Kyocera Ecosys P5026cdw

A laser printer with distinct strengths

$469 Manufacturer Kyocera Document Solutions America, usa.kyoceradocumentsolutions.com Features USB 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet and Wi-Fi connectivity, SD/SDHC card slot

Kyocera is targeting the small to mediumsized business with this mid-priced color laser printer. It’s a step up from noisy and slow budget laser printers, and more efficient to run than inkjet rivals, making it suitable for a busy office that’s reliant on paperwork.

This is strictly a no-frills printer, not a multifunction device, so there’s no scanner or fax on board and Kyocera advises against loading photo paper. What you can do is fill the 250sheet paper tray with Letter, or the 50-sheet multipurpose tray with envelopes, and print at a steady rate of around 26 pages per minute.

In terms of connectivity, you get integrated Wi-Fi alongside the usual square USB port, plus there’s also a front USB port for inserting a flash drive – but there’s no NFC compatibility. Kyocera has also ignored the trend for everlarger touchscreen interfaces: a humble two-line mono LCD panel is all you get, with rudimentary cursor buttons to navigate through the primitive and awkward user interface.

The companion app, called Kyocera Mobile Print, is a free download for iOS and Android devices, and it presents an attractive interface for printing wirelessly from your smartphone. Disappointingly, though, you can’t check the printer’s toner levels from the app.

Plain text on A4 paper looks fabulous from this razor-sharp laser printer, especially when you introduce some color. These look bold and perfectly contained, and as colorful documents take exactly the same amount of time to print, it’s tempting to drop in some red, yellow, and blue text just to brighten things up.

The bottom line. If you don’t mind persevering with a tiny LCD, the P5026cdw’s output is fast and consistent, achieving an impressive print quality, and it has plentiful paper and ink capacity. Jim Hill