Dell 3130CN – Powerful printer
Dell 3130CN is a laser color printer and is recommended for small office/workgroup related purposes. It is really capable in a lot of areas and there is plenty of room inside for growth. The broad, tall Dell 3130CN is a powerful printer and I was pleased with the test results. Plain text pages printed at a speed of 25.3 ppm or pages per minute, this is amongst the fastest I have ever seen to date. The printer prints graphical documents at speed of 5.7 ppm which is equally impressive too. Speed is not the only impressive factor in this printer, the text quality was really crisp and the photos quite realistic even on a plain paper.
There is power available on the Dell 3130CN and hence I was surprised to see that the manufacturer chose to omit the duplexer function from the standard configuration of the unit. This would have saved a lot of paper and there wouldn’t have been any major sacrifices in speed either. There is an optional duplexer sold for $199 but Dell should have included it in first place especially printers like Konica Minolta’s magicolor 2530DL and Lexmark C543dn having it with a lower price tag than the 3130CN.
Other than that, the configuration on the Dell 3130CN is quite generous. You get 250 trays for output and input and there is also a 150 sheet roomy multipurpose tray. Along with that, there is an 550 sheet second input tray (optional) which costs $229 and it expands the capacity significantly. The colored and decal markings are strategically placed and this makes it easy to figure out the common tasks like changing toner and loading paper. A monochrome, two line display with the navigation keys make it easy to access the menus.
My only complaint with the Dell 3130CN is the front panel. You may accidentally unfold the printer’s multipurpose tray while opening this panel. Also, the side button which opens the front panel of the printer for revealing toner cartridges is hard to find.
Toner costs of the Dell 3130CN aren’t astronomical. I will recommend you to get higher capacity toner cartridges for saving money. Out of the box, the printer has 4000 page capacity black tank and a 3000 page capacity yellow, magenta and cyan cartridges. At such capacities, you will have to pay two cents for a text page and 12 cents for a colored one.
