Epson Aculaser C1100 Review June 27, 2011 11:51 by Matt Bird

Overview

The Aculaser C1100 uses an unusual carousel mount for its toners, giving it high quality output, yet Epson have managed to ensure that it doesn't lose any of the speed associated with laser printers.

Ratings

Epson Aculaser C1100

Main Review

Externally, there’s nothing special about this machine – it’s a vaguely cuboid box in shades of grey, with a small control panel at the front and a top-mounted output tray. To find the main reason this printer made it to the shortlist though, you have to go a little deeper. The C1100’s four cartridges are mounted in a rotating carousel, applying the toner to the drum unit one colour at a time before it makes contact with the paper and prints, making it a somewhat difficult procedure to replace them. Under normal circumstances it would be fair enough to imagine this would greatly slow the print speeds, but somehow Epson have managed to keep the printing rates of a more conventional drum-toner layout, while moving to the increased sharpness possible with a carousel. The Aculaser C1100 is advertised at 25 pages per minute, and it outputs at a rate not entirely dissimilar to this. Unfortunately, its standard model only comes with a small (180 sheets of A4) paper tray, so at this rate you could be changing the paper every eight minutes; this can be avoided by fitting an additional (500 sheets) paper tray, but this makes the printer particularly tall, meaning it won’t necessarily fit everywhere it might be wanted. Epson have made this machine quite economical, with a low purchase cost (it can be found for less than two hundred pounds, by the discerning customer), and reasonably low costs per print with compatibles (less than a penny per A4 sheet). All in all, this is a good colour laser printer, that can be used in many different environments; its only real shortcoming (the small paper capacity) can be remedied with an add-on, but this increases its price.