Dell has recently updated its entire laser printer line-up, with the new models having faster print speeds and additional features over the previous generation of printers. The flagship of the new mono laser line is the 5310n, a 1,200 x 1,200dpi, 47ppm printer; Dell's fastest printer to date.

It is also fully RoHS (Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment) compliant, a directive from the European Parliament aimed - as you might have guessed - at restricting the use of hazardous chemicals and substances in new equipment.

The 5310n is a chunky beast as is the norm for a workgroup printer, although it's not as heavy as it appears, at around 19kg. It looks imposing in the familiar black and silver-grey of Dell's business printers, standing on its 500-sheet paper tray.

Using a front-loading design, a door in the front doubles as the auxiliary feed tray while a flap above this folds back to enable access to the toner/imaging combo drum, which slides in and out without too much bother.

To control the 5310n there is an LCD control panel sitting in the middle of the front panel, which displays menu options, along with just four buttons sitting under it; Menu, Navigation, Back and Cancel.

The 5310n is compatible with a wide range of operating systems including Mac OS 10.4 and a number of Linux flavours, and it features full PCL6 and Postscript 3 support. Included as standard are USB 2.0, parallel and LAN interfaces but if you want wireless networking this is available as an option (£199 plus VAT), as is a 500-sheet duplex unit (£154 plus VAT).

Like many printers in this market segment you can expand the 5310n's paper handling capabilities as your company grows. You can stack up to four additional 500-page input trays (£142 plus VAT each) under the printer, which gives a total - including the 100-page multipurpose tray - of 2,600 sheets. There's also an option of adding up to three additional 650-page output expanders (£163 plus VAT each). The printer has a quoted monthly duty cycle of up to 250,000 pages.

The 5310n comes with a 10,000-page (at 5 percent coverage) toner cartridge with replacements costing £87 plus VAT. There are also 20,000-page (£114 plus VAT) and 30,000-page (£144 plus VAT) alternatives.

To achieve its stunning print speed the 5310n uses a 514MHz engine with 128MB of memory as standard, which can be increased to a maximum of 640MB via a 100-pin DDR DIMM slot. And its 47ppm quoted speed was borne out by our tests.

Print quality is good for text and even photographs are presentable, being printed on the light side so that detail and contrast are captured. That's unusual for a mono laser; in general such machines tend to print photos very dark.

Verdict
Easy to install, use and - probably most important of all - manage, the 5310n is ideal for bigger offices where fast print times are essential.

Company: Dell

Contact: 0870 353 3924

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