Fuji Xerox DocuPrint C2120 colour laser printer

The Fuji Xerox DocuPrint C2120 colour laser printer improves slightly on the DocuPrint C2100. For the extra money you get little more than a memory boost, but this sub-$1000 colour laser printer still shines when it comes to value, print speed and quality.

It offers USB and Ethernet connections. The Fuji Xerox DocuPrint C2120 has a 250-sheet paper cassette, which should suffice for small to medium offices. Automatic duplexing costs an extra $298.99, while increasing paper capacity will cost $315 per additional 250-sheet cassette. If you want to access the printer's Secure Print and Sample Print features, you also need to purchase a 512MB or 1024MB module, for $845.19 and $1449.00, respectively.

The DocuPrint C2120 has a 2-line monochrome LCD. Using its control panel, you can display a DHCP-assigned IP address, initialise network settings and even manually configure the printer's IP filter. Maintenance tasks like colour registration are also available from the control panel.

These functions can also be accessed from a Web-based interface. You can also use it to access other network security tools like 802.1X authentication. E-mail notifications can be configured, and administrators can place limits on users' printing.

In our tests, the DocuPrint C2120 printed the first page of black and white documents in 17.6 seconds; subsequent pages printed at an average rate of 20 pages per minute. Colour documents printed at a rate of 18.2ppm. These speeds aren't particularly fast but are adequate for the price.

The Fuji Xerox DocuPrint C2120 lacks the half-toning capability of high-end laser printers, but print quality is still good. Our printed mono text documents were crisp and accurate, though at smaller font sizes characters appeared dark grey instead of black.

As with the DocuPrint C2200, the DocuPrint C2120 required some experimentation and colour re-registration during set up in order to attain the best possible results. We chose the "Vivid" colour profile, which produced particularly vibrant reds and yellows, as well as dark blacks. Green hues weren't as consistent. Text suffered from shadowing when superimposed on a blue background. Colours, in general, were more consistent than normal for a laser printer. Despite some inconsistencies, the DocuPrint C2120 colour laser printer handles professional presentation documents surprisingly well.

The DocuPrint C2120 colour laser printer has an average running cost of 24.9c per A4 page, which is fairly high. If you don't require automatic duplexing or Secure Print, the standard configuration of the DocuPrint C2120 has plenty to offer.

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