Canon LBP-5200

The price of colour lasers has now dropped enough to make them worth considering for large volume printing. The LBP-5200 is the latest, and cheapest, addition to Canon's Laser Shot range.

Cheap doesn't have to mean nasty and the LBP-5200's features surprised us. It's capable of churning out mono text at a rate of 19ppm (pages per minute), which is Canon's claimed print speed, but doesn't take into account the 24 seconds for the first page to appear.

Colour images mixed with text took a bit more processing time. When we printed 10 PDF documents they arrived in two minutes, 44 seconds, which equates to around four ppm. A full A4 colour image took 38 seconds to print.

Print quality was impressive considering the printer's cost. Black text was sharp, accurate and legible at all point sizes tested (2-100pt). Colour graphics were good and largely free from the laser hatching effect.

Colour photo quality was admirable, but lacked the depth, clarity and richness of inkjet printing. Canon's Automatic Image Refinement technology, which allows an equivalent printing resolution of 9,600 x 600dpi, helps out, but if you're after photo prints then an inkjet's your best bet.

One slight downside is the 125-sheet paper feed, which is exposed to the elements and feels slightly flimsy. Paper has to be removed if you want to print envelopes and suchlike. A 250-sheet cassette and a network module are optional.

Running costs are average, with toner at around £45 for the three-colour cartridges and £52 for black toner, lasting 2,000 pages and 5,000 pages respectively at five per cent coverage.

Overall, the LBP-5200 is a quality laser at a good price.