Epson EPL-6200L review

Gallery

Verdict:

The EPL-6200L prints good-quality text quickly, and produces decent graphics for a mono laser printer. It's quite expensive to run, however, and fairly basic given its above-average price. It's a match for some printers here, but it shows its age next to Samsung's ML-2510

Review Date: 21 Aug 2006

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: Simon Handby

Our Rating 2 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

We first reviewed Epson's venerable EPL-6200L in Labs, Shopper September 2004. Its price has dropped by £43 since our last review, but it still costs more than £100 and is the second-most expensive printer in this test.

Despite its considerable price, the EPL-6200L has the most basic paper handling in the group. It stores paper in a simple fold-down 150-sheet tray with no orientation markings for paper or envelopes. There's no single feed slot, so you need to unload plain paper before printing envelopes, which the printer crumples. At least the steeply raked output tray keeps printed pages tidy.

Setting up the EPL-6200L held no nasty surprises. It takes similar-looking consumables to Konica Minolta's PagePro 1400W, and it too produced a mild antiseptic smell when printing. Replacement toners last for 3,000 pages, and the printer's separate drum unit should last for 20,000 pages.

This printer was some way from its rated speed in our text tests, but its performance was still above average for the group. Only Samsung's ML-2510 was quicker in our mixed-colour test. Its driver doesn't offer much control over resolution or print quality, and it's also the only driver in this test that can't print multiple pages on each sheet of paper.

Despite the driver's lack of quality options, the EPL-6200L's print quality gave no cause for complaint. Its dark, crisp text was among the best in the group, and grey text was clear despite the printer's low 600dpi resolution.

Illustrations and PowerPoint slides in our mixed-colour document were a little dark, but otherwise very good. Detail was well preserved in the light areas of photographs, but some subtlety was lost in darkly shaded regions. All graphics printed with some mild banding.

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