In many ways, it's not unreasonable to view the 5110cn as a more powerful big brother to the 3110cn. This applies to its dimensions of 16.9" x 22.8" x 19.6" (42.9 cm x 58 cm x 49.7 cm), its weight of 71.4 lbs (32.4 kg), as well as its MSRP of $1,349, which makes it one of the most expensive printers in this article. The duty cycle is a formidable 95,000 pages per month, and this unit also offers standard duplex printing and much higher paper capacity.

Big, black and bulky, the 5110cn gets by on what it does rather than how it looks.

As with the 3110cn, the 5110cn comes with a 150-sheet multipurpose tray, but its standard drawer holds 500 pages. By adding optional 500-sheet and 1000-sheet drawers to the line-up, a fully loaded 5110cn can accommodate 2150 sheets of paper (at a cost of $229 for the 500-sheet drawer, and $499 for the 1000-sheet drawer). Memory architecture and parts are the same as for the 3110cn, with 128 MB built-in and support for up to an additional 1 GB.

Interestingly, consumables are cheaper for the 5110cn than they are for the 3110cn. A 10,000 page black toner cartridge goes for $55; 8,000 page CYM color cartridges go for $170; and 12,000 page CYM color cartridges cost $230. The same multi-protocol card with wireless capability that's available for the 3110cn fits the 5110cn as well.

If you factor in the cost of the added paper capacity, built-in duplexing, and cheaper consumables, this unit is actually a better deal than the 3110cn - at least, for those who can stomach its upfront cost of nearly $1,350 (MSRP).