Canon I SENSYS LBP5360 Color Laser Printer Review

Canon I-SENSYS LBP5360 Color Laser Printer Review

The I-SENSYS brand is now carried by Canons' workgroup color laser printers which is space-efficient, saves time and minimizes energy. It isn't the smallest but its steep front panel and controls make it interesting. It goes into sleep mode when idle but starts up instantly.

It has a 250-sheet paper tray at the bottom and is colored light gray and cream. Above the paper tray is a folded 100-sheet multi-purpose tray with access to the drum and toner. It also has an organized control panel on top with a 1-line backlit LCD with 7 buttons and indicators.

Paper comes from paper source or tray under the printer or to a top tray to transmit the color printing directly with no transfer belt. This makes color print speed same as black print's (21ppm).

USB 2.0, Ethernet and parallel connections are given.

Toners and drum cartridges are already set up but you'll need to remove the protective tape first, which is very easy once you've pulled the front cover of the printer down.

The software sets up a PCL5e/6 driver and another for Canon's printer language UFR II. The USB connection wasn't recognized with the review sample when the PCL driver was installed but there was no problem with the UFR. Even with unplugging and re-plugging the printer, no change occurred. All results are therefore taken from the UFR driver which Canon claims is speedier.

The software driver has good support for multi-page printing, poster printing, collation and watermarks printing. Duplex printing is standard and the driver has controls for booklet printing.

Canon claims that the first printed page comes out in 10 seconds. Our results show 15 seconds, meaning it needs little time to warm up. 5-page black print comes out in 26 seconds, calculating to 11.5ppm.

Color and text mixed print comes out in 21 seconds (14.3 ppm), faster than black text print. Testing the duplex function resulted to 1:17 printing of a 20-side document, calculating to over 15 sides per minute, which is close to the Canon claim. This printer is a fast one and the 15 second time for page one to come out is good for hurried short jobs.

High quality pages can also be printed with sharp and clear black test with no dotting whatsoever. Color print is neat but too light with minimal banding.

Photo printing was very good with natural colors and smooth color transitions as compared to oversaturation in other color laser printers. The results from this printer are good enough professionally considering that color gamut of laser printers is smaller than an inkjet's.

The Canon LBP5360 uses 4 toners and drum cartridges for primary colors. The black cartridge is worth £75 while the colored ones are £95. Each printer is set to print 6000 sheets at 5%, giving a black page print of 1.7p/page and a 20% color page of 6.46p. This is a good comparison with other printer competitors, advantaged by the big capacity of the toner needing less maintenance. Canon has a recycling campaign with prepaid labels in the cartridge box.

Canon's i-SENSYS LBP5360 is a complete color laser printer for workgroups or even small businesses. It's maintenance comes cheap and prints exceptionally and at a faster pace. It prints a fast first page with good text, images and photos. It's quite pricey but worth it because of convenience and faster, more efficient response.