Epson AcuLaser C4100

After seeing the impressive quality of Epson's AcuLaser C900 in our budget colour lasers Labs (see issue 109, p126), we were expecting great things from its higher-end sibling. What we weren't expecting, however, was the 35kg beast that arrived for review. This is a seriously big machine; so big, we initially thought it would handle A3 paper sizes.

Instead, you'll find a 500-sheet A4 input tray along with a 100-sheet multipurpose tray to deal with special papers and a manual feeder for single sheets. Given the sheer bulk of the unit, you'll thankfully only need to access the top and front with any regularity. It's all solidly built to withstand intense use, hardware setup proved easy enough and the toners installed without fuss. The software also includes a status monitor, which provides reasonably comprehensive consumables information. Front-panel feedback is functional, if basic.

In terms of performance, the first page of our 50-page plain text document took 15 seconds to appear, with the other pages emerging at just over 24ppm. The only fly in the ointment is the C4100's habit of calibrating every 32 pages, which takes around 40 seconds, reducing the overall speed to 18ppm. The good news is that we had no complaints over general text quality. Moving on to our colour letter-headed document again resulted in an 18ppm speed, although the processing time increased to 34 seconds. We were a little concerned over the logo at the top of the letter, though, which contained specks of other colours, giving it a mottled appearance.

Our 12-page Excel test began appearing after 32 seconds of thinking, and continued at a respectable rate of just under 26ppm thereafter. Horizontal and vertical banding was immediately obvious, though, with muted colours and a lack of definition on white text over a coloured background. Blocks of colour also lacked solidity, with greys being particularly patchy.

There were similar problems with our 24-page DTP document, although high-resolution colour photographs were treated more kindly and a variety of fonts were reproduced well. Print times were again good, exceeding 25ppm, but most of the images were still banded and washed out. Printing five copies of our four-page DTP test was again at a speedy 24ppm, but quality remained a problem. Coloured text was fine, although definition began to deteriorate at smaller sizes. This was confirmed by our mono-quality document, where anything under 6pt text became unclear. While that size may not be used with great regularity, it certainly calls into question the AcuLaser's ability to reproduce detail accurately.

Printing our photomontage at the highest quality settings failed to improve matters. Banding and definition aside, difficult areas such as skin tones were reproduced effectively, but the overall effect was poor. While the AcuLaser C900 shone at this test, the C4100 exhibited half-toning, banded graduations and a lack of neutrality on mono parts of the document.

Overall mono and colour printing costs are costly, at 1.07p and 7.83p respectively. Due to this, both general mono and colour uses are better served by similarly priced units like the Kyocera Mita FS-C5016N. Printing costs are less than half that of the C4100 and, while graphics quality isn't leagues ahead, it's enough to make an everyday difference.

Author: Ross Burridge