Fuji Xerox, usually a player in enterprise arena, pushes into the SMB and home markets with this tidy little unit.
Despite a strong presence in the corporate space, Fuji Xerox had generally ignored the potential of the SMB market. That changed late last year with a new range of printers and all-in-ones including the DocuPrint CP205. The idea was to bring various technologies developed by the company to a wider market.
The overall styling, compact dimensions and light weight of the CP205 also makes it home friendly, but the single paper tray plus bypass feed requires the front flap to be left open, which looks untidier than a paper cassette.
While the typos in the setup program (e.g. ‘Eathernet’) don’t instil confidence, we do like the animated setup instructions that are becoming more common.
An all-black page revealed a fairly typical leathergrain effect plus a faint ‘snakeskin’ pattern with a pitch of 15mm in both directions. There were also slight but noticeable darker lines across the page alternating between 37 and 58mm separation.
However, text quality matched or exceeded that of other similarly priced models we’ve tested. Colours seemed fractionally darker than usual in our business graphics test (curiously, the reverse was true when printing photos), and as we’ve seen with other laser/LED printers, there was less detail in the shadows than inkjets can achieve. Despite Fuji Xerox’s efforts to create a controlled gloss black toner, the overall effect seemed just as glossy as the output from those other printers.
As the documentation warns, significant wrinkling occurs when printing DL envelopes in portrait orientation, but switching to landscape means pushing the envelope deep into the printer’s bypass tray.
Our testing showed a first page out time of 20 sec increasing to 35 sec if the printer is in power saver mode (Fuji Xerox quotes 27 sec) and then just under 9ppm (the rated speed is 12ppm).
Available from Fuji Xerox, available for $329 ($149, mono version).
APC rating: 7/10