It's rare to come across a totally perfect printer, and although there are lots of good reasons for liking the new Kyocera FS-C5025N colour laser, there were things we didn't like about it too. But let's not spoil the party just yet and, instead, start with some of the things we liked.

Firstly, it's a compact and well designed printer, taking up very little space for a colour laser that's destined to be shared on a small company or departmental LAN.

It also benefits from an impressive basic specification, with a single-pass laser engine able to cope with up to 85,000 pages per month. USB and Ethernet interfaces come as standard, with the usual multi-protocol print server emulations plus Web and SNMP management.

We also liked the array of paper handling options on offer. A 500-sheet feeder is built into the base model with a fold-out multi-purpose tray for transparencies, card and other awkward materials. Three more trays can then be added underneath (£188 plus VAT each), bringing capacity to 2,000 sheets altogether, with a duplexer (£215 plus VAT) and a powered envelope feeder (£189 plus VAT) also available.

What impressed us most, however, were the low cost of ownership claims, stemming from the fact that toner is the only consumable required in day-to day operation.

As on all single-pass lasers, four cartridges are required (cyan, yellow, magenta and black), each clicking quickly into place under the lift-up top. The original starter cartridges are good for around 4,000 pages each, but replacements can print around 8,000.

Moreover, although these may seem expensive (just under £300 plus VAT for a complete set), unlike on most other colour lasers there's nothing else to buy apart from a maintenance kit for the long-life drum every 200,000 prints (£450 plus VAT). Another plus is the low cost of black toner (£53.88 plus VAT) putting the cost of black and white prints on a par with using a dedicated monochrome laser.

According to Kyocera the net effect is dramatically lower running costs when calculated over the life of the printer (typically 3-5 years). Indeed, believe the tools on the Kyocera Web site and you could save thousands of pounds compared to other leading brands.

But let's not forget the things we didn't like, such as the 600dpi print quality and poor colour saturation leading to relatively poor prints compared to other printers in this price bracket. Neither did we find it particularly quick. The first page of any document took about 13 seconds to appear and simple text was produced fairly quickly, but complex pages could take longer to print and hold other jobs up.

Such concerns aside, however, the Kyocera FS-C5025N still has a lot to recommend it as a general purpose printer. And, at the end of the day, the low cost of ownership could outweigh the quality and performance concerns for a lot of potential buyers.

A well specified 20ppm colour laser that majors on low cost of ownership, with toner the only consumable that needs changing on a regular basis. Good networking and paper handling options are among other key features, but print quality and performance don't quite live up to expectation.