Fuji Xerox Australia DocuPrint C2200

Fuji Xerox's DocuPrint C2200 colour laser printer offers better print speeds and quality compared to low-end colour lasers, but its price we would have liked to see some more features included as standard.

The Fuji Xerox DocuPrint C2200 is quite tall, as its four toners are aligned vertically rather than the horizontally like the HP Colour LaserJet CP2025dn. This isn't unusual for a colour laser printer, and it makes the toners easily accessible. With high capacity yields reaching to 9000 pages each you won't have to change them too often, however. You should expect a running cost of around 19.3c per A4 page during normal use.

The printer offers USB and Ethernet connectivity and can hold up to 400 sheets in a front paper cassette and multi-purpose fold-out tray. Other worthwhile features are optional, however. These include an automatic duplex unit, increased paper capacity, a 40GB hard disk and a 512MB memory upgrade (for a total of 768MB). With these options added, this colour laser printer becomes more functional but much more expensive.

The Fuji Xerox DocuPrint C2200 has a two-line monochrome LCD panel and a four-button navigation pad. Like many networked laser printers, obtaining information about network settings requires you to print out a report.

Fuji Xerox quotes a monthly duty cycle of 70,000 pages for the DocuPrint C2200, which is high enough to meet the needs of medium-sized businesses. Its security is also commendable, with a Secure Print function accessible both locally and when the laser printer is networked. A Web interface provides is best means of administering the printer, and it offers access to more security options such as 802.1X authentication, IP filtering and SSL. The DocuPrint C2200 can also provide e-mail notifications.

The DocuPrint C2200 colour laser printer performed capably in our tests, with print speeds remaining at a consistent 26 pages per minute. The first page of mono documents came out in 11.5sec, compared to 14.4sec for colour documents.

Print quality is very good for the most part. The DocuPrint C2200 laser printer has a half-toning option for colour printing, but this isn't available for mono documents. Nevertheless, text is accurate at all font sizes and proved particularly crisp at 7pt.

Colour adjustment options are quite comprehensive, with the ability to choose from various colour presets on both a hardware and software level. Not all of these presets improve print quality, and we found many often led to misalignment of colour backgrounds and overlayed text; some experimentation will allow you to choose the best option for your needs. At its best, the Fuji Xerox DocuPrint C2200 produces vivid colours. The comparatively low 600x600dpi resolution can have a noticeable effect on some colours, with green in particular showing this effect. Though it won't suit photo printing, the laser printer will produce good quality professional colour documents.

If you need a durable colour laser printer with decent security and good print quality, the Fuji Xerox DocuPrint C2200 is a viable option, but it would be nice if some of the optional extras were included as standard.