to 4ppm from 3.5ppm, while mono speeds have increased from 14ppm to 16ppm. Top true resolution is still 1,200 x 1,200dpi, but processing power gets a boost with a 200MHz PowerPC chip and standard memory has doubled to 48Mb. The latter can be upgraded to 112Mb using industry standard SIMMs, which is fortunate as Kyocera charges £179 for a 16Mb security-coded module.

The FS-5900C-N reviewed has an EcoLink dual-speed network print server card as standard. A single paper tray in the base has a 250 A4 sheet capacity, while a flip-down 100-sheet tray opposite is for heavier media. Optional extras include a combination lower tray for an extra 250 A4 sheets, plus 80 transparencies, a duplex unit plus a version that includes a 250-sheet tray. A PC Card slot at the rear allows fonts, logos and forms to be stored locally and swapped quickly. Alternatively, you can use a 2Gb internal hard disk which brings the optional bar code reader into play. This connects to the serial port and allows users to select reprints from the printer.

The FS-5900C uses the same arrangement as the Phaser 740, where the four toner cartridges slot neatly into a rack behind a panel on the right-hand side. The black cartridge (£80) prints 12,000 pages while the cyan, yellow and magenta cartridges (£165 each) last for 10,000 pages. Note that the printer ships with half-capacity starter cartridges, so initial print costs will be higher. There are a frightening amount of extra consumables to be considered: a 15,000 colour page imaging unit (£289), a 60,000 page fuser kit (£295), a 15,000 page oil supply roll (£95), an 80,000 page transfer unit (£25), a 15,000 page fuser cleaning pad and finally, a 7,500 colour page main charger (£30). Colour costs pan out to 9.3p per page - around a third more than HP's Colour LaserJet 4500 (reviewed issue 51, p169). The Phaser 740 also offers lower running costs since Tektronix charges less for the same consumables.

Network installation on our NetWare 5 network was helped along by the EcoLink software, which searches the network for EcoLink cards and displays them all for easy selection. EcoLink supports NDS (Novell Directory Services) and allows print queues to be created although you can't create user and group objects or assign printing privileges directly from EcoLink. The printer can be accessed using a standard Web browser but the information received is only a reflection of that provided by EcoLink. You're better off downloading and using Kyocera's Print Monitor since it accesses the printer over SNMP (simple network management protocol) and provides good levels of information about status and activity and can be used to manage other SNMP-compliant printers.

Since the FS-5900C uses the same print engine as the Phaser 740, it comes in for the same criticisms about print quality. Use low-quality 80g/m2 paper and watch quality take a nosedive; the toner won't adhere properly resulting in unsightly blotches in darker areas and a stippling effect on colour fades. Move up to 100g/m2 and you'll see a big improvement. Colour fades on the PC Pro colour charts were extremely smooth with virtually no stepping evident, although grey shades using equal cyan, yellow and magenta mixes showed a distinct magenta hint, which gave some test prints a slightly pinkish hue. General detail in photographic images was reasonable but not a patch on the Colour LaserJet 4500 and we had to reconfigure the driver settings as some prints were too dark.