Canon I-SENSYS LBP3100 Printer Review

The Canon I-SENSYS LBP3100 mono laser printer is one of the latest in a long line of personal laser printers and is available for about £90. With its ice-white coloring and petite size, this machine not only looks good but will fit in a small space.

If you want to print, you have to open the top lid, which folds forward to become the output tray. The Canon’s I-SENSYS LBP3100 150 the page input tray folds out from the front and has a dust cover installed to keep paper clean. Dust cover is a neat idea because you can’t put it wrong when not in use. There is also a one-sheet multipurpose feed just above the lid.

The only controls on the front of the Canon I-SENSYS LBP3100 are the power button, resume button, and green LED to indicate power. The back has a USB socket.

Setting up the Canon I-SENSYS LBP3100 is straightforward as virtually all you have to do as far as software is concerned is to install the supplied driver. The only consumable for the machine is the printer cartridge, which inserted via the top hatch. The provided toner cartridge will do a maximum of 700 pages, but the only replacement toner cartridges you can get will do 1,500 pages, and you can get Canon or compatible ones.

Canon claims the LBP3100 is capable of printing at 16 pages per minute (ppm), which proved to be not far off the mark as in tests, a 20-page text print was completed in 15.2ppm while a 15 x 10cm photo printed in 15 seconds. Given the cost of this machine, this result is more than acceptable.

Not only was the print speed good but, generally, the Canon I-SENSYS LBP3100 also produced good quality prints. The text was clear and well defined, but grayscale did show a little banding, and different tones were not as clearly defined as they might have been.

Photo prints were not that great a level of detail that was a little disappointing. Of course, this is a black and white printer and not designed with photo printing in mind.

Canon quotes a noise level of 50dBA for the Canon I-SENSYS LBP3100, but in tests, it peaked at 63dBA, which is quite loud for a printer, which you may have sitting on a desk close to you.

In conclusion, the Canon I-SENSYS LBP3100 is a pretty good everyday mono printer for under £100. It is quick and produces good text prints, although grayscale was a little disappointing, and photos were little more than OK.