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Entry-level laser printers are difficult to target at a specific market. Home users are attracted to cheaper inkjet printers that provide colour output, while offices usually opt for more expensive printers with higher page-per-minute (ppm) speeds. Kyocera's FS-1200 aims to bridge this gap, promising 12ppm printing at a price that home users can contemplate.
It offers a maximum print resolution of 600dpi and we were impressed by the print quality. It produced rich, sharp black lines and text, though when we set it loose on greyscale images it didn't fare as well, but these aren't really what you buy a laser printer for. There was also some minor banding visible on an all-black page, and when the paper was folded the toner cracked easily.
Print speeds came close to the claimed 12ppm at 9.23ppm, but home users who only print a couple of pages at a time should note that the claimed time to first page is 15 seconds, which is quite a while to wait for a single page. Speeds for graphics are significantly slower at 4.71ppm.
The FS-1200 comes with 4MB of RAM as standard, but you have the option to expand this up to 68MB for improved spooling. Other optional extras include: a 10/100BaseT Ethernet card to allow you to network the FS-1200; various additional paper trays, to up the capacity from an already large 350 pages and a duplexing unit to enable double-sided printing.
The key selling point for the FS-1200 is the ECOSYS cartridge-free technology used to print pages. This helps to keep printing costs to a minimum with each page setting you back less than a third of a penny - a real bonus in both the home and office.
Contact - Kyocera 0118 931 1500 www.kyocera.co.uk
System requirements - Windows 95/98/NT, free parallel port
See also:
All Inkjet Printers
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