Fast First Page Printer

[Hotchkin]

Hi,

I have a specific application which prints a single page document periodically for customers. It's essential that I don't want to keep customers hanging around and I really want to buy a fast laser printer for the job.

The trouble is that in-between printing the document, the printer will be idle. Therefore, each time it prints the document it's a "first page" print. This means that the usual measure of printing speed (pages per minute) is useless to me.

What I want is a fast first-page-out printer. Manufacturers do report on this metric, but it seems very inconsistent and trauling through all the printers on each manufacturer's website is pretty hit and miss!

Please can someone recommend a fast first-page-out laser printer?

Thanks,
Richard.

 

[JimInKS]

You don't give many specifics.
Are you talking Monochrome, 8.5x11 paper, single sided, low volume ( less than 3,000 per month )? You also don't mention what kind of interface you want, usb, network, parallel?

There are really two first page out times. One time if the printer is asleep and another if it is awake. For a laser printer the first page out from sleep can take quite some time (maybe more than a minute) as the fuser has to warm up. You can get around this somewhat by setting the time before going to sleep at a high number. On an ink jet they will often park the print heads when asleep. It takes awhile to unpark the heads and prime the ink.

If you a looking for a cheap little laser, I really like the brother lasers, for example:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16828113290

For a little extra money you can get both wired and wireless networking.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16828113291

First page out for these guys will probably be between 8 and 10 seconds. It will depend somewhat on how complex the page you are printing is.

 

[wahnula]

Once it goes through its startup from power-off (POST really) our HP 3600n printers will spit out a page pretty quickly from sleep mode. Just for you, I printed a Windows Test Page from a sleeping 3600n (color). It took about six seconds from ice cold to done. I would assume the current crop of HP printers would be similar.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[cricket]

Is this single page printout from a windows program or a DOS program?

 

[Hotchkin]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

The application is a Windows application which runs under Vista. The content is only A5 (half A4) mono and (for speed) only contains text...although I could, and would probably like to include graphics if the printer I get can print it at an acceptable speed.

The key for me is not the interface (frankly I don't care whether it's parallel, USB or network) it's the speed of the first page out. Whichever laser printer can give me the best speed to the first page, I'll get. Money is also not too much of a big deal...I suppose about £300 (maybe $500) would be about the level...I reckon I should be able to get something for about that mark.

The fuser warm-up time is something that concerns me slightly. I've found that the OKI B430 has a stated first page out time of 5.5 seconds (which I'd like to beat if I can!) but as JimInKS points out, the warm up time is likely to drag this time out if the printer happens to fall into "sleep" mode. I'm trying to find out from OKI if it's possible to turn off or (as JimInKS mentions) at least extend the time-before-sleep to some huge number.

The 6 seconds from sleeping on the HP3600n sounds pretty good! HP quote that printer as "as fast as 14 seconds"! Obviously I believe the real observations of Wahnula rather than HP, but this really highlights my problem. How on earth can I establish which printer to buy when the manufacturs' quoted times vary so dramatically from reality???? Of course the output speed will vary depending on size, content and composition of the document, but I'd have thought that a common standard (like printing a Windows test page for instance) would be beneficial for everyone!

I'm still open to suggestions for a fast first-page-out printer and I'm still interested to hear feedback on personal experiences so I can compare them to manufacturers' quoted times.

Thanks for all your ongoing assistance.
Richard.

 

[wahnula]

Sleep mode on/off is a setup option in the HP 3600n, look in the manuals of the printers to find the setup options. I did not stand over the printer with a stopwatch, but I did verify it was in Sleep mode and mentally timed it. I pretended I was an impatient client...

Another issue to me is cost of the toner cartridges, I have found that the more popular the printer, the more readily-available and lower-cost the cartridges are. While HP wants well over $100USD per piece, I buy compatibles from eBay for $39-49USD, not an option when I used the Konica-Minolta lasers. Performance of the compatibles I am buying is excellent.


Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[tf1]

Depending on the number of pages you need to print, there's little to beat an ordinary inkjet set to DRAFT mode for a fast first page out. You need to assess whether you need duty cycle of a laser or whether an inkjet will suffice.

Choose an Inkjet with a large black reservoir, and a decent sized paper hopper for your needs. Set the printer driver to print BLACK/DRAFT as default.

For the £300 cost you are thinking about, you can buy several inkjet printers and a fair number of black cartridges! As this is business critical, I'd suggest buying 2 printers so that you can very quickly swap if one does fail.

A Canon Pixma IP3600 costs less than £60 from eBuyer and black cartridges (less than £8 each) are specified as printing 324 A4 page (so around 600+ A5 pages).


Regards: Terry

 

[JimInKS]

Well, you got my curiosity up...

I drug a brother HL-2170W out of the closet and did some testing. I used the network connection as that was easiest.
Printing the windows test page took just about exactly 10 seconds from the time I clicked print until I could pull the page out of the printer (spec <10S). And you can adjust the sleep time on this printer to at least 99 minutes (maybe more) that is just what I tried.

