Kyocera Mita FS-C5150DN review

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Verdict:

Its colour prints are slow and lack a glossy sheen, but the FS-C5150DN is great value

Review Date: 11 Apr 2012

Price when reviewed: £287

Supplier: http://www.printerbase.co.uk

Reviewed By: Kat Orphanides

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

Kyocera's FS-C5150DN is a heavy duty printer that’s designed to handle the high page yields required by small-to-medium businesses. Unlike many of its rivals, Kyocera doesn’t quote one-time maximum monthly duty cycle figures, and instead recommends a maximum monthly average of no more than 9,000 pages if you want to keep your printer running smoothly for as long as possible. It’s worth noting that the printer has a 100,000 page OPC drum that isn’t designed to be replaced, which means it’ll probably be more cost-effective to replace the printer when the drum runs out.

Because of the savings made by the fixed drum, the FS-C5150DN‘s print costs and total cost of ownership are remarkably low. It’s good value for money if your printing requirements are slight, costing just £333 over three years, but it is users undertaking medium to heavy-duty printing that’ll benefit the most. If you print 500 mono and 250 colour pages every month for three years you’ll spend just £1,180. That’s far less than you’d spend with most of Kyocera’s rivals.

It's not particularly attractive, but the FS-C5150DN is massively upgradeable.

The FS-C5150DN is big, heavy and not particularly attractive. It's a bit more complicated to assemble than more compact colour lasers, having a waste toner bottle to fit in addition to four toner cartridges, but its clear operating instructions meant we had no major problems physically setting it up, despite its slightly fiddly cartridge locking system. The FS-C5150DN’s massively upgradeable too, taking up to four additional paper trays for a maximum paper capacity of 1,250 pages. Out of the box, it starts with an input and output capacity of 250 pages.

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