Dell Color Multifunction Printer - E525w
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Pros
- Prints, scans, copies, faxes.
- Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Wi-Fi Direct.
- High-quality graphics and photo output.
Cons
- Low paper capacity.
- No duplexer (for two-sided printing).
Bottom Line
The Dell Color Multifunction Printer - E525w offers a low price with all the features you need in a color MFP for personal use or shared use in a micro office.
As an LED printer—which makes it nearly identical to a laser, except that it uses LEDs instead of a laser to draw the image of each page on its drum—the Dell Color Multifunction Printer - E525w ($329.99) is one of the lower-cost color laser-class multifunction printers (MFPs) available. That alone makes it a candidate for a personal printer or a shared printer in a micro office. What makes it worth a close look, however, is its reasonably high-quality output combined with a full set of MFP features. It also delivers more than you'd probably expect for the price, making it well worth your attention if you're looking for a color laser MFP and don't want to spend a lot of money.
Much like the closely competitive HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M177fw and the more expensive HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw, our Editors' Choice color laser MFP for personal or light-duty use in a micro office, the E525w gets its small size in part from a limited paper capacity. In addition to helping keep the printer small enough for personal use, the single 150-sheet tray limits it to light-duty printing, even by micro-office standards.
Also limiting the E525w's paper handling is the lack of an automatic duplexer (for two-sided printing), which is true of the HP M177fw as well, but is one of the welcome extras in the HP M277dw. For scanning, the E525w offers a letter-size flatbed supplemented by a 15-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) that can handle up to legal-size pages.
More Basics
EVESKY SPTC High Yield Compatible Dell E525W E525 525 Toner Cartridge Set for Dell Color Multi Function E525W Printers 5 Pack Set (1 Cyan, 1 Magenta, 1 Yellow, 2 Black) Model #: h2019hB075GJBZQV Item #: 9SIABJCB2H7662. The Dell E525w is an all-in-one color laser printer with scan and copy functions, an automatic document feeder and built-in faxing. It works with Windows, macOS and Linux. The capacity of the main.
Core MFP features in the E525w include printing and faxing from, as well as scanning to, a computer plus standalone copying and faxing. In addition, it can print from and scan to a USB memory key.
If you connect the printer to a network, using either Ethernet or Wi-Fi, you can print from and scan to iOS, Android, and Windows mobile devices, making the connection through a Wi-Fi access point on your network, and you can print though the cloud. If you connect the printer to a single PC via a USB cable instead, you won't be able to print through the cloud, but you can still connect to it directly to print from or scan to a mobile device, using the printer's Wi-Fi Direct.
Like more and more recent MFPs, the E525w can print from and scan to a selection of websites (including Dropbox, Evernote, and Box, for example). However, its approach is unusual. With most printers that offer this capability, you give commands from the front panel, and the printer connects directly to the cloud though your network. With the E525w, you run a supplied program on your PC or an equivalent downloadable app on your mobile device, and then give commands from, and relay the data through, your PC or device.
More precisely, according to Dell, your PC or device connects to the Dell Document Hub website, which in turn connects to the site you want to print from or scan to. The print or scan job then goes through both the Dell Document Hub and the PC or device. That means you can't use the feature with the E525w by itself. On the other hand, it lets you print from or scan to the cloud even if the printer isn't on a network. Because the PC-based app works only with Windows 7 or above, however, I couldn't see it in action with the Windows Vista system I used for testing.
Setup and Speed
The E525w measures 13.9 by 16.1 by 15.7 inches (HWD), which makes it small enough that you should be able to find a spot for it even if space it tight. At 36 pounds 3 ounces, you might want some help moving it into place. Setup with a wired connection on a network is mostly standard, although Dell's installation program is even more automated than most.The speed is best described as good for the price. The 18 page-per-minute (ppm) rating for both color and black and white is the speed you should see when printing text or other documents with little or no formatting. In my tests (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing), I clocked the printer on our business applications suite at 4.2ppm. That makes it significantly faster than the HP M177fw, which managed only 2.9ppm, but a lot slower than the HP M277dw, at 8.4ppm.
Output Quality
Output quality is more than acceptable overall, despite text quality that's near the low end of the range for a color laser MFP. Fortunately, even poor text from a laser quality is better than almost any inkjet can manage. For the font sizes in most documents, the quality is easily good enough for virtually any business use, including output that has to look fully professional, like a resumé. Unless you have an unusual need for small fonts, you shouldn't have any problems with it.Dell Color Mfp E525w Print Drivers For Mac Catalina 2016
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Graphics quality is typical for a color laser MFP, which makes it similarly suitable for any business use, including PowerPoint handouts and the like. Most people would also consider it good enough for marketing materials like one-page mailers and trifold brochures. The same is true for photo quality.