Product Reviews

Laser printers are often big, square boxes, but Kyocera's new budget mono range is different. Designed by FA Porsche, the three models share a slightly arched look and black and cream plastics that should complement most PCs and monitors.

The FS-820 is the mid-range model. Kyocera says this model, like the entry-level FS-720, prints 16 pages per minute (ppm). However, the FS-820 adds a parallel port, 1,200dpi enhanced printing and Printer Control Language (PCL) 6 support. The 18ppm PostScript FS-920 tops the range.

Kyocera's ECOSYS products aim to reduce waste and print costs by cutting down on consumables. The FS-820's drum is factory installed and guaranteed for the shorter of 100,000 pages or three years, so only the toner need be replaced during the product's lifetime. A single-consumable approach should make the FS-820 easy to set up, but it took several attempts for us to lock the reluctant supply in place.

The

ADVERTISEMENT

range is aimed at the home and small office, but Kyocera's installation program is clunky and confusing to the layman. The user is presented with a port selection dialog that most USB printer installations avoid and there isn't enough guidance for the non-technical user. Once installed, the FS-820 was close to its rated speed on both 50-page tests, where it achieved 15.7ppm. Printing the more complex colour test reduced its output to just 4.7ppm, though, which is slow for a mono laser.

Print quality on our graphical tests was fine, although some photos showed plenty of horizontal banding. Text quality was unusually poor. Characters were dark, but no print setting produced the crisp outlines we would expect to see from a laser. Tiny amounts of toner seemed to stray outside certain letters, such as between the line and dot of an 'i', when using any mode other than the faint EcoPrint.

Running costs are the FS-820's great strength. Its normal capacity toner is rated for 6,000 pages and should cost less than £61 once it finds its way into online shops. Using it, each page should cost a penny or less, lower than any rival product we've tested. Over time this may offset the printer's price.

The FS-820's text quality is a disappointment because otherwise it's a good printer. It's unusually quiet, simple to maintain and cheap to run. Given its strengths it is more suited to the home. However, while many users will find its text printing adequate, they may struggle with its tricky install program.