When it comes to a printer everyone looks for quality, speed, and endurance. The TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award winning Dell 3130cn is a great example of exactly that. The combination of these important attributes makes it one of the best laser printers for a small office or home office. Over the years laser printers have come down quite a bit in price. They’ve come down enough that they even work great for a family printing off homework, research, maps for the family vacation, etc. This Dell can be the answer to all these needs and more.

Features

There are several important things that you need with a printer. A few I already mentioned briefly so let’s go over those first. When you think of a laser printer you think of quality and speed primarily because that’s what they’re known for. This Dell has the typical 600 x 600 dpi (dots per inch) which is pretty common and is about the standard in laser printers. There are a few out there that have higher dpi but 600 x 600 will give you plenty of quality for bother your standard black and white document as well as photos and other color images.

Secondly we have speed. This area is where the Dell 3130cn really excels. Most laser printers average between 21 and 15 black and white ppm (pages per minute) and between 21 and 5 color ppm. The 3130cn can spit out 31 ppm in black and white and 26 ppm in color. That much of a difference adds up when you’re on a deadline and need to get your work printed and off to your client, boss, or teacher at school. So you get it printed off in time and maintain that laser quality that everyone loves. All you have now to worry about is whether or not you did a good job on the actual work; the 3130cn will take care of the rest.

Another speedy advantage to this Dell laser printer is that it has a memory card slot for when you already have the finished version of your work done. Without bothering to start up your computer and load up your work into whatever program that applies to it, you can plug your external hard drive or flash drive right into the printer and print off whatever you need. This is especially nice if you do the work in one place, on like a laptop for example, but don’t have a printer there. So, you put your work on a flash drive and take it home or to the office to get the job done.

Endurance is also a key point to when it comes to laser printers. Most printers average a “duty cycle” of between 20,000 and 40,000 pages. The duty cycle is basically a guideline for users so that they don’t over use and ruin their printer. This number of pages is the amount of pages that can safely be printer each month. If you go beyond its recommendations then you put your printer at risk. The great thing about this Dell printer is that it has a duty cycle of 70,000 pages. That is about twice as much as the other leading competitors.
One nice advantage to buying a Dell product is that it comes with 24/7 customer support that they are known for. Only a few days till the deadline and you’re getting error messages on your Dell printer? Call them anytime to talk with a technician and get the problem resolved for as long as you own the printer. There is also a next business day on-site service as well for those still under the warranty. This service can be extended if you prefer.

There are a few things that Dell could add to this printer to make it the “be all to end all” though. Perhaps in the interest of fairness they didn’t. Never mind, it was probably more like in the interest of expenses. Anyway, a higher resolution would be nice, since it is found on a few laser printers. The other thing that would be nice is a LCD status panel that allows for more interactivity with the printer for adjusting everything. Minor things yes but nice none the less.

Summary

Dell has made a lot of quality products for a lot of years and the Dell 3130cn is another to add to that list. A great laser printer that will get the job done quickly and efficiently so that the quality of your work has the most potential it can have. All these important things wrapped up into an affordable package.