Kyocera has just upgraded a batch of five mono multifunction laser printers for small- to medium-size business users with a greater emphasis on speed of production, cost efficiency and environmental friendliness. (See all multifunction printer reviews.) The Ecosys M2030dn is one of the mid-range performers in this new group and outwardly it’s hard to distinguish it from its predecessor, the FS-1130MFP. It has identical dimensions of 494 x 430 x 448 mm, weighs in at the same comfortably solid 18kg and is styled in the usual Kyocera two-tone colours of cream and grey. (See also Group test: what’s the best mono laser printer?) Keeping a familiar design, however, isn’t always an advantage and there are two features that are not so user-friendly. The lesser annoyance is the positioning of the USB port high under the rim of the jutting control panel, which makes inserting a flash drive here awkward. More serious, though, is the drum installation mechanism which involves a flimsy plastic locking mechanism and some frustrating manoeuvring into position. While the control panel is broad and clearly labelled, some specialised buttons might need some reading up beforehand, including the Send function which forwards images to PC folders, FTP servers, via email and TWAIN; and the Document Box which allows scanning to and printing from USB memory. Despite not having the luxury of a touch-screen to choose from, the 5-line LCD display menus are nevertheless bright and simple to follow. Print savings are apparent from the 50-sheet ADF which allows for duplex scanning while double-sided ID cards can be scanned to a single sheet. There’s a further 50-sheet multipurpose drop-down tray at the front with a conventional 250-sheet cassette tray in the base which may be optionally boosted by a further 500 sheets if your volume needs are considerable. Kyocera printers have usually been blessed with nippy print rates and the Ecosys M2030dn is no slouch either, slinging out documents around the 28 ppm mark with single sheets and 16 ppm in duplex. This decent pace may have been helped by doubling the memory from the previous model to 512 MB (an additional 1GB is also available). Print quality, on the other hand, was less consistent. Print and graphics copied documents generally emerged relatively bold and sharp but ordinary text documents were paler and less substantial. Photos too were fainter but still managed to keep a reasonable amount of detail without too much banding. Ink replacement costs have normally been comparatively low for Kyocera MFPs and here the 3000-page drum works out at 2.21p per page at current market prices.
