SOLVED: How to Evaluate Desktop Printers

Here is my ‘Desktop Color Printer Evaluation’ in Excel format.  You can use it as a template for evaluating other printer products.  It covers obvious items like printer cost and pages per minutes as well as less obvious but very important criteria like second paper tray cost and memory.

In the end all most of my clients care about is pages per minute and total cost of ownership.

My evaluation was restricted to printers with:

• Duplexing
• Wired network connectivity
• Support for TWO paper trays  
• a minimum of 20 pages per minute
• not inkjet

I reviewed about half a dozen brands and quickly settled on considering the following devices:

• Brother HL04150CDN
• HP M451DN
• Lexmark C546DTN
• Samsung CLP-620ND
• Xerox 6500DN

In my case, the Lexmark C546DTN won out because the evaluation showed it was:

1. the fastest
2. had the largest paper trays
3. just slightly more than the least expensive on the all important TCO