TONER CARTRIDGE for DELL W5300N LASER PRINTER

Dell W5300N Review

Overview:

While many consumer-electronic stores offer a variety of laser printers, most of the models displayed on the floor aren’t robust or durable enough to handle the demands of medium businesses and classrooms. For a commercial-grade desktop laser printer, one that delivers 1200 dpi at speeds up to 45 ppm, in 2003 Dell offered the Dell W5300NN monochrome printer.

Pros:

The curved Dell has a footprint of 17.2” x 20.2” footprint for easy placement in any corner or credenza.  However with this model starting at 45 pounds, it’ll need a study table.  Paper and toner are all accessible from the front, reducing the need of moving a printer for refilling.  If this Dell printer looks familiar that’s because it’s. The W5300NN is really a Lexmark T630, just in a different color and rebadged with the Dell emblem. All the parts inside are the same.

Right from the start the W5300NN comes with some serious paper capacity. The cassette tray can hold a ream of paper, with sizes up to 8 ½” x 14”.  While most desktop laser printers have a multi-purpose tray that only holds from 25 to 50 sheets, the W5300N’s multi-purpose tray can support up to 100 sheets of your heavier papers and cardstock up to 100#, envelopes, labels, and transparencies. If you need more paper capacity, you can stack additional 500-sheet trays or 250-sheet trays.  For a business that needs to print a lot of envelopes, Dell/Lexmark offers an optional 85-envelope feeder.

The W5300N prints 45 monochrome pages per minute at 600 dpi. In digitally-enhanced 1200 x 1200 dpi resolution, the printer keeps text sharp--even at 6-point font sizes--and does a decent job with graphics. The W5300N does not come stock with a duplexer, but one can be purchased.

The W5300N comes with 80MB of memory, with an extra slot to increase storage up to 336MB, allowing the Dell can easily handle higher capacity workloads across a network from multiple computer requests.

The printer can connect directly to a PC using USB 2.0 connections.  To support network workstations, the Dell comes with switching 10/100 BaseT Ethernet controller. And in case you’re curious, no, the “W” in W5300N does not mean “wireless built-in”. Dell does offer an external Wi-Fi adapter for making any printer wireless.

Understanding the printing needs of today’s businesses, Dell has installed the popular Adobe PostScript3, HP PCL5e and PCL6 print emulators. The W5300N includes 158 PostScript and 89 PCL fonts.

Cons:

While idling at a quiet 34 dB, the printer produces 55 dB of sound printing. To give you an idea of what that means: 60 decibels is the level of typical conversations and 30 decibels is a quiet office.  If you have a quiet workplace, you don’t want this in anyone’s cubicle, but if placed inside a copy room or a common area, any noise generated from the printer won’t be as noticeable.

Being a rebadged Lexmark T630 also means the Dell W5300N has the same problems the Lexmark has. The plastic housing is not as solid as HP’s LaserJet line, and the doors and trays of the Dell 5200 flex quite a bit and seems flimsy for a printer that’s going to be heavily used.