What is the Canon iSENSYS LBP6230dw?
Canon’s iSENSYS LBP6230dw is a large personal or small desktop laser printer, aimed at a single owner or a small workgroup. It has duplex print as standard and can connect via USN, Ethernet or wireless.
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Canon iSENSYS LBP6230dw – Design and Features
The ice-white case has a black top, with a false rim sitting above it as a style feature. The output paper support pulls out from this, with a flip-over paper stop, and the lid itself folds up to give access to the combination drum and toner cartridge, which slides deep into the heart of the machine.
The control panel, three lights and two buttons on its top surface, is marked only with icons, so is not that intuitive. A pulldown cover on the front turns into the paper feed tray, which can take up to 250 sheets. Inside this cover is a second, cantilevered, semi-transparent cover, which pulls down over the tray. This is a really neat solution to having a printer with a very small footprint, but still providing protection for the paper when it’s loaded up. There’s a single-sheet feed on top of the tray cover, too.
Canon iSENSYS LBP6230dw – Connections and Setup
At the back are sockets for USB 2.0 and 10/100 Ethernet connections and the printer can also be used wirelessly. To make a wireless connection is a simple, two-button procedure if your router supports WPS setup. Press buttons on the router and on the front of the printer and the connection is made without the need to enter a pass code.
Once a wireless connection has been established, the iSENSYS LBP6230dw can accept input from a PC, Mac or from an Android device using Canon’s own mobile print app.
The single-piece drum and toner cartridge is only available in one capacity, of 2100 pages, which is a shame as a high yield variant would bring the overall cost per page down.
Supplied software is basic, though the driver is adequate, providing useful presets for regularly used printing tasks. There’s no draft print mode that we could find, though.
Canon iSENSYS LBP6230dw – Print Speed
Canon rates the iSENSYS LBP6230dw at 25ppm though, as usual, this speed makes no allowance for processing time and only measures the physical paper throughput. Even so, and partly due to the printer’s fast first page out, we saw a maximum speed of 20.3ppm on our long, 20-page document, which isn’t far off the claim.
The more typical five-page document came through at 14.3ppm and this was the speed for the text and graphics test, too. These are still good speeds for a reasonably budget laser such as this. It’s quite impressive that the 20-side duplex document gave 13.2 sides per minute, not much slower than the single-sided, five-page tests.
A 15 x 10cm photo on A4 from a PC completed in 8s and a full page A4 photo print from a Samsung Galaxy S3 Android phone took only marginally longer at 10s.
Canon iSENSYS LBP6230dw – Print Quality and Costs
We’ve come to expect print from Canon lasers to be excellent and weren’t disappointed here. Text from the default 600dpi print engine is crisp and sharp, with dense bold headings and no signs of toner spatter.
Greyscale fills are smooth with no blotchiness, though several shades of colour in our original reproduced as very similar shades of grey. Reversed text is clear and unbroken and greyscales and photos are better than many we’ve seen from machines in this price bracket. Better than average detail is available in shadowed areas of prints.
Using the best cartridge price we could find, the cost per page comes out at 3.0p, including 0.7p for paper. This is reasonable, while not being the best in its field.
Should I buy the Canon iSENSYS LBP6230dw?
There really are very few reasons not to consider this printer if you’re going for a small mono laser, though models from Brother, HP and Samsung should also be in the running.
In particular, the £130 Brother HL-2270DW comes close, offering duplex print, wireless connection and similar running costs.
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Verdict
The Canon iSENSYS LBP6230dw is a very well-thought-through mono laser printer, which should serve as a personal or small group device with little problem. We like its paper tray cover and the ease of wireless setup in particular. While not that cheap to run, it’s on a par with its main competitors.