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The Dell Cloud Multifunction Printer H815dw ($379.99) delivers a level of print speed and paper handling that’s clearly aimed at small offices or workgroups with medium-duty print needs. Beyond that, it’s aimed at offices that need to print from and scan to the cloud and can benefit from giving the print and scan commands directly from the printer’s front panel rather than a computer. For offices that need that kind of Web connectivity in a workhorse monochrome multifunction printer (MFP), the H815dw is of obvious interest.
Printing directly from and scanning directly to websites is far from unique to the H815dw. The Brother MFC-L2720DW ($536.86 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) offers a similar feature. On the other hand, it’s still unusual enough to give the printer an edge if you happen to want that capability. The Canon imageClass MF6160dw ($1,569.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) for example—our Editors’ Choice medium-duty monochrome laser MFP for a small office—can print through the cloud, but it can’t print directly from, or scan directly to, a website.
The Basics…
The H815dw’s basic MFP features include printing and faxing from, as well as scanning to, a PC, plus the ability to work as a standalone copier, fax machine, and direct email sender (meaning you can send a scanned document as an email attachment directly, without having to send it to your PC’s email client). In addition, it can both print from and scan to a USB memory key.
Paper handling for printing is easily good enough for medium-duty use in a small office or heavy-duty use in a micro office. In addition to its 250-sheet drawer, the printer offers a 100-sheet multi-purpose tray and an automatic duplexer standard. You can also add an optional 550-sheet tray ($159.99) for the maximum 900-sheet capacity.
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For scanning, the H815dw supplements its letter-size flatbed with a 50-page automatic document feeder (ADF) that can scan up to legal-size pages and can also copy, scan, and fax in duplex, by scanning one side of the page, turning it over, and scanning the other. Although this isn’t as fast as scanning both sides of the page at once, it’s a welcome convenience. In addition, the combination of duplexing ADF and duplex printing lets you copy both single- and double-sided originals to your choice of single- or double-sided copies.
…and Beyond
Features that go beyond the basics include mobile printing support both for printing through the cloud (assuming you connect the printer directly to a network that’s connected to the Internet), and printing over Wi-Fi through an access point on your network from iOS, Android, and Windows phones and tablets. The printer also supports mobile scanning over an access point from iOS and Android devices. In addition, it supports Wi-Fi Direct—so you can connect to the printer directly for printing and scanning—and NFC, which lets you establish a Wi-Fi Direct connection from compatible devices by simply tapping the device to the NFC logo on the printer.
For printing from and scanning to cloud sites, you first have to set up an account with the Dell Document Hub website and give it details about your accounts on any of the sites it works with (Google Drive, Evernote, Sharepoint Online, OneDrive, Dropbox, Box, and SalesForce.com). All scans to and print jobs from those sites will go through the Dell site.
Unlike some of Dell’s other printers that can print from and scan to websites—including the Dell Multifunction Printer – E515dw ($124.99 at Dell Technologies)(Opens in a new window) —the H815dw connects directly to the Dell Document Hub without needing a PC. Instead, you give commands through the 4.3-inch front-panel touch screen.
You can also scan a document and have the Dell server recognize the text and create a file in Word, searchable PDF, Excel, or PowerPoint formats. Simply choose the option on the front panel, specify a format, and choose a destination, which can be any one of the available websites or an email address.
Still another extra is the ability to send files to the printer to hold until you give a print command from the front panel. In addition to using this for private printing, which tells the printer to wait for you to enter a PIN at the front panel before printing, you can also specify that a job should stay in memory for reprinting later. However, if you turn off the printer, you’ll lose any stored print jobs. That makes the feature a lot less useful than it would be if the documents were stored on disk or in non-volatile memory.
Setup, Speed, and Output Quality
As is typical for this category of printer, the H815dw is big and heavy enough, at 19.4 by 17.3 by 17.2 inches (HWD) and 41.9 pounds, that you might want some help moving it into place. Setup is standard fare. For my tests I connected it to a network using its Ethernet port and installed the drivers on a system running Windows Vista.
The default setting for the H815dw’s print driver is to print in duplex, which is the setting I used for our official tests. However, I also ran the test in simplex (one-sided) mode, for a more direct comparison to most of its competition.
Speed is a strong point. Dell rates the printer at 40 pages per minute (ppm) in simplex mode and 24ppm in duplex, which are the speeds you should see when printing documents that need little to no processing time. On our business applications suite, I timed it (using QualityLogic’s(Opens in a new window) hardware and software for timing) at a convincingly fast 11.8ppm for printing in duplex, and 13.4ppm for simplex. That makes the Dell printer faster than the Canon MF6160dw’s 9.9ppm for duplex mode and essentially tied with it for simplex mode. As another point of reference, the less-expensive Brother MFC-L2720DW and the Dell E515dw both came in at less than 10ppm for printing in simplex.
See How We Test Printers
Output quality is the one area where the H815dw doesn’t score well. Its saving grace is that monochrome lasers offer high enough quality as a group that even slightly subpar output is good enough for most business use. As long as you don’t have an unusual need for small fonts, you shouldn’t have a problem with the text quality. Similarly, the graphics output is suitable for any typical business need, including PowerPoint handouts and the like. Photos are more than good enough for printing recognizable images from webpages.
Conclusion
If you don’t need a printer that can print directly from or scan directly to websites, be sure to consider the Canon MF6160dw, which offers much better output quality than the Dell Cloud Multifunction Printer H815dw. Alternatively, if you want the Web-connected capability, but don’t need as heavy-duty a printer, consider the Brother MFC-L2720DW or the Dell E515dw. The H815dw is an excellent fit if you want to print directly from and scan directly to the cloud, and also need a printer suitable for a moderate workload in a small office.
3.5
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The Dell Cloud Multifunction Printer H815dw’s output quality is good enough for most business use, and the printer offers a long list of features, including printing from and scanning to both mobile devices and the cloud.
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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/dell-cloud-multifunction-printer-h815dw