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The Dell Color Smart Multifunction Printer S3845cdn ($999.99) is the first color laser all-in-one printer (AIO) we’ve reviewed from Dell in some time. Its print speeds and output quality are comparable to those of the Editors’ Choice Samsung Multifunction Printer ProXpress C3060FW , and its running costs, especially for monochrome pages, are significantly lower. And though it has a high sticker price, if you use it in the high-volume role it’s capable of filling, it may save you a lot of money. For these reasons, the S3845cdn is strong enough overall to replace the ProXpress C3060FW as our Editors’ Choice for medium-to-heavy-duty micro and small-office AIOs.
Design and Features
Dell’s matte-black S3845cdn ($2,444.31 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) measures 23.6 by 17.4 by 21.2 inches (HWD) and weighs a stout 85.8 pounds. Getting it from the box to a sturdy table or printer stand requires two reasonably healthy people (and/or a hoist). Out of the box, you can connect it only via Ethernet or USB cable. To use 802.11 Wi-Fi, you’ll need to buy the $59.99 Dell Wireless Card from Dell’s site and plug it into the back of the printer.
Mobile connectivity options include Apple AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, and Mopria, and missing are Wi-Fi Direct (except through the Wireless Card add-on) and near field communication (NFC). The last two are peer-to-peer protocols that allow you to print from your tablet or smartphone without either it or the printer being part of a network. Just as Canon and a few other printer makers have done lately, Dell has instead developed its own apps, such as Dell Document Hub and Dell Open Print Driver, for mobile connectivity, among other things. Overall, mobile device options are more than adequate.
The S3845cdn’s standard paper capacity is 700 sheets, split between a 550-sheet drawer and a 150-sheet multipurpose tray. If that’s not enough, you can add another 550-sheet drawer ($185.99) to increase capacity to 1,250 sheets. The 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) is single-pass, meaning it can scan both sides of a page simultaneously.
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Security features abound, including Trusted Platform Module (TPM) for data encryption, Secure Print for assigning PINs to print jobs, a secure embedded Web server, OpenManage Printer Essentials (OMPE) for fast setup and fleet monitoring, and even a lock slot on the paper drawer(s) to prevent tampering. Setting up security, as well as many other walk-up functions (such as making copies, and scanning to and printing from cloud sites, network sites, and USB thumb drives) are handled from a 5-inch capacitive touch screen, which comprises the entire control panel. The only two physical buttons are Home and Power.
Print Speed
Dell rates the S3845cdn at 36 pages per minute (ppm) in simplex (one-sided) mode, in either black-and-white or color, and 24ppm in duplex (double-sided) mode. To come up with these ratings, printer makers typically use lightly formatted text documents with about 5 percent coverage on the page. Testing from PC Labs’ Intel Core i5, Windows 10 ($139.00 at Microsoft Store)(Opens in a new window) testbed PC, I used a similar (MS Word) text file and timed the S3845cdn at 33.3ppm duplex and 34.7ppm simplex.
As it’s almost 10ppm faster than Dell’s 24ppm rating, the duplex number is higher than expected here, but I ran the documents several times to make sure. In any case, when I added more complicated documents containing graphics and images to the mix, the S38545cdn slowed down to 13.7ppm duplex and 15.3ppm simplex, which is about right—typically, when we add our graphics- and image-laden business documents the performance hit is 50 percent or more.
See How We Test Printers
Output Quality
Among this AIO’s better attributes are its print and copy quality. (But then what do you expect for $1,000?) Text ranging in size from 4 to upwards of 100 points came out crisp and highly legible, very near typesetter quality. Our business graphics (charts, graphs, tables), PowerPoint slides, and Excel charts and spreadsheets all came out looking sharp and professional, displaying only occasional, minor flaws. For example, like the HP OfficeJet Pro 8210 Printer ($149.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) and the Canon Maxify MB5120 Wireless Home Office Inkjet Printer ($199.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , it produced some minor banding in dark fills and gradients.
Photos looked good, too, for a laser printer. A photo-centric inkjet such as the inexpensive Canon Pixma MG7720 ($969.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , will print better photos still, but the S3845cdn’s are good enough for most business applications. For the most part, all of the S3845cdn’s output on our tests, including scanning and copying, was somewhat above average.
Running Costs
A $1,000 printer with an 80,000-page maximum monthly duty cycle (and a recommended duty cycle of 2,000 to 6,000 pages) requires a low cost per page. The S3845cdn’s running costs are among the lowest we’ve seen for a color laser AIO. The highest yield black toner cartridge sells for $149.99 and is good for about 11,000 prints, while the three color cartridges (cyan, magenta, and yellow) go for $223.99 each and, when combined with the black toner, yield about 9,000 pages. Using these numbers, the running costs come to 1.4 cents per black-and-white page and 8.9 cents per color page.
Again, these numbers are highly competitive for a color laser. For example, the aforementioned ProXpress C3060FM’s running costs are 2.4 cents per monochrome page and 13.5 per color page. Keep in mind that with a 1-cent difference in the monochrome cost per page, every 10,000 pages you print with the Samsung model will cost you an additional $100, and every 100,000 pages will cost you $1,000—enough to buy another printer (or a complete set of high-yield toner cartridges).
Conclusion
There’s little to dislike about the Dell Color Smart Multifunction Printer S3845cdn. It prints relatively fast and well. It has low running costs for a color laser AIO, so although its purchase price is lofty compared with that of the Samsung ProXpress C3060FM, if you churn out thousands of pages, you’ll make up the difference in a matter of months. Because of its fine balance of quality and value, the S3845cdn is our new Editors’ Choice for medium-to-heavy duty micro and small office AIOs.
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Although the Dell Color Smart Multifunction Printer S3845cdn is pricey, its speed, print quality, and low running costs make it an excellent color laser all-in-one for your micro or small office.
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