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If you’re looking for a laser printer that will handle tens of thousands of pages at minimal cost, Kyocera’s name is bound to crop up sooner or later. All laser printers need to have their toner cartridges replaced or refilled on a regular basis, but the real expense often comes when other parts such as the fuser unit, transfer belt or drum need to be replaced. You may find that your new printer needs what seems like a rebuild every 50,000 pages or so, and that drives up the cost per page quite dramatically.

Kyocera builds its laser printers around a ceramic drum technology, so the drum lasts for up to 200,000 prints, at which point it’s time for a full maintenance kit. In the case of the FS-C5016N the kit is part number MK-500 which contains a drum, developer kit, transfer unit, feed unit, fuser kit, two ozone filters and a roller feed set for £516 inc VAT, which works out to 0.26p per page. Other than that, the only regular expense is toner. All four toner cartridges are rated at 8,000 pages each with the black costing £49 inc VAT and each of the three colours costing £76 inc VAT. A simple average gives a cost of 3.5p per page, although that clearly varies depending on the type of printing that you do.

It’s just as well that the FS-C5016N can claim to have low running costs as it is an expensive printer to buy in the first place. This networked model carries a retail price tag of £2,011 inc VAT, but we found it on the street for £1,650 inc VAT. A duplex model (suffix DN) has an RRP of £2,264, and if you want twin cassettes, as well as networking and duplex (a DTN model) that will set you back £2546. Alternatively, you can buy the DNH model with Duplex, Networking and a Hard Disk for £2,709, with the HD-4ME 20GB hard disk costing a frightening £445 as an optional extra if you buy one of the other models. Of course all these prices are RRP and as we’ve already seen with the model on test, you will find dramatic savings on the street.

Basically, the FS-5016N is the budget model in the Kyocera FS-C5016 colour printer range, the idea being that you use it as a building block at the centre of a printing system that will serve entire departments

Take the networking feature for instance. On the back of the printer you’ll find the Centronics Parallel port and USB 2.0 port, and next to that is the Ethernet port, but there is also a metal cover. Remove that and you can add an extra network adapter to make the printer compatible with an older networking standard, or to bring it right up to date with 802.11 or fibre optics.

The FS-C5016N has a fairly small footprint, but Kyocera dearly hopes that you’ll add three extra input trays that take the paper capacity up to a maximum of 2,100 sheets and which also give you the option of up to five different types of paper. These additional trays sit under the printer, so the footprint remains the same but the unit gets taller and taller. Each tray costs £282, so it is quite easy to spend £3000-£4000 on a Kyocera colour printer if you pay RRP prices.

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