Canon i-SENSYS: LBP7200Cdn review

Canon rates the i-SENSYS LBP7200Cdn at 20ppm for both black and colour print and while we couldn't match this figure, we did get quite close with our 20 page, black text print, which completed in 1:17, a speed of nearly 16ppm. Our five-page black text and colour graphics document took exactly 30 seconds, or 10ppm and when we repeated the 20-page test with the machine’s internal duplexer engaged, the speed dropped to 8.6 sides per minute. Even though this is a bit slower than advertised, these speeds are still adequate for the market the printer’s being sold into.

This isn't a particularly quiet printer and we measured peak noise levels of 60dBA, when it was feeding paper. In typical office use, though, we wouldn't expect it to cause anybody much irritation.

Print quality from Canon machines has always been good – it's not for nothing that HP has used its laser engines for years. Black text is solid and well-shaped, even though the default resolution is a fairly standard 600dpi. It's neither over thick nor spidery and is ideal for internal documents and for external correspondence and presentations.

Colour is also well reproduced, with vivid, bright business graphics suffering little of the dither patterns some colour engines have to use to produce shades. Black text registration over colour is excellent and there's no sign of white-space haloing around characters.

Finally, the machine even reproduces colour photos with some degree of naturality. So often, colour photos produced by colour lasers veer towards the limited, bright hues needed for graphs and charts. Here, while not in the inkjet class, colour images are more than passable.

Print costs are a bit distorted because, at the time of writing, the i-SENSYS LBP7200Cdn is very new and suggested retail prices are all that's available for costings. Canon consumables are usually quite well discounted, so these figures should be treated very much as maximums. We calculate the ISO black page cost to be 3.5p and the colour page cost to be 16p, both of which are high, with the colour page cost being well above average.