Walk into any small- to medium-sized graphic design studio, and the chances are you’ll find one or more A3+ inkjet printers – often in conjunction with a software RIP – used as a proofing tool. And that’s great – as long as you’re producing one-off proofs of no more than a few pages. However, if you do work in such a studio, you might sometimes be faced with proofing a larger document – an entire brochure or catalogue, for instance – and you really can’t afford to wait for the RIP to process the Postscript data from your InDesign file. Plus, if you’re printing a sizeable document you’re likely to run through at least one set of inkjet cartridges – not to mention the sheer volume of paper, if you’re printing single-sided. The alternative? Well, until fairly recently not much – or at least not at a price that could be considered cost-effective by a self-employed designer or small design studio.

In recent years, however, the cost of one alternative – the workgroup colour laser printer – has not exactly plummeted, but dropped to a level that makes it viable for a broader range of users.

For this test we’ve taken six candidates from some of the leading manufacturers and set them head-to-head. All the printers in this group test are networkable – some, such as Konica Minolta’s Magicolor 8650DN and the Lexmark C935DN, with Gigabit Ethernet. All are capable of automatic duplexing, either as standard or as an option.

There is, as you might expect, a comprehensive range of options available for each printer, including additional paper trays, internal hard disks and finishing options such as booklet folding, stapling and saddle stitching, depending on the manufacturer.

In addition, each printer is capable of handling a broad range of media types and weights so, where this information is available, we’ll mention it in the reviews of the individual units.

In fact, the capabilities of most of these printers mean that they are serious candidates if you’re looking to move your leaflet or brochure printing in-house – a common enough business strategy these days. Which raises one final factor for consideration: cost of ownership. Any saving made on no longer paying someone else to do the printing would have to be offset against the not inconsiderable cost of consumables for these printers, so we’ve taken a close look at that too. Let’s see, then, how they stack up.

Buying Advice

The in-house document proofing and production market is clearly one in which there is great competition. In summing up, we’d have to say that you should first take a careful costing of consumables – based on your actual usage – before switching, but there are obviously great benefits to be had in terms of flexibility as well as the logistical ones.

Of the units supplied to us, the Lexmark, while an OK all-rounder, didn’t have the build quality to withstand the rigours of daily life as a workgroup printer – though we’d be delighted to be proved wrong. Its print quality was pretty good, reproducing a clearly differentiated Kodak grey-scale as well as sharp print.

HP, however, provided the greatest disappointment, with its Colour LaserJet 5550DN unable to handle our image file – a paltry 4.4MB PDF – without additional memory. This would suggest that the unit needs more than the standard 160MB, and its total capacity increased to more than 544MB. For mono workgroup printing the HP was pretty sluggish, coming in at a little over two minutes to print 50 copies of our standard Word document. Possibly this model is due for replacement, which would explain its under par performance.

The Canon LBP5960 had an even lower total memory capacity then the HP, yet still managed our image test with its default amount of 128MB. Print quality was good but not exceptional, with our Kodak grey-scale providing evidence of a certain muddiness of reproduction. Like the HP, this is probably a unit best reserved for production of mono booklets. Like most Canon lasers, the LBP5960 is at the heart of a modular printing and finishing system, so it certainly isn’t without flexibility.

With hindsight, the Xerox Phaser 7400 and the OKI C9650N can be seen as two aspects of the same (shared) print engine. If anything, we preferred the Xerox’s clear presentation of its status to the user, both via its front LCD panel, and through its network interface.

Which leaves us with what we think is a clear winner: the Konica Minolta Magicolor 8650DN. Generously specified straight out of the box, the 8650DN tore through all we asked of it with considerable aplomb, and left us with the impression that it was capable of coming back for more. Build quality is excellent, too.