Dell B5465dnf review

Dell’s latest mono MFP targets large workgroups with big printing demands and an eye on value. Costing just over £1,800, the B5465dnf offers a speed of 66ppm, making it the fastest printer in its class.

It combines print, copy, scan and fax functions, and tops them off with built-in duplexing. It also has an enormous 10.2in colour touchscreen, which looks very impressive but isn’t well made – it broke away from its hinged mounting during testing.

Nevertheless, the touchscreen offers easy access to printing features, plus a slick, guided installation. The Windows driver provides plenty of useful features, including a print and hold option that requires a PIN to be entered at the printer to release the document. You can also scan documents to an FTP server and print from or scan to USB sticks.

Print speeds are on the money, with a basic 60-page Word document printed at 66ppm, while duplexing reduced that to 40ppm. Our 24-page DTP document was printed at the same rate. The printer is a speed demon for copy operations, too: we copied a double-sided 15-page document onto single sheets in only 18 seconds. Helpfully, the scanner can detect and scan double-sided pages, so you can mix them up in the same copy job.

It isn’t all good news. As with Kyocera’s FS-4300DN, text output at standard font sizes was fine, but graphics and photos were marred by banding and a lack of detail. Costs are a high 2.2p per page with the standard 6,000-page toner cartridges; this falls to 1p with the 25,000-page use-and-return cartridge.

Along with its slick colour LCD control panel, the B5465dnf scores highly for its fast print and copy speeds. It’s also good value, but output and build quality aren’t good enough for us to recommend it.

Author: Dave Mitchell