Colour laser printers are becoming as quick as their monochrome counterparts, almost as affordable and just as easy to use. So much so that even quite small businesses can now routinely choose a colour laser, like the Genicom Intelliprint cL160, over the more traditional mono laser and colour inkjet pairing.

There are lots of colour lasers on the market but the Intelliprint cL160 stands out for several reasons, starting with its lack of bulk. Sure, it's a lot bigger than a personal laser but it's designed to be shared on a network, with a 500-sheet A4 paper tray as standard plus a fold-out, 100-sheet, manual feeder to take transparencies, card and envelopes. That's enough for the needs of most small companies, but there's more. Duplexing (that's double-side printing) is built-in and you can add two more 500-sheet trays underneath, turning the Genicom printer into a high capacity, free-standing device.

The next thing you'll notice is the lack of noise. Turn the Intelliprint cL160 on and, apart from a couple of beeps as it warms up, it's eerily silent. Plus it's remarkably frugal in terms of power while it waits in its standby mode. Of course that all changes when you send something to print, using either of the built-in PostScript or PCL emulations but, even then, the Xerox-based engine makes no more noise than most monochrome lasers.

Speed is another plus, largely because the Intelliprint cL160 is a single pass laser. As with all colour printers, the pages are made up of separate cyan, yellow, magenta and black (CYMK) layers, but these don't have to be printed separately. Instead there are individual toner/drum units for each of the four colours, the paper passing through each in turn as it travels the short distance from input to output tray.

The end result is the ability to print an impressive 16 pages per minute (ppm) in both colour and black and white, at a resolution of 1,200dpi. Of course there's a delay as the image is first processed, but that's short too thanks to the Genicom controller which features two on-board processors and a full 256MB of memory, plus an optional hard disk to store things like extra fonts. Most documents start to print in under 10 seconds, even when the printer begins in standby mode, and overall performance would be acceptable even on a monochrome printer.

Maintenance is just as straightforward, the four colour cartridges simply dropping into place under the transparent lid on the top of the printer. The Intelliprint cL160 is also very easy to configure and manage, with a