Dell 5100CN Workgroup Laser Printer

What I love about this printer ... it is fast, gives good office quality images, photos look good, and is very inexpensive to operate. I have had mine for over a year, I have only printed about 9,000 pages, most with some color, and my color toner still shows 80% remaining and black is at 60%. Try that with an inkjet! This has MORE than paid for itself in supply savings! ... Note, one of the comments said their HP and Xerox lasted much longer, but DELL doesn't manufacture printers, and I am quite certain that the Dell 5100cn is Xerox at the core.

Firstly, I have been a loyal Dell customer for over ten years. I have purchased computers for myself and my family that are still in good shape after many years, and I (regrettably) convinced my office to switch over to Dell products over the same time-frame.

Our Dell 5100cn is the third color laser printer we have purchased for our business in the past four years (it is just over one year old). It is now officially the worst printer we have ever used or worked with (our Xerox and HP color lasers have lasted much longer and have cost much less over the long run)

The first issue was the toner cartidges that were shipped. The Dell websites (both the US and Canadian ones) claim that the 5100cn is shipped with high-yield toner cartridges, not the "economy" cartridges of some other manufacturers. Bull! Our 5100cn printed 2100 B&W pages before the supposed 10,000 page Black toner ran out. A couple hours on the phone, a few diagnostics later, and we were shipped a new Black toner cartridge free of charge. All was well.

But guess what? Our color toner cartridges stared running out...warnings would flash on the printer. We called Dell. Similar diagnostic tests were done, and it was determined that we had printed approximately 50% of the "yield" of these cartridges. A transfer here, a transfer there, and after 20 or 30 minutes on the phone to various departments of Dell, I was providing our office information and address for the replacement color toner cartridges that were going to be shipped.

What next??? Nothing came. Weeks turned into a couple of months. A few of us had phoned at various times, but the end result was that the decision for our 1/2 filled color cartidges to be replaced by new ones had been overturned or overuled by someone in "authority" (this is what the lady said from Dell said)

Upset at what had happened, I sent a letter to Dell. The letter included the serial numbers and service tags of 16 Dell products I/we had purchased over the past 10 years. It went on to express our disappointment with the way our issue with the Dell 5100cn had been treated. The letter was sent registered-mail. It was picked-up. It was never responded to.

After six months, the 5100cn started making noises. The attempted warranty service was awful. Dell tries to make you NOT want to have warranty work done, by (in our case) explaining how long it will take to order the replacement part and have a "Dell Authorized Technician" schedule an appointment to "service" the printer.

During one phone call, I was told we would probably be looking at three or four weeks before warranty service could be completed. This may not seem like long to some, but for a business where we count on quality, color pages to be printed and supplied to our clients on a daily basis, it is upsetting to have a company representative from Dell tell you that it may take a month to perform "warranty service" on their machine.

Our HP unit is older; our Xerox color laser is even older than that. They both run well, and this seems to be a trend among other offices in our area.

Like us, some have tried Dell. Most never will again.

Very dependable; good colour quality and cartridges last a very long time. We do a lot of brochure printing and of all the printers we've had in the past (brother, samsung, etc.) the 5100cn is by far the best. Add to that buying cartridges at discount from eBay and your have a phenominal package. The Dell toner somehow makes a slick glossy, kind of elevated, image. It is almost like a slightly embossed picture of sorts. In any case the colour is really great for the price and the machine is very fast, as well. We bought the machine "new" off of eBay. I told the Dell tech on the phone about this and I wasn't believed... the tech said, "Dell is the only one selling these.." Well, I didn't argue. That fact didn't make any difference in the service, which was great. The tech people were very helpful and the machine was easy to set up on our 6-PC LAN. Great Buy.

Had this unit for three years in a small business/home environment. Average use less than 1000 pages/month. Thankfully, this unit is no longer produced. I would have reated it lower except that when it did work, the color was good.

Issues:

Toner did not last as advertised (less than 40%).
Drum/fuser did not last as advertised(less than 30%).
Consumables (tomer) very expensive and only available from Dell.
Very heavy - ~80 pounds lodaed with paper.
Very noisy and pulls almost 13 Amps with a very slow warm-up to print cycle.
Small basic memory, cannot handle complex jobs well (Adobe) and the cost for
a on-board disk or expanded memory, too expensive to consider.
PATHETIC Dell service (oxymoron) and I live within two hours of Dell in Round Rock, Texas.

We deployed 12 of the Dell 5100cn Laser printers and never had problem one with any of them. this is the finest color laser printer we have ever used for the money we invested. Granted, we certainly could have gone for a much finer, more costly higher end model, but in the end, the sharpness, quality, PPM, and the virtual absence of maintenance has made this printer dollar for dollar the best investment in printer technology we could have ever made given the use and purpose of the finished product. What we really never expected was how maintenance free these have truly been. Either that or we just got incredibly lucky.