Kyocera Mita FS-2020D

What, no networking?

Mon 27 Apr 2009 // 08:02 UTC

Printing duplex, a standard feature of the FS-2020D, saw a speed of 14.6 sides per minute, which is fair compared with other workgroup machines in the same price bracket.

The step-up-and-print USB port is conveniently positioned

Print quality is good, with light, but well-formed text, right down to small point sizes. Greyscale graphics for graphs and charts show a good range of tones, though fills are slightly uneven, giving some shades a mottled appearance. Our photo test print also exhibited this blotchiness and some minor banding across the height of our landscape image. Both graphics and photos are usable, but we have seen better greys from competitor machines.

As toner is the only consumable, you might think Kyocera Mita machines would be vastly cheaper to run than printers that require new photoconductor drums at regular intervals. It depends on how much the company charges for its toner, of course, but in this case running costs are very low.

With a 12,000-page cartridge costing around £85, the cost per page comes out at 0.70p including VAT. If you look at machines like Lexmark's T650DN, which has a page cost of 1.07p, or the Xerox Phaser 3435, which costs 0.97p per page, there's a considerable saving to be had.

The FS-2020D comes with a two-year warranty as standard and guarantees the drum for three years or 300,000 pages, whichever comes sooner.

Verdict

This is a good, general-purpose office printer, geared well to small workgroups, apart from the lack of a network connection. It's very cheap to run, prints at good speed and produces excellent text and reasonable graphics print. Simple maintenance should keep the running costs down, though the asking price for the printer itself is higher than some of its rivals. ®