12 Color Laser Printers Explored

Dell Color Laser Printer 3110cn

Dell entered the printer market somewhat later than many other vendors, but has rapidly carved out a niche for itself, particularly in the small office / home office space. This is where the 3110cn makes a pretty nice splash with some pretty nice statistics and an MSRP of around $450.

Though it's something of a massive monolith, the Dell 3110cn packs some printing punch.

Dell's latest generation of printers features what the company calls its Toner Management System, which tracks toner levels and provides automatic notification when levels get low. It even provides a built-in online order form, so busy users can order refills right on the screen, and then get back to work.

The printer is pretty large and fairly heavy: its dimensions are 15.8" x 19.1" x 18.5" (40 cm x 48.5 cm x 47 cm) and it weighs 52.9 lbs (24 kg). Print resolution is 600x600 for monochrome, 2400x2400 for color.

The unit includes a 150-sheet multipurpose paper tray that can accommodate a wide variety of paper and envelope sizes, plus a 250-sheet paper drawer that handles most standard paper sizes (A4, B5, letter, executive, folio, and legal). An optional 550-sheet drawer is also available ($229), as is an optional duplexing unit for two-sided printing ($199). Standard memory is 128 MB, with an additional memory slot than can handle up to 1 GB (for total memory capacity of 1152 MB). The memory form factor is 200-pin SODIMM DDR2 PC2-3200, so even though Dell sells memory for this unit at premium prices ($160 for 1 GB), you can max it out for about $50 using modules available on the open market.

The standard black toner cartridge outputs up to 5,000 pages and costs $76, while standard CYM color cartridges output up to 4,000 pages and cost $120. An 8,000 page black cartridge goes for $110, and an 8,000 page CYM cartridges for $215. An add-on multi-protocol card with wireless support is also available for $149; it confers network printing support for numerous protocols and applications, and also enables 802.11b/g wireless devices to access the printer directly. This is done by plugging a wireless interface into a USB port built into the card itself.