The Dell Color Multifunction Printer - C5765dn is an imposing multifunction printer (MFP) for larger workgroups or other situations requiring a heavy-duty MFP with color capabilities and some nice workflow features. Its 110-page duplexing automatic document feeder scans both sides of a document, and it can scan to searchable PDF. Its hefty purchase price is mitigated by its unusually low running costs, so in the long run a business can recoup the difference and may even save money over lower-priced MFPs.

The Dell C5765dn prints, copies, and scans. (An optional fax kit is available for $249.) You can print from or scan to a USB thumb drive; scan to e-mail, a PC or network folder or an FTP site. A nice touch is that it has built-in OCR so it can scan to searchable PDF format.

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The Dell C5765dn measures 24.8 by 22 by 21.1 inches (HWD) and weighs 123 pounds, so you'll need at least two (and preferably 3) people to move it into place. That front panel houses a 7-inch color touch LCD, an alphanumeric keypad for both faxing and password-protected printing, and a handful of other buttons. The 110-sheet ADF is a duplexing model, capable of scanning two-sided documents.

The C5765dn has a standard paper capacity of 700 sheets, split between a 550-sheet main tray and a 150-sheet multipurpose tray. It has an automatic duplexer for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper. Its 110,000-page maximum duty cycle pegs it for high-volume printing.

Optional 550-sheet ($199.99) and 1,100-sheet ($379.99) trays are available; the maximum paper capacity is 2,350 sheets. A finisher tray costs $899.99. The C5765dn can print on paper at up to legal size; if you need tabloid-size color printing, Dell offers the otherwise similar C7765dn ($7,499 list).

The printer ships with PCL and PostScript drivers. The PCL driver installs by default; PostScript, which comes on a separate disk, needs to be installed separately. It has an automatic duplexer for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper; the machine, as we have seen with several other recent Dell printers (as well as printers from Canon and Xerox), comes with duplex printing as the default.

USB and Ethernet (including Gigabit Ethernet) connectivity are standard. I tested the machine on a wired network with drivers installed on a PC running Windows Vista.

Printing Speed
On our business applications suite, as timed with QualityLogic's hardware and software, the Dell C5765dn—rated at 47 ppm for both monochrome and color printing—tested at an effective 11 pages per minute (ppm) in its default (duplex) mode, which we use for its official timing. That's a good speed for a color laser and in line with its rated speed, which is based on printing text documents without graphics or photos—our test suite includes text pages, graphics pages, and pages with mixed content. We timed the Editors' Choice Dell C3765dnf Color Laser PrinterSEE IT, rated at 23 pages per minute for both monochrome and color printing, at 8.2 ppm, and the HP LaserJet Enterprise color flow MFP M575c , rated at 31 pages per minute, at 8.3 ppm. When I switched to simplex mode, the C5765dn was a bit faster still, at 11.8 ppm.

Output Quality
Overall output quality was average for a color laser, with below-par text, slightly above-par graphics, and average photo quality. For a laser, even sub-par text quality is good enough for typical business uses.

With graphics, colors were for the most part bright and well saturated. Some illustrations showed mild banding, and in others, dithering in the form of graininess was apparent. Quality is good enough for PowerPoint handouts.

Several photos showed traces of banding. Dithering (graininess) was apparent in some prints. Though detail was generally good, one print showed significant loss of detail in dark areas. Whether the photo quality is good enough for use in client newsletters depends on how picky you are.

Running Cost
There is generally an inverse relationship between the price of a printer and its running costs, and the Dell C5765dn is a prime example of that. Its stratospheric sticker price is offset by very low costs of 1 cent per monochrome page and 6.6 cents per color page. The HP M575c's running costs are considerably higher at 1.8 and 13 cents for black and white and color, respectively, while the Editors' Choice Dell C3765dnf's costs per page are 1.5 and 10 cents. The HP Officejet Pro X576dw MFP , an inkjet with laser-like capabilities, has running costs of 1.3 and 6.8 cents for monochrome and color.

The HP M575c includes similar workflow features to the C5765dn, including a duplexing ADF and embedded OCR, which lets you scan to various document formats including searchable PDF. It has much higher running costs than the C5765dn, but a considerably lower sticker price (though it's still expensive compared with most color laser MFPs).

The C5765dn prints at higher volume and a lower cost per page than the Editors' Choice Dell C3765dnf Color Laser Printer, which has a good set of MFP features though it can't match those of its larger sibling. It does, however, come with fax as a standard feature.

For businesses able to make the massive investment that its price commands, the Dell C5765dn Color Laser Printer offers good speed, decent output quality, and a good set of MFP and workflow features. It's capable of heavy-duty printing, and has good standard and optional paper capacity. Its very low running costs allow businesses with high print volumes to recoup the price difference between it and most lower-priced MFPs over time, and even save money in the long run. The C5765dn has most any MFP feature a busy workgroup would want—except for fax capabilities, for which you have to pay extra.