New York, NY -- Reviewed in late 2009 by PC Magazine, the new Dell 1230c is a reasonably priced and
reasonably sized laser that one could justify using as a personal printer. It is not particularly large,
measuring only 9.6” x 15.3” x 12.3”, so it won’t take up a lot of room on your desk. It has the print quality
and speed that you would expect from a color laser at $230, so not fantastic, but definitely a step up from
your average inkjet printer. Because it is a personal printer as opposed to a network printer, the only
connection option is a USB cable.
It also has a tray that holds a maximum of 150 sheets, again, enough for one person, but not enough for
sharing. It is both PC and Mac compatible, and Windows 7 drivers are available for download from their
corporate website. In terms of print speed, it offers somewhat average to below average speed with 17 pages
per minute for monochrome and 4 pages per minute for color. The slow color speed is due to a four-pass engine,
which means that all of the colors are printed from one laser so that each of the four colors needs a separate
pass.
According to Dell, the printer offers a robust duty cycle for a personal printer—20,000 pages per month.
In terms of ink, the 1230c uses four cartridges: black, cyan, magenta, and yellow with a yield of 1,500 pages
for the black ink and 1,000 for the color cartridges. One nice feature of this printer is that the cartridges
literally ship inside the printer, so you don’t even have to install them during initial setup. These
cartridges are starter cartridges which will yield 1,000 pages for black and 700 pages for each color. The
1230c also offers manual duplexing and is EnergyStar certified. Overall, you could do a lot worse in a
personal printer and for the price, the 1230c is certainly a decent investment.
