Selecting a printer, whether for home or small office use, can be overwhelming, especially with the wide range of functions and features they come in. There is also the price factor that many tend to base their decision on.

These days, inkjet printers are the printers of choice; they are affordable and feature-packed. However, who is to say that laser printers aren’t equally as affordable when it comes to cost of ownership. This month we look at the Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP115 w – a single function colour laser printer that is full of surprises.

Leveraging on Legacy

You will often hear about Fuji Xerox if you’re familiar with the enterprise imaging segment; they are one of the best when it comes to providing high volume multi-function printing solution. It was a pleasant surprise for us at PC.com when a fairly compact printer from the brand arrived.

While its design is nothing to shout about, it has a small footprint – comparable with inkjet printers targeted to small office, home office (SOHO) users. This is a printer that is suitable to be used in a retail store back-end office, seeing as it is compact, and provides crisp and clear output.

The DocuPrint CP115 w also has wireless connectivity, which allows for easy setup. If your router has a WPS button, it is easily paired using this function. We did have a little problem setting up initially, but it was resolved as quickly as it cropped up. Set-up was almost pain-free, suffice to say.

Print-and-Dash

More often than not, we print text-heavy documents in the office, and this DocuPrint CP115 w is the perfect machine to do it. Since they were mostly monochrome, the printer churned out our single pages at lightning speed. Even when it was full-colour, the laser printer churns it out with ease.

On this end, laser printers will have more advantage comparatively to inkjet printers – the former is faster, produces better quality and probably less noisy when printing colour.

If you’re in a hurry, laser printers also ensure that you’ll be able to grab your print-out without having to wait for it to dry. The chances of smudging are close to none. We’ve had our fair share of print-and-dash moments in the office, and the DocuPrint CP115 w saved the day when our own office laser printer was down.

The only downside to using the DocuPrint CP115 w is its manual duplex function. In our effort to save paper in the office, we do try to print on both sides. With this particular model, you would need to manually flip and place your one-side printed pages for it to print on the other.  Unfortunately, when you’re in a hurry, the meme of ‘ain’t nobody got time for that’ is closer to the truth.

Amazing Cost of Ownership

That said, even with this minor (and in all honestly, attributed by our laziness) issue, the DocuPrint CP115 w is a great buy. Comparing to the Canon imageCLASS LBP7110Cw and HP LaserJet Pro CP1025nw, the DocuPrint CP115 w’s performance falls somewhere in the middle – a perfect balance in output capacity and functions.

The huge advantage is that its RRP of RM847 is unbelievably affordable in its class, making it far more accessible to be used at home or in a small-to-medium enterprise. As a reference, the RRP for the Canon and HP are RM1,400 and RM1,169.25 respectively.

Price: RM847

Measurements (L x W x H): 394 x 304 x 234mm

Print Speed: 10ppm Colour, 12ppm Monochrome

First Page Out: 17.3 seconds Colour, 15.0 seconds Monochrome

Memory Standard/Maximum: 128MB

Duty Cycle: 30,000 pages or 5 years

Print Resolution (dpi): 1200 x 2400 dpi (Fuji Xerox Imaging Technology)

Image Processing: 525MHz

Auto 2-sided Printing (Duplex): Manual

Media Size: Paper Tray: A4, B5, A5, Letter, Executive, Folio (215.9 mm x 330.2 mm), Legal, Envelope (Com-10/Monarch /DL /C5). Custom size width 76.2 to 215.9mm. Length 127 to 355.6mm 60-163gsm

Paper Input Capability: 150 sheets

Paper Output Capability: 100 sheets face-down

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Value: 9.5/10

Performance: 8/10

Design: 7.5/10

Usability: 8/10

Features: 8/10

Total Score: 8.2

Verdict: If you’ve dreamt of owning a colour laser printer, this is the model for you