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Dell B2360dn review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £136
inc VAT

The Dell B2360dn is cheap to buy, yet it's very fast with top quality prints. It's a great mono laser printer.

Dell’s B2360dn is a mono laser printer with a fast 38 pages-per-minute (ppm) maximum speed. It’s aimed at small and medium business, so its standard features include automatic duplex (double-sided) printing, and a gigabit wired Ethernet port. There’s also a 1,200 dots-per-inch (dpi) maximum print resolution, although the default 600dpi is fine for most work. Dell quotes a maximum 80,000 page per month duty cycle, while the imaging drum is rated for 60,000 pages, so durability should be high and maintenance comparatively low.

This printer’s main 250-page input cassette feels built to last, and there’s a well-designed 50-page multipurpose feed above it. Adjust the cassette for A4 paper and it stands slightly proud at the rear, but the design keeps it covered to avoid dust getting in. Those needing greater capacity can add a second 550-sheet cassette for around £115. The printer’s standard 150-page paper output tray is a little shallow, but a wide paper stop helps keep printed pages in good order. At the top is a control panel with a two-line backlit display – it’s basic, but sufficient. The only notable omission is a USB port for direct printing.

The B2360dn delivered its first page of text in just eight seconds, and printed 25 pages in 45 seconds (33.3ppm). It was generally just as fast when printing graphics, but pauses before each of four PowerPoint slides meant it managed only 21.2ppm in our 24-page test. Allowed to rest for an hour, it produced a first page of text in only nine seconds.

Print quality was exceptional, with the crisp black text you’d expect from a laser printer coupled with excellent photo prints and graphics. Our tests had progressive, accurate shading, virtually no banding, and no obvious half-toning patterns or other weaknesses.

They don’t look alike, but the Dell B2360dn is very similar to the Lexmark MS415dn Pro, which in specification and the B2360dn performed almost identically across our tests. Our main reservation about the MS415dn is that its print costs are a little on the high side, and the same is true of the B2360dn. Using its 8,500-page high capacity return programme toner, costs work out at just over 1.6p per page, although this is more forgivable given this printer’s significantly lower price.

Where reliability and service are paramount, we’d still buy the MS415dn Pro for its three-year warranty, which is an optional extra for the B2360dn. If a year’s warranty is sufficient, though, no similarly priced printers can touch the B2360dn’s combination of pace and quality. It’s a Best Buy.

Hardware
TechnologyMono laser
Maximum print resolution1,200×1,200dpi
Number of colours (cartridges)1 (1)
Standard interfacesUSB, gigabit Ethernet
Optional interfacesNone
Dimensions (HxWxD)263x399x382mm
Weight14.1kg
Noise54dB(A)
Duty cycle (pages per month)80,000 (max), 2,500 (recommended)
Paper handling
Maximum paper sizeA4/legal
Maximum paper weight
Standard paper trays (capacity)2 (300)
Maximum paper trays (capacity)3 (850)
DuplexYes
Features
Supported operating systemsWindows XP or later, Mac OS X 10.5 or later, various Linux distributions, Novell Netware 5.x or later
LanguagesPCL 5C, PCL 5E, PostScript 3, XPS
Other featuresTwo-line mono LCD
Buying information
WarrantyOne-year RTB
Price£136
Consumable parts and prices593-11167 black toner (8,500-pages) £130, 724-10492 drum (60,000 pages) £47
Quoted life of supplied black toner2,500 pages (ISO/IEC 19752)
Quoted life of supplied colour tonerN/A
Cost per ISO/IEC 24712 A4 page inc VAT1.6p
Cost per ISO/IEC 24712 A4 page inc VAT (colour part)N/A
Cost per ISO/IEC 24712 A4 page inc VAT (mono part)1.6p
Capacity of supplied drum/s (pages)60,000 pages
Suppliercpc.farnell.com
Detailswww.dell.co.uk
Part code210-41173

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