By Tony Hoffman
As a modestly priced monochrome laser printer, the Canon ImageClass LBP151dw ($169) is small enough to be a good fit for a micro or hoome office. The LBP151dw has the wired and wireless connections needed for networked use, but it's also a good fit as a personal printer attached to a single computer. It has good speed for its price and prints above-average text, and offers enough to make it our new Editors' Choice as a shared micro-office mono laser.
Design and Features
Measuring 9.4 by 15.7 by 13.2 inches (HWD) and weighing 19 pounds including the cartridge, the matte-black LBP151dw should be easy for one person to move, and small enough to comfortably fit on many desks. As is typical for printers of this class, it lacks a display. There are several controls, marked by icons, to the left of the main paper tray. They include the Power button, a Wi-Fi button (for use in setup, with an indicator light that turns on when you are connected wirelessly), a job cancel button, and a paper indicator button. The latter will flash when you are out of paper, or if the paper is the wrong size. Once you refill the tray, pressing the button will restart printing.
Paper handling is essentially the same as we have seen in many other budget mono laser printers, including the Samsung xPress M2825DW and the Dell Printer E310dw, both Editors' Choice models, and the Canon imageClass LBP6230dw. It includes a 250-sheet main paper tray and a 1-sheet multipurpose feeder, as well as an automatic duplexer for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper. The printer is set by default to two-sided printing as a paper- and money-saving measure.
The LBP151dw offers Ethernet, USB, and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi connectivity. It supports printing with the Canon Print Business and Mopria Print Service apps, as well as Google Cloud Print. Unlike both the Samsung M2825DWand the Dell E310dw, the LBP151dw lacks Wi-Fi Direct, which lets you print over a direct peer-to-peer connection with a compatible mobile device. I tested the printer over an Ethernet connection. Printer drivers include Canon's host-based (UFR II) driver, as well as PCL6.
Printing Speed
The LBP151dw proved a speedster in our testing, printing out our business applications suite (as timed with QualityLogic's hardware and software) at 10.1 pages per minute (ppm) in its default duplex (two-sided) mode, a good time especially considering its rated speed of 16ppm. Note that rated speeds are based on text-only printing, while our test suite includes text documents, graphics documents, and documents with mixed content. In ad-hoc testing in simplex (one-sided) printing mode, for which it is rated at 28ppm, it tested at an even faster 13.2ppm. Its speed is similar to that of the Canon LBP6230dw, which tested at 10.8ppm in duplex and 13.2ppm in simplex. The Samsung M2825DW, which turned in a speed of 9.9ppm in its default simplex mode, and the Dell E310dw, which tested at 9.2ppm, also in simplex, considerably lagged the LBP151dw.
Output Quality
Overall output quality was average for a mono laser, with slightly above-par text, graphics a bit below par, and average photos. Text should be good enough for any business use except for ones requiring tinyfonts.
Most of the graphics looked okay, although one illustration meant to show a gradation in tone showed very little change between different zones. The LBP151dw also did poorly in printing very thin colored lines. Photo quality is fine for printing out images from Web pages and the like. Quality varied considerably from print to print.
Running costs for the LBP151dw, based on Canon's prices and yield figures for toner cartridges, are 3.5 cents per page. These are a little higher than the Dell E310dw (3.3 cents) and the Samsung M2825DW (3.1 cents), though lower than the Canon LBP6230dw (4.1 cents).
Conclusion
The Canon ImageClass LBP151dw is a compact and capable mono laser printer for use in a micro or home office or as a personal printer. It lacks the Wi-Fi Direct connectivity found in the Samsung M2825DWand the Dell E310dw, but does via connect USB, Ethernet, and standard Wi-Fi. The LBP151dw is easily faster than either of these models, printing out two-sided documents in its default duplex mode—which requires flipping each document over to print the second side—faster than they could print in simplex, and blowing them away when I switched it to simplex. Its speed, combined with its above-par text, is enough to earn it our Editors' Choice as a shared micro-office monochrome printer.
