Manufacturer's Description

Panasonic KX-CL500 Color Laser Printer

Panasonic One Pass Color Laser Printer --17ppm Color, 21ppm B/W, up to 1200 X 1200 DPI, Ethernet 10/100 Base TX, USB and IEEE1284 Ports, PCL 5C emulation, 64 MB Memory, 530-sheet universal paper cassette (up to 14" in length), 100-sheet multi-purpose paper tray.

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Product Specifications for

Panasonic KX-CL500 Color Laser Printer

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Most recent User Reviews for

Panasonic KX-CL500 Color Laser Printer

• 

  Reviewed by: pfc5

  07-29-04

  Duration of ownership: 5 Months

  Strengths: Great printer/great price! Output quality is even better than the Hp on text/color. Lowest total cost for color printing

  Weaknesses:That darn bypass tray SHOULD BE AUTOMATICALLY SELECTED FIRST if paper is in it.

  Overall Evaluation: I bought the Ricoh CL3000 version of this printer after extensive research. I have always bought HP LaserJets when ever I bought a laser printer in the past. I originally owned the LaserJet II. That lasted 7 years until it needed a new fuser roller, but I needed to print that day, so I bought the LaserJet 4+. The LJ4+ lasted 9 years. You can see why I am a fan of HP LaserJets. I originally thought I would buy another Laserjet, until I looked at them in Staples. They didn't seem to be built like my prior HP models were, and the consumables (which will cost many times more than the actual printer over the life of the unit) were higher than the Ricoh CL3000. In fact, much higher at my estimates of 2-3 times higher for black and 2 times higher for color. The HP model closest to the CL3000 in price/features, was the HP2500N which cost $1300.00 vs $825.00 for the Ricoh at pcConnection.The HP2500N also didn't fair too well in the specs comparison. The HP2500N prints at 16 ppm black, and only 4 ppm color (4 pass color). The CL3000 does 21 ppm black, and 17 ppm color (single pass color). These are REAL print speeds I have timed as well. Paper capacity fell short as well for the HP2500N. It only has a 250 sheet cassette and a 125 sheet multi-purpose bypass tray. The Ricoh CL3000 has a 530 sheet cassette and a 100 multi-purpose bypass tray.I also believe that a single pass color laser is less prone to break down simply because each page only has to go around once vs 4 times for a 4 pass printer (4 times the wear?).There are benefits to the HP2500N though. For one, it has toner cartridges with the drum included, where the Ricoh CL3000 has separate drums (1 black and 1 tri-drum for the color) from the toner. This makes it slightly easier to maintain the HP. I should say that replacing the drum units is only about a 2 minute process and shouldn't take any longer than opening & closing the front door of the HP2500N 4 times to cycle thru each toner cartridge. Also you only have to replace the drum (printer tells you when) every 3rd time you replace the toner. The toner alone takes about 5 seconds to replace through a door on the top of the unit, which is faster than the HP2500N. The LCD display tells you when the toner, etc is getting low, so there are no surprises, and you can make sure you have replacement toner available. It also has a RED error light, so you don't forget you are running low. Ricoh needs to learn how to do a multi-purpose bypass tray like HP. It should AUTOMATICALLY take the paper from the bypass tray FIRST if there is paper in there, before going to the paper cassette. I print checks via the bypass tray and it is a pain to remember to change the paper source when printing checks. I have solved the problem by creating multiple "versions" of the printer labeled with the paper defaults. One called Ricoh Bypass and the other just Ricoh and changed the default in the program settings for forms printing. It also prints "face down" from the bypass tray which means if I load multiple checks to print at once I have to re-sort the check sequence.UPDATE:Ricoh provides the standard one year parts/labor warranty with this printer, but it is an on-site warranty too!Consumables are VERY INEXPENSIVE compared to the other color laser printers, AND even cheaper than most B/W printers as well. Here is what I found from 5 months of use:Black/white printing cost:Black toner (5,000 yield)/$30.00 = 0.006/pageBlack Photo drum (15,000 yield)/$86.00 = 0.006/pageFusing Unit (100,000 yield)/$255.00 = 0.003/pageTransfer Unit (83,000 yield)/$109.00 = 0.001/pageTotal cost per page for black is = 0.016/pageThat is less than 2 cents per page excluding paper/electricity!Color printing cost:Cyan toner (5,000 yield)/$83.00 = 0.017/pageMagenta toner (5,000 yield)/$83.00 = 0.017/pageYellow toner (5,000 yield)/$83.00 = 0.017/pageTriColor Photo drum (15,000 yield)/330. = 0.022/pageFusing Unit (100,000 yield)/$255.00 = 0.003/pageTransfer Unit (83,000 yield)/$109.00 = 0.001/pageTotal cost per page for color is = 0.077/pageThat is less than 8 cents per color page excluding paper/electricity! Both are based on standard 5% coverage on 8.5 x 11 paper.Remember, most other printers (except HP which uses expensive all-in-one cartridges, AND you still need to replace the fusing unit & transfer unit on the HP), also have oil costs, transfer belts, etc, in addition to the costs that are stated above for the Ricoh CL3000, but Ricoh doesn't have those extra costs. The costs I stated are all-inclusive, so these are the COMPLETE & REAL costs of running the Ricoh CL3000 printer. The Fusing Unit & Transfer Unit are listed under both black AND color printing costs because they are used regardless of what you are printing. There are NOT separate Fusing and Transfer units for b/w and color printing. Kyocera makes the only color printers with lower consumable costbut cost twice as much for the printer.

• 

  Reviewed by: showem

  04-15-04

  Duration of ownership: 1 Months

  Strengths: Very low cost per page printing. FAST - including first page out. Least expensive duplex unit with networking on the market - by far!

  Weaknesses:Not the best at photos

  Overall Evaluation: I'm very happy with this printer. It was very easy to set up and worked right out of the box. Basically, I wanted a fast color laser that does two-sided printing where cost per page needs to be low. At

• 

  Reviewed by: prodesigner

  03-11-04

  Duration of ownership: 1 Weeks

  Strengths: Great Value, Excelent feature set, solid construction, great output, resonable cost of ownership, good warranty, network ready, duplexer.

  Weaknesses:Starter cartridges, Huge printer, a little loud when running.

  Overall Evaluation: I shopped around for several months comparing features, warranty cost and construction. Just like everything else in life, you get what you pay for, if you are lucky. This is an excellent product for an excellent price. Very well built, not like some of the toy like products that I have seen in this price range. Handles everything that I have thrown at it with ease. Color output is very good unlike some of the reviews I have read. Very fast output, very good construction, good design, good feature set, great value, good warranty.

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Review:

Panasonic KX-CL500

Panasonic's KX-CL500 makes workgroup color printing as affordable as using an ordinary laser model.

WHAT'S HOT: The KX-CL500 prints solid text. Panasonic provides a concise, accurate printed setup guide and three in-depth on-screen manuals, plus a color card to use as a reference for adjusting toner density. The device's control panel menus, though not strictly hierarchical, are easy to operate, with ever-attentive prompts. We also like the printer's small footprint, 17 inches wide by 21 inches deep, and its manageable 66-pound weight. (However, the small size means the imaging components are packed in tight, so replacing some consumables and clearing paper jams in certain places is challenging.) Thanks to Panasonic's patented induction heating technology, the KX-CL500 was ready to print 10 seconds after we flicked on the power from a cold start.

WHAT'S NOT: The KX-CL500's print quality on graphics didn't match its fine text quality. It rendered the narrow parallel lines in one of our test documents by mixing color into the black, but the color was so out of register in our test prints that the whole thing was a mess. Gray-scale photos had a denimlike texture of narrow regular stripes that obliterated detail, and color prints looked dotty and somewhat washed out.

Panasonic came up with a funky design that builds the auxiliary tray into the main tray. We found the auxiliary piece awkward to open and adjust; it also seemed flimsy and prone to break, and interfered with access to the main paper tray.

WHAT ELSE: For such a low price ($1599), we can live with the slightly below-average 13.4-ppm text-printing speed we saw in our tests. You can equip the printer with one or two optional 530-page paper feeders for $500 each, or a duplexer for $300. The KX-CL500 doesn't have an alternative straight paper path, so running labels through might be risky, especially if they're starting to dry out. The power switch is on the back, but we had no trouble reaching it because the printer is so small.

UPSHOT: Small workgroups will be able to rely on the KX-CL500 for both color and monochrome printing.

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