Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP205 LED printer

Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP205 review: This colour LED printer produces clean and crisp documents

PC World Australia (online)

The Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP205 is a colour LED printer that is able to produce great quality documents. It's affordably priced, so you don't need a multifunction device that can scan and copy as well as print, we have no problems recommending the DocuPrint CP205.

  • Expert Rating

    4.00 / 5

  • User Rating

    3.50 / 5 (of 4 Reviews)

Pros

  • Great print quality for a low-end laser or LED printer, good input and output capacity, USB and Ethernet connectivity, good print yields from standard cartridges

Cons

  • Print speeds are slightly lower than stated, no automatic duplex

Bottom Line

The Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP205 really impressed us with its combination of features and good print quality. It's a little slower than Fuji Xerox claims, but this is a minor grievance.

Would you buy this?

  • Where to buy

    Priced from: $ 77.94
    Selling at 13 stores
See all prices

Special Offers

Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP205: Design, control layout and features

The Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP205 is sensibly laid out, with a small set of controls on the front of the printer. The two-line LCD can be a little hard to read, but given that the printer is so simple we didn't find ourselves referring to it often.

Up to 150 sheets of paper can be loaded at the base of the printer. Single sheets can also be loaded, which is useful if you occasionally have to print labels or use a letterhead. The DocuPrint CP205's output tray can hold 100 sheets — more than enough to let a few large print jobs stack up before things start overflowing.

USB 2.0 and Ethernet connectivity mean the printer can connect to a single computer or an office network. The slightly more expensive DocuPrint CP205W offers 802.11b/g wireless networking as well.

Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP205: Consumable pricing and yield

The Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP205 uses four toner cartridges — the CT201591 black cartridge with a yield of 2000 pages, and CT201592, CT201593 and CT201594 cyan, magenta and yellow cartridges which each have an average yield of 1400 pages. The black toner is $89 and each colour cartridge costs $99, giving the DocuPrint CP205 an ongoing cost of 4.5 cents per black A4 page and 21.2 cents per colour A4 page. These costs are competitive with entry-level and mid-range laser printers.

Cost aside, we like the high page yields of the Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP205's toner cartridges If we were running a small business, this would be a major factor in favour of using laser/LED compared to inkjet — you'll spend a tenth of the time replacing a laser printer's cartridges than an inkjet's.

Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP205 LED printer: Print speed and quality

The Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP205 impressed us with the quality of its output. Using the default 1200x2400dpi print settings we found it printed very clear and smooth text and graphics.

We even used the DocuPrint CP205 to run off a couple of surprisingly detailed 6x4in photos. We were also interested to see that the DocuPrint CP205 didn't display the same posterisation problems we've found on almost every colour laser printer — the photos it printed weren't grainy or undersaturated. We wouldn't put it in the same league as a mid-range inkjet printer, but it's able to match entry-level inkjets and beat budget laser printers with its output.

Our one disappointment with the Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP205 was that it printed slightly slower than we were expecting it to. Fuji Xerox claims the DocuPrint CP205 can output 12 pages per minute in colour and 15 pages in monochrome, but over a 50 page print run we were only able to achieve 10 colour and 12 monochrome pages per minute. This isn't a major flaw by any means — just a slight reality check. The time for the first page to print on a document matched Fuji Xerox's claims, though — we timed initial sheets at 15 seconds for colour and 13 seconds for monochrome.

Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP205 LED printer: Environmental policy and conclusion

Fuji Xerox is committed to environmental sustainability, and incorporates a range of energy-saving features into its printers — including the use of emulsion aggregation toner which uses less energy than regular toner to produce and print with.

The Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CP205 is an excellent choice for a small or medium business. It's surprisingly versatile in its colour printing — we would happily use it for occasionally printing small photos. The only way we think it could have been better would be the inclusion of automatic duplex printing, but this omission is not surprising given its low price.

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Read more on these topics: fuji xerox, Fuji Xerox DocuPrint, LED printers, printers,

User Comments

1

AlexisTue 01/02/2011 - 17:49

We recently bought CP205 and we tried to use it as a network printer by keying in the IP address and using the networking cable, that our server vendor provides.

We operate large MRI and CT medical equipment that use to link up with a phaser 8500 (which broke down), unfortunately we are unable to get the CP205 to work. (Using a new IP address and we 'ping' them)

The IP address was keyed into the printer, the medical machines DO detect it. But when we sent images for printing, the medical machines says 'Printed', but the CP205 did not even move.

Using a Laptop (windows Vista) and the USB wire, we manage to get it printing.

The operator's CD Rom did nothing much to help and Xerox was not very informative as well.

Any help we can get here? Thanks.

2

PatrickSat 05/02/2011 - 01:09

I have had similar experiences in the past with scientific equipment.

My educated guess:

The Phaser 8500 uses both Postscript (PS) 3 and PCL5c printer languages, which are common, defined printing languages that work across a vast range of devices. If the device can generate PS or PCL, then the printer can print it.

According to the downloadable manual (http://www.fujixeroxprinters.com.au/downloads/uploaded/DocuPrint%20CP205_CP205w%20User%20Guide%20English_7be5.pdf), the CP205 only uses "host-based" language. "Host-based" can be interpreted to mean it requires an interpreter to send proprietary code to the printer (hence the Vista laptop- it has the printer driver on it to convert the info). So you need a device with an operating system to support the printer driver- a PC win Windows XP or newer, or Mac OSX 10.4.11 or later to run the printer driver. This is usual with lower cost printers. Because the CP205 does not understand the PCL/PS information being sent to it, it 'dumps' the print job.

Given you are operating MRI/CT equipment, the MRI/CT technical support SHOULD (I would say CAN, if they are any way competent) be able to tell you whether the instrument they are printing in PS or PCL. It may be configurable between PS/PCL. As the equipment probably uses a proprietary operating system (or at least one not commonly supported) they will in all probability use a common printer language- namely PS or PCL.

If you can save the print job as a file (and NOT through the PC Vista print driver), and view in a text editor you can tell what the language is. PS tends to start with "%!PS-Adobe-3.0" or similar. PCL will contain a lot of weird and wonderful control and "Escape" characters and may not display properly, but may contain something like "@PJL ENTER LANGUAGE=PCL" or "PJL" near the top of the file.

More (but not much more) expensive printers will support PCL/PS. Find out from your MRI/CT technical support what the printer language used is. They should be able to recommend a printer! You can also ask your local (even online) competent computer shop which printer to buy (or perhaps to ID the printer file type).

Given the cost of MRI/CT equipment I would suggest you should be spending more than ~$329 RRP on a printer in the first place, you will certainly have lost the difference in wasted time and lost productivity already and it's minuscule in terms of the (assumed by me) equipment cost. More expensive printers also give better quality printouts, usually more time between refills and possibly lower printer refill (and therefore overall running) costs.

In the meantime, the hook-up through the laptop sounds like a viable option if it's working as you require. Perhaps a cheap or spare old laptop (WinXP should be fine) with the printer driver on it is all you need.

Good Luck!
Patrick

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