The Way We See It
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| Excellent |
| Good |
| Average |
| Poor |
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| Setup |
9.9 |
| Print Quality |
9.4 |
| Speed |
8.0 |
| Paper Handling |
9.3 |
| Supplies |
10.0 |
| Service/Reliabilty |
7.5 |
| TOTAL |
54.1 |
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In Short: The Kyocera-Mita FS-C5016N is a very long and cryptic name for one of the best desk top, color laser printers currently available. The C5016, (for short), lives up to the lofty reputation of the monochrome Kyocera printers as having the lowest operating cost of any other printer in their respective categories. The C5016 has the fewest consumables to replace of any color laser to date. Four color-coded toner cartridges install easily from the top making this the fastest color laser setup of all time. Unlike all other color laser printers, the C5016 requires only the replacement of the four high capacity toners. The end result is an astonishingly low cost per color page rating of 4.6 cents per page @ 20% coverage, which is approximately half that of most other color lasers. The single-pass Kyocera laser engine can print up to seventeen color or black & white pages per minute. The controller inside the C5016 is packed with features including a 400MGz Power PC processor, PS3 & PCL6 emulations, and lots of other extras most people would never use but should, like resident barcodes and forms on-demand capability. The software setup was very smooth due to the advanced driver installer provided by Kyocera-Mita. The print quality at 600 dpi was surprisingly some of the best we've seen. The test photos we printed looked extremely smooth and the color accuracy was great. Black text also looked above average and color text appeared solid. The printer overall is much smaller than it's competitors yet still has a 500 sheet letter/legal feeder and a 100-sheet MP tray for heavier stock with available straight paper path. The Kyocera C5016 will work in almost any environment and includes a built-in 100 Base T Ethernet print server for universal compatibility with MAC OS, UNIX, or most any other OS. The C5016 has several options including up to three additional 500-sheet feeders, auto-duplex unit, envelope feeder, RAM up-grade, and internal hard drive.
 The Bottom Line: The Kyocera-Mita C5016N combines one of the most advanced laser printer engine designs with a powerful controller in a relatively small, attractive package. The C5016 is the least expensive color laser printer to own and operate without tradeoffs. It has the fewest consumables to replace and offers an array of paper handling options. With a duty cycle of up to 80k pages per month, this printer can handle the load of a network and should pay for itself very quickly. We think this Kyocera-Mita FS-C5016N is a winner despite it's cryptic name.
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