Dell 5100cn delivers low-cost color printing

Even offices that work mostly with memos, spreadsheets, and other no-nonsense documents need color output sometimes. Dell’s 5100cn addresses this need in a very affordable, low-maintenance package.

With a NIC and duplexer as standard equipment, there are few other color laser printers — perhaps none — that match Dell’s $999 price tag and combine its performance and output quality.

The 5100cn’s single-pass engine means fewer moving parts that might potentially break down, and it offers easy access to almost all areas where paper might jam. And unlike many competing single-pass designs, this engine sits vertically, making the printer relatively compact.

Simple design makes the 5100cn easy to set up. Because the printer’s control panel lacks a numeric keypad, you may have to scroll through all possible numbers in each IP address field; fortunately, the printer has an Auto IP function, and it supports IP addressing via various protocols. The control panel is otherwise easy to navigate.

The base configuration comes well equipped, which is fortunate, as some Dell options run a bit steep. It includes 128MB of memory and can support as much as 640MB. A 500-sheet main tray, a somewhat flimsy 150-sheet auxiliary tray, and an internal duplexer come standard. An internal 20GB hard-drive option enables features such as Secure Print, which password-protects jobs so that only the person who sends a document can release it at the control panel.

You can keep an eye on the 5100cn through the Dell Printer Configuration Web Tool in a Web browser over your IP network. It watches for low toner, empty paper trays, and so on, and it can shoot you an e-mail when something needs attention. It also provides tools to fine-tune color registration, delete files from the internal hard drive, tweak network settings, set the order to step between trays as they run out of paper, and other necessary functions.

You can copy settings you’ve entered for one printer and push them to other 5100cn printers on your network by typing their IP addresses on a screen in the Dell Printer Configuration Web Tool. The Web Tool is confusing in places, however, because general headings and subcategories overlap at times and don’t follow the same organization.

Also, the Web Tool’s reporting and job logs are strictly one printer at a time, unlike network printer management software from Hewlett-Packard, Lexmark, and Xerox. By the way, if you already run those vendors’ tools, you can use them to display the Dell printer’s status, although not to change its settings.

Dell provides three versions of the 5100cn driver. One prints monochrome only, one requires a password to print color, and one is unrestricted. As admin, you can distribute different driver versions to different users.

On average the 5100cn’s speeds compared well with more expensive competitors, almost hitting the print engine’s 35-pages-per-minute theoretical maximum on repeated copies of the same simple text document. It printed color graphics much more slowly, of course, but in the same range as the competition.

Frequent auto-recalibration caused intermittent, annoying delays, but between that and its 1,200-dpi optical resolution, the 5100cn produced impressive monochrome and color documents. Text looked evenly weighted, crisp, and very black, yet remained clean even at small sizes. On graphics, colors appeared saturated without popping off the page; transitions and shading avoided abrupt steps; and photos had good detail with realistic textures.

All in all, Dell’s 5100cn is a competent color printer at a price within reach of most workgroups. It’s easy to manage, and its consumables are affordable. Plus, if you invest in some paper-handling add-ons, you could probably stretch the number of users it serves without creating too many bottlenecks.