A couple of other data points:

Lexmark t630 Test Page: 9S (measured) spec: <8.5S
(We use this for hospital admissions paper work)

Brother MFC-8870DW Test Page: 9s

I also have a canon ip4200 inkjet (which I love). In fast mode, monochrome, usb connection, print times are as follows:

Windows test page (which is a full page of text)
from sleep: 15s
(not asleep): 8s

Simple word document with two small paragraphs
from sleep: 10s
(not asleep): 5s

The HP 3600 spec shows 14 sec to first page out. Wahnula's time above seems a little optimistic to me.

All these times are with a stop watch rounded to the nearest second. My experience has been that getting anything under 8 Seconds for first page out will be pretty hard to do at any price point (at least in the laser category).

I also find that the brother laser printers are the most economical on cost per page on the low end. I have had so many bad experiences with re-manufactured cartridges that I don't use those. Others may have different experiences. If you do use re-manufactured, you could do better on cost per page, of course.

I looked that the spec sheet for the OKI B430 you mentioned above. If it can really do 5.5s I doubt you will beat that.

Please, let us know what you end up doing and good luck.

 

[tf1]

I have just done some similar simple tests.

Canon Pixma IP4600
Defaults set to FAST, Greyscale, A5
Standby set to OFF

A Windows Test print: ~4 seconds
An A5 page, narrow margins using Word 2010, =rand text in 12pt SegoeUI (350 words, 2043 characters) took a fraction longer at just under 5 seconds.

Wakeup from standby adds 8-10 seconds to those times. Standby can be set from 5-60 mins or disabled completely.

You'll be hard pushed to beat that too.



Regards: Terry

 

[wahnula]

Update...I snuck up on a sleeping 3600n, got the test page set to print, watched the sweep second hand, pressed "Print Test Page"...and...exactly 14 seconds to end of printing the page. So much for my mental clock . Sorry for the misinformation.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[wahnula]

...and a warmed-up 3600n does it in 9 seconds. Five second penalty for saving energy is a fair trade-off. Just for comparison, my OfficeJet Pro K550 matches the 3600n, but the paper does not have that "fresh-baked" feel...

I must admit this testing is kind of fun. I guess I'm easily amused...or OCD.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[Hotchkin]

WOW Guys!

This is exactly why I love the technical community! Thanks for all your help.

I (finally) managed to get through to someone technical at OKI, who ran through a few tests for me while I was on the phone. He was using an OKI B440 because he didn't have a B430 on his test bench but he assured me they were almost identical. The first page he printed out from cold was 17 seconds. He then put the printer into sleep mode and printed another page...again it was 17 seconds. Now the printer was "awake" and the fuser was warmed he printed a third page which really did print in 5.5 seconds. He also told me that whilst you can't turn "sleep" mode off on the OKI, it is possible to extend the time before sleep mode kicks in to 240 minutes...as good as off!

I had our Konica-Minolta representative look at their range of printers and the best he could come back with was 9.5 seconds. They provide us with our high-end multi-function devices around the offices here and he was looking at all the products they offer.

I agree totally with JimInKS that it doesn't seem to matter what price-point you're looking at, 5.5 seconds seems about as fast as you can get. I'm now tempted just to buy an OKI to see how it performs!

I do have another concern about laser printers in general. I'm not really sure that having the printer in "awake" mode ensures that the fuser is kept warm. Any ideas? I'm worried that even if I leave the printer "awake", customers may still have to wait for the fuser to warm up before they get their page.

I am conscious that inkjets can perform very quickly - I use an inkjet myself for personal use. Somehow though I just feel that laser printers give a feel of more permanence and professionalism. This feeling is important for our customers - especially in the current economic climate when many of our competitors are going bankrupt! In our industry (luxury yachts) our customers need a warm glowing feeling...a warm "fresh baked" page (as Wahnula pointed out) goes part of the way!

Thanks again for all your help!

Richard.

 

[Hotchkin]

Hi again,

Just for the record, I've tested the first-page-out speed of an HP Laserjet 1018 via USB today and from warm, it takes 10 seconds for a Windows test page.

I've also ordered an OKI B430dn today, so I'll let you know how that performs when it arrives.

In the mean time, if anyone can beat 5.5 seconds on a laser, I'd be interested to hear!

Thanks again,
Richard.

 

[Hotchkin]

OK...for anyone who's interested...

The OKI B430 arrived.

The first thing I did was extend the sleep time to 240 minutes....then I found an option to turn off power save mode so I turned it off too.

Then I did my first Windows Test Page print. As expected it took about 16.5 seconds. Within a minute of this completing I did a second test page. This was in my hands in 5.5 seconds...pretty good. I then left the printer for 5 minutes and tried another print. Disappointingly (but not entirely unexpectedly) it took 16.5 seconds to print. I guess the extra 11 seconds is the time it takes to warm the fuser and neither the power save mode - "off" setting or the extended sleep time setting seem to keep the fuser warm. DOH! This is exactly what I'd hoped to avoid!

Thanks for all your interest and testing. I guess my search for a truly fast first-page-out will go on. If anyone can offer any tips or advice on keeping fuser warm or if anyone can find a laser printer that prints quickly please let me know.

I'm off now to try positioning a lighted candle under the printer to see if that helps!!

Richard.

 

[tf1]

HP rekon they have a new patented instant-on ceramic fuser and quote first page out times at around 8 seconds.

I still think you are wasting your money on a Laser when an inkjet can do what you want - proven and reliable.

If you need to impress customers, you could include a colour company logo!

Regards: Terry