About Dell 2350dn

If you're looking for a printer for modest to heavy-duty printing for your small office or workgroup, don't need color, and must have high-quality text, the Dell 2350dn ($299.99 direct) should be on your short list. Although it's slower than you would expect from its 40 page-per-minute (ppm) rating, it offers reasonable speed, high quality output across the board, and suitable paper capacity for a small office, making it a more than reasonable choice, particularly if you care more about output quality than speed.

Even if output quality isn't your primary need, you might still want to consider the 2350dn. Although it isn't a match otherwise for the Editors' Choice OKI B431dn ($349.99 direct, 4 stars), which is smaller, lighter, faster, and offers a bit higher paper capacity, it doesn't cost as much either. That should be enough to keep it in the running in any case.

Basics and Speed:
At 10.5 by 16.8 by 14.6 inches (HWD) and 31.2 pounds, the 2350dn is a touch too large and heavy to qualify as a personal printer. However, it actually takes up less desktop space than many inkjets, which means it shouldn't be hard to find room for even in a small office where space is tight.
The paper capacity is 300 sheets, divided into a 250-sheet drawer and 50-sheet multipurpose tray, so you can have two different types of paper loaded at once and change paper easily. For offices with more heavy-duty print needs, Dell sells a 550-sheet tray ($99.99 direct), for a total 850-sheet capacity. The printer also comes with a duplexer for printing on both sides of a page.

Output Quality and Other Issues:
The 2350dn's output quality is its strongest point. Text quality in our tests was just a touch below the absolute best I've seen. I'd call it suitable even for demanding desktop publishing applications. It's certainly good enough for any business use, even if you have an unusual need for small fonts.

Graphics quality was similarly just a touch below the very best for mono lasers, although that's not unusually high quality, since you can say the same for the vast majority of the competition. That makes the output good enough for any internal business use, up to and including PowerPoint handouts and the like. Photos are at the high end of the tight range where most mono lasers fall, making them easily good enough for printing Web pages with photos or a client or company newsletter.