There are modestly sized low-intensity laser printers that sit in a corner of the office quietly rolling out small print jobs. And there are hefty workgroup printers like this one, designed to service the needs of an extensive staff list.
The Kyocera FS-C2126MFP isn’t a small printer, but it’s tall rather than wide and deep, and its actual footprint isn’t huge given its capabilities. It’ll take up little more room than a typical printer costing half the price, although you’ll want a strong table to support its 36.5kg weight.
In keeping with typical workgroup models, its looks are no more than functional. The heavy-duty scanning and copying component forms the rather bulbous top part of the printer. Here you also find the control panel, accompanied by a plain text display. We found the control system simple to use, despite its lack of niceties, and the careful arrangement of buttons makes it relatively intuitive given the wealth of complex features.
The Kyocera FS-C2126MFP has some strong security options. SSL data encryption and IPSec allow for private and secure communications across the network, while the Private Print functionality makes it easier for users to choose when the printer processes their job, allowing them to keep documents private from other users.
The included KMnet Viewer software for Windows lets you monitor all Kyocera printers from a PC on the network. Network managers can tap into a more advanced features set and restrict access to certain functions on specific printers, or give privileges to users with passwords.
As standard, the Kyocera FS-C2126MFP comes with a 250-sheet paper tray and an additional 50-sheet multi-purpose tray. This may not seem impressive for a heavy-duty printer, but you can buy two additional 500-sheet feeders, the PF-520 and PF-530, costing around £205 and £285 respectively. These will bring the Kyocera FS-C2126MFP up to a handsome 1300 sheets.
Inside, 1024MB of memory is provided. This should be more than enough for big print jobs, although you can double the complement should your company’s needs be more demanding. The 667MHz PowerPC 464 processor is powerful enough to keep the printer galloping along, and the list of emulations (PCL 6 5c/XL, KPDL 3) and font support (93 outline fonts in PCL 6 and KPDL 3) are solid.
The scanning component is highly capable, and test images displayed faithful levels of reproduction. The Kyocera FS-C2126MFP is fast enough to work as a photocopier – turning up over 20 pages a minute – and this model also has fax facilities.
Should you not want faxing, you might want to consider the otherwise quite similar FS-C2026MFP+, which should cost around £80-£90 less.
The Kyocera FS-C2126MFP is about speed, and it has plenty of that. For black text it gets impressively close to its stated speed of 26ppm, turning out a real-world figure of 25.2ppm. This is considerably faster than other printers we’ve covered.
Duplexing drops this speed by only just over a quarter, which is very impressive. The text quality is strong, with crisp well-defined text and plenty of definition. Colour prints take only marginally longer, with the figure dropping to 23.4ppm, although the results are a notch down on the text quality.
The light palette is inoffensive, but the colours lack a little punch. It’ll be fine for presentation print-outs. But for quality photos, the Kyocera FS-C2126MFP isn’t the best choice.
Running costs are competitive, with pages of black available for around 1.3p each. Colour costs rather more, however, and 5p for a page is affordable but not stunning given the high cost of the printer itself – the considerably cheaper Brother MFC-J6910DW can more or less match that figure.
Comments
David A Farrer Ltd said: Have found this to be an excellent printer excelling in both connectivity and features Kyocera are wonderful to deal with and answer questions quickly The original toner cartridges from Kyocera are so reasonably priced that you would never need to consider compatibles Price per page is around 1p per page which is excellent for this mid range printer We have our answering machine connected through it it scans to PDF emails - excellent Build quality is far superior to the usual small office machines drum is half the price of other manufacturers and has a 20000 page life Very please very impressed way better than the usual small office laser all-in-ones
Fasdfsdaf said: Why do they call this TINY printercopier for BIGFAST and what not This is for small offices with very few people And it is just 1 step above the home segment We actually sells many of these that is placed in normal family homes OK for school work and your day by day printer needs in a modern homeIf you have a home office it will handle that too But to call it an alternative for larger offices is wrong It cost to much to print a page and it can not handle the volumes