Small enough to share a desk with comfortably, the Canon imageClass LBP6200d monochrome laser printer ($169) delivers fast speed and excellent paper handling. It has a higher cost per page than most of its competition, but if you care more about speed than cost, it can still be a good choice as a personal printer in any size office.

In many ways, the LBP6200d is similar to the Samsung Xpress M2625D, which is our Editors' Choice for personal monochrome lasers. Both are limited to USB as a connection choice, which is a big part of what defines them as personal printers, and both are small enough to sit on your desk. The LBP6200d measures 9.6 by 14.9 by 11.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 16.8 pounds, making it easy for one person to move into place.

The printers also offer essentially the same paper handling, with a 250-sheet paper tray, one-page manual feed, and built-in duplexer (for two-sided printing) standard. That's enough to qualify as excellent for a personal printer, even without any extra-cost options available. One key difference between the two is price. The LBP6200d coming in at both a higher initial price (about $50 more) and a higher running cost. What you get for the extra money is faster speed.

Setup

Setting up the LBP6200d on a system running Windows Vista was mostly standard fare, with one minor glitch. The printer comes with a disc, so setup can actually consist mostly of putting the disc in your PC and running the installation program. The problem is that the quick-start guide doesn't mention the disc. Instead it tells you to download the driver and manual from Canon's website.

Not mentioning the disc is confusing, since it leaves you wondering what the disc is for. Beyond that, you shouldn't have to download the driver manually in any case. The preferred approach, which most printer setup programs follow, is to include an option in the program for the software itself to check online for updated drivers and download them if necessary. For my tests, I wound up installing the driver both ways so I could confirm I had the latest version.

Speed and Output Quality
Canon's driver installs to print in duplex mode by default, so that's the setting I used for our official tests. However, Canon rates the LBP6200d at only 16 pages per minute (ppm) in duplex, compared with 26 ppm in simplex (one-sided) mode. These ratings are the speeds you should see when printing text documents or other files that need little to no processing. I ran the tests in both modes to see how much difference in speed there was on our tests.

On our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing), I timed the printer at 11.1 ppm in duplex and 14.5 ppm in simplex. Even the duplex speed counts as fast for the category. Both the Samsung M2625D and the Samsung Xpress M2825DW, our Editors' Choice for budget-priced, shared monochrome laser printer in a micro office, managed only 9.9 ppm. And keep in mind that both of those printers install to print in simplex by default.

Output quality for the LBP6200d in my tests was in the typical range for a monochrome laser across the board. Text quality was at the low end of a fairly tight range where most monochrome lasers fall, making it easily good enough for any business need.

Similarly, graphics and photos were at the low end of what is typical for the category. For graphics, that translates to being good enough for any internal business need and potentially good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like, depending on how much of a perfectionist you are. For photos, it means the printer can produce recognizable images from Web pages and can print photos in general at roughly the same quality as a black-and-white photo in a newspaper.

One final issue that demands mention is the printer's running cost, at 4.1 cents per page. In comparison, the running cost for the Samsung M2625D and Samsung M2825DW is only 3 cents per page. So not only does the LBP6200d cost more than either of those printers, but the total cost of ownership increases with every page you print.

If you expect to print a lot of pages, that gives either Samsung model a much lower cost of ownership than the Canon printer, which is one of the reasons both earn our Editors' Choice designation. Beyond that, if you don't need to connect to a network and are considering the Canon printer, be sure to check out the Samsung M2625D. Similarly, be sure to look at the Samsung M2825DW if you need to connect to a network, even as a personal printer, or want mobile print features—which it offers. That said, if you don't need to connect to a network, and are willing to pay more for faster speed, the Canon imageClass LBP6200d can certainly do the job as a personal monochrome laser printer.