Kyocera Ecosys FS-C5400DN review

Kyocera's latest A4 desktop laser claims a top speed of 35ppm for both colour and mono printing. It comes as standard with an automatic duplexer, and there's room to expand paper capacity as the printer supports four extra 500-sheet cassettes, giving you up to six paper sources.

Printing costs for Kyocera's lasers have traditionally been among the lowest, and the FS-C5400DN is no exception. Mono cartridges are good for 16,000 pages at 5% coverage, while the colour ones can last for 12,000 pages, at 8p per mono page and 4p for colour.

Kyocera engages in the dubious practice of shipping the printer with half-capacity starter cartridges, so initial running costs will be higher. We approve of the toner cartridge design, however, which makes for a much cleaner printer installation, as they remain sealed until placed in the printer. The only other consumable is a toner waste bottle and the printer is shipped with two.

It has an integral 500-sheet lower tray and you can stack four more underneath. Combine these with the 150-sheet MPT for a total capacity of 2,650 sheets. It has a small desktop footprint, and the front panel offers a backlit LCD status panel and control keypad.

The FS-C5400DN completed a standard 35-page mono Word document in 59 seconds and our 24-page DTP style document (a collection of colour charts, graphics and photographs) in 41 seconds, for a perfect 35ppm. Duplexing operations were also fast, printing a DTP document on both sides in 48 seconds.

The driver doesn't offer many controls over print quality. Apart from the default finest mode you only have mono or economy options. It makes light work of choosing print layouts, however, as the quick print tab has one-click options for two-up or four-up printing and duplexing.

Overall print quality was good. Text across a range of sizes was clean and sharp, but there was a slight cross-hatching effect on our mono photo test page. Colour test photos also had a very slight banding effect in large areas of single colours.

Cyan, yellow and magenta toners delivered vibrant colours, and transitions across complex colour fades showed virtually no banding. Grey shades using equal mixes of C, Y and M toner were reproduced faithfully, if a little blotchy.

As a high-speed business colour laser, the FS-C5400DN has little competition if your budget is under £1,000. Mono and colour print quality is decent, paper capacity can be increased massively and its low running costs are unbeatable.

Author: Dave Mitchell