Product Reviews

While the LaserJet 2600N reviewed on page 28 is an unconventional printer, Canon's Laser Shot LBP5200 is exactly what we would expect from an entry-level colour laser: it's a large and heavy four-pass device, with a minimal control panel and no network interface.

Having said that, an ordinary specification doesn't necessarily make a printer inferior. Canon's conventional approach has produced a very affordable product. Its quoted speeds of 19 pages per minute (ppm) mono and 4ppm in colour are a touch adrift from some of the entry-level competition, but in mono at least it should comfortably outpace the HP.

The Laser Shot is shipped without its toners in place, so the first job is to remove some shipping locks and install them. Each colour slots neatly into the printer's carousel, but a button press is required to rotate it in between them. A few other shipping locks

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must be removed before the printer is ready, leaving you with enough orange plastic to start a children's toy company.

Budget colour lasers often have no paper cassette, and Canon doesn't fit one to the Laser Shot. Its 150-sheet all-purpose tray is adequate for light use, but it isn't ideal as it leaves paper exposed to dust and other elements. You'll need to unload the plain paper supply if you want to print envelopes, but the Canon doesn't crumple them.

When first switched on, the Laser Shot takes a couple of minutes to whirr and clunk before it's ready for its first print. It's quicker from standby, though, and we timed the first mono page out at 20 seconds. Our colour document seemed to take a long time to spool, but the printer still despatched it at 3.8ppm, which is a decent performance for a budget device.

Printing in mono, the LBP5200 was a little further from its quoted speeds. Its 16.3ppm in our 50-page tests wasn't too bad, but Epson's AcuLaser C1100 was 7.5ppm quicker. Prints from the Canon were almost a match for the AcuLaser's high quality, but comparatively inaccurate colour in photographs let them down.

The Laser Shot is a sound and affordable colour laser with reasonable running costs. It's up against fierce competition though, some of which come with such features as automatic double-sided printing and network ports. Epson's C1100 has neither, but its superior print quality and speed edge this printer out of contention.