The printer really only has a few modes of operation: powered off, sleeping, ready for print and printing, each with increasing amount of power consumption.

Using my new Blueplant EM100 Energy Meter, I made the following measurements:

When printing 10 pages, the power varied between 400 to 700W, occassionally peaking to the 750+ range. For the most part, I would guess the average power usage would ring in at 550W. The 700W spike is usually just as a fresh sheet entered the fuser. Once the print job completed, the power quickly dropped down to 8W.

To test the print speed, I created a 20 page word document. Each page had 50 lines and a total of 4079 characters. For single sided printing, I used my stop watch to record the time it takes for the first page to hit the output tray and the time for the entire job to be completed. The average page per minute print time will be determined by pages 2 through 20, 19 pages total. This will allow me to remove the spooling time for the print job. For duplex printing, I will follow the same procedures. I will record the time for the first sheet to hit the output tray and then the time for the entire job to be completed. The average page per minute print time for a duplex job will be determined by averaging the time for pages 3 to 20, 9 sheets total.

I did a couple test prints using various printer resolutions and toner saving features. Can you see the difference between pages one, two and three? These pages were scanned using my Samsung MFP at 200 dpi.

There’s a small difference when you switch from 600 DPI to 1200 DPI and turn off the toner save mode. Personally, it’s worth having Toner Save On just to get the extra pages out of your toner at the expense of a small quality loss. However, when you start printing black and white photos, it’s a very different ballgame. The difference between 600 DPI with Toner Save on and 1200 DPI with Toner Save off is one worth making.

The left photo above is the original picture converted into black and white. To the right is a comparison between 600 DPI with toner save mode on and 1200 DPI with toner save mode off.

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