Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP105b colour laser printer

The Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP105b is a cheap colour laser printer that is suited to document printing. While its colour print quality isn't as good as a more expensive colour laser or an inkjet, and its consumables are slightly more costly than a more initially expensive laser printer, the Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP105b makes a useful device for a small office or home business.

Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP105b: Design

Our Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP105b was finished in a lurid pink colour, showing Fuji Xerox's support for breast cancer research. Every pink Fuji Xerox printer sold before 30 June 2011 donates $5 to the Sydney Breast Cancer Foundation — a small amount, but every cent helps and we applaud Fuji Xerox for its effort.

The Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP105b isn't too different from the step-up DocuPrint CP205 — it has the same bottom-loading paper cassette with a 150 sheet capacity. Paper is outputted through the DocuPrint CP105b's top, but you can only fit 100 sheets in the output tray at once. Unlike on the Fuji Xerox M205b the CP105b is light on buttons. It doesn't even have the two-line LCD screen of the DocuPrint CP205 so you're forced to do all printer configuration and maintenance through Fuji Xerox's printer driver.

We set the DocuPrint CP105b up with an Apple Macbook Pro, using Windows as well as Mac OS X. In both operating systems the Fuji Xerox installed drivers quickly and without hassle, and we didn't see anything glaring missing from maintenance or toner management options — important when the printer doesn't have a screen to monitor everything.

Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP105b: Performance and print quality

The Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP105b is different from Fuji Xerox's more expensive printers in that it doesn't have a great deal of internal memory, so larger print jobs can take a while to start printing. The Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP105b's first page out to be roughly around 30 seconds with our monochrome test document, while printing in colour bumps up the wait time to just under 40 seconds.

The main hindrance to running off a couple of pages with the Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP105b is the long wait for the first page out. After the first page is produced subsequent sheets come quickly. Once the printer gets up to speed you can expect a colour page every ten seconds or so, so longer print runs at normal printing quality have an average colour printing speed of just under six pages a minute. Black printing is significantly faster as we managed just over ten pages per minute.

Print quality is good for black toner — we prefer laser over inkjet for black document printing purely because of the solid-looking text with no bleeding — and the Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP105b is also acceptable for colour. We thought colour graphics occasionally looked posterised and grainy, but for a professional document they're acceptable. We definitely wouldn't use the DocuPrint CP105b for printing a colour photo, though.

Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP105b: Toner costs

Replacement toner cartridges for the Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP105b — there are four, for black, cyan, magenta and yellow — can be bought from online or retail stores for acceptably low prices, although more expensive printers still have cheaper cartridges overall. The 2000-page black cartridge is $89 and each colour cartridge costs $99, giving the DocuPrint CP105b an ongoing cost of 4.5 cents per black A4 page and 21.2 cents per colour A4 page. These costs are identical to the DocuPrint CP205 which we thought was competitive with other entry-level lasers. We also like the high page yields of the DocuPrint CP105b's toner.

Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP105b: Conclusion

The Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP105b is a cheap printer that would be well suited to a small business or home office with small to moderate printing needs.