Canon i-Sensys LBP5300 toner cartridges

Canon i-Sensys LBP5300,this network ready colour laser printer provides high-quality shared printing for professional use, with 21ppm colour and mono output, automatic double-sided printing and All-in-One colour cartridges. Discount Canon laser toner cartridges for this colour printer are available from Cartridge Concept together with our fully guaranteed compatible cartridges, also listed below.

 Canon i-SENSYS LBP5300 Review

Canon's i-SENSYS LBP5300 is a fast, single-pass colour laser printer. It is possible to connect it directly to an individual pc by means of USB, or employ its network port to share it among users.

The LBP5300 prints using a host-based driver. At this price tag, we'd usually will be expecting a printer to allow for both PCL as well as PostScript print languages. The LBP5300's 250-sheet input cassette and 100-sheet multipurpose feed also seem to be rudimentary for the price, however the machine includes a duplex unit therefore it can automatically print on the two sides of every sheet of paper. It really is a helpful function if you'd like to reduce paper or perhaps print extended pamphlets with the minimum of bother, however we have found it on less expensive machines.

For a bulky colour laser printer, the LBP5300 is simple to unpack and set up. Canon's install program provides a choice of an Easy or Custom install, however the complete software bundle includes merely a driver and user manual. Setup found the unit on our network and completed devoid of incident. The print driver's format will probably be recognizable to anyone who has previously used a current Canon inkjet, with the alternatives practically divided in to four themed groupings, each of which is shown on a discrete tab. The job-status monitor is very useful with regard to a network printer which might be situated in a different room to the user, however we had to turn off the shrill tone it played at the conclusion of each job.

While Canon boasts comparatively modest speeds for the LBP5300, it was actually capable of getting unusually close to them in our testing. It was particularly true for colour. Photos equally printed extremely rapidly, with six 6x4in pictures on three A4 pages taking just 25 seconds. Sadly, this rate would seem to come at the expense of print quality. Colour photographs suffered with a very sickly, yellow-green pallor which had us worried for the well being of the portrait subjects, and a lot of other graphics ended up being woefully off-colour. Black text, at least, was really good, by way of dark, crisp fonts right down to very small two-point size.

We were pleased with the LBP5300's speed when duplex printing. It created the 50-page Draft test in two minutes and 33 seconds, printing it on 25 sheets of paper at a rate of 19.6 sides a minute. It is abnormal for a printer to match its single-sided results when printing both sides, and the LBP5300 is definitely the first model we have tested that virtually accomplishes this. It's also pretty quick to begin printing after having a long interval of inactivity, with a page of black text appearing within just 18 seconds right after the printer had been kept unused for a day. That's just six seconds more time than the exact same test required when the machine had been freshly utilised.

The LBP5300's paper cassette is extravagantly labelled with instructions with regard to loading paper and also cleaning jams, but the icon representing the correct orientation is stamped into the metal base and is confusing. Luckily though, the multipurpose tray is labelled clearly for paper and envelopes. The printer feeds envelopes very slowly, and prints them perfectly without any subsequent crumpling whatsoever.

The supplied Canon i-SENSYS LBP5300 printer cartridges are full-capacity, each of which is rated for 6,000 pages. This is actually generous, and also affordable replacements ensure this printer will prove relatively inexpensive to have within the medium and long term, although not for very light use. This is certainly encouraging, but it is not enough to offset the printer's relatively elementary specification and inadequate colour print quality. We can not recommend it at this cost.