Significantly less expensive than the Dell B1165nfw Mono Laser Multifunction Printer, the Dell Mono Multifunction Printer - B1163w delivers most of the same MFP features, but without faxing or an automatic document feeder (ADF) for scanning. The lack of an ADF limits its copying and scanning to extremely light-duty use. If you don't copy or scan very often, that may be enough.
Much like the B1165nfw, the B1163w is meant primarily as a personal MFP. At 9.8 by 15.3 by 10.8 inches (HWD), it has a smaller footprint than most inkjets, which makes it small enough to share a desk with as a personal printer in any size office. On the other hand, in addition to USB as a connection choice, it also offers Wi-Fi, which makes it easy to use as a shared printer in a micro office for light-duty printing and lighter-duty scanning and copying.
Like more and more printers today, the B1163w also supports an assortment of mobile printing features, including Google Cloud Print for printing over the Internet and both AirPrint and Dell's own app for Android devices for printing over a Wi-Fi connection. It doesn't support Wi-Fi Direct, however, which means you can use the mobile print features only if you have a Wi-Fi access point on your network and you've set the printer up using its Wi-Fi connection.
Paper Handling
One of the key issues that makes the B1163w primarily a personal printer is its limited paper handling, with a 150-sheet capacity and no duplexer available even as an option. The 150-sheet tray, with no upgrades available, means that if you print more than about 30 pages per day, refilling the tray can turn into an annoying chore.
Having a single tray, without even a manual feed to supplement it, also means that to print on a different paper stock you have to swap out the paper in the tray, which can turn into an annoyance as well. That said, the B1163w's capacity and paper handling in general should be sufficient for most personal use as well as for sharing the printer for light-duty use by micro office standards.
For scanning and copying, the printer offers only a letter-size flatbed without an automatic document feeder. As I've already suggested, that limits it to extremely light-duty scanning and copying, even by personal MFP standards.
Setup and Speed
One advantage of the low paper capacity is that it helps keep the size of the printer down, with the small size serving as another feature that helps define the B1163w as a personal printer. Not only is it small enough to sit on your desk without towering over you, it weighs only 14.7 pounds, making it easy for one person to move into place.
Setup is absolutely typical. For my tests, I connected the printer by USB cable, and installed the drivers on a Windows Vista system.
Dell rates the printer engine at 21 pages per minute (ppm), which is the speed you should see when printing text or other files that need little to no processing. On our business applications suite I timed it at 7.6 ppm (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing), which is an acceptable speed for the price, but not fast enough to count as a strong point. It's essentially tied with the B1165nfw and only a tad slower than the Editors' Choice Panasonic KX-MB2000, at 8.0 ppm, but it's significantly slower than the Canon imageClass MF3010, at 10.3 ppm.
Output Quality
The B1163w's output quality is arguably its strongest point, with text, graphics, and photo output all falling at the high end of the range that includes the vast majority of mono lasers. Text and graphics aren't quite suitable for serious desktop publishing applications, but both are good enough for virtually any business need. For graphics, that includes PowerPoint handouts and the like.
Photo quality is roughly equivalent to the high end of what you would expect from a black and white photo in a newspaper. It's certainly more than good enough to print recognizable images from Web pages or similar source material with photos.
If you need an MFP that can scan or copy multipage documents on a regular basis, you'll obviously want to look for one that includes an ADF, with Dell's own B1165nfw Mono Laser Multifunction Printer a good place to start. If you need to copy and scan only short documents, however, and not even many of those, you can probably do without an ADF. If so, the Dell Mono Multifunction Printer - B1163w offers a potentially attractive balance of acceptable speed, high-quality output, and paper handling suitable for either personal use or light-duty use as a shared printer in a micro office.
No comments:
Post a Comment