Epson Aculaser C2800N review

Epson's Aculaser C2800N is one of the largest, heaviest printers here, but its fast print speeds and low costs make it a strong business printer.

It comes loaded with high-yield toner cartridges that should last for 9,500 black and 5,000 colour pages. When those run out, Epson's high-yield cartridges are great value at £68 for an 8,000-page black cartridge and £118 for each of three 6,000-page colour cartridges. This produced a mixed colour and mono print cost of 6.8p, and mono pages that cost less than a penny. The total cost of ownership is low, with three years of heavy use totalling £3,054.

Unlike most colour laser printers, the C2800 series will switch into its black-only print mode as soon as it runs out of colour toner, so time-sensitive print jobs needn't be interrupted to change the cartridge. A large mono LCD screen provides control over a detailed menu system that lets you configure resolution, page description language emulation, paper settings and more. The same options are available via a well-designed web interface, which allows you to restrict access to designated IP ranges. The driver includes more settings, including numerous print quality modes. The sheer number of these meant it took a few attempts to get the best results in our more challenging print tests. For example, 5pt fonts were rendered perfectly only when we set the default resolution to 1,200dpi and the driver to Advanced Text/Graph mode.

Print quality was generally excellent, with bright colours, sharp text and precise shading. Colours were accurate and greyscale shades were reproduced with greater precision than most laser printers manage. Both photos and business graphics looked great, although the finish produced by the Aculaser's toner wasn't quite as glossy as that of certain other printers here, such as Oki's C3450.

Still, with its quick mono print speeds, the fastest colour prints in the group, great print quality and remarkably low print costs, the C2800N is outstanding and our Best Buy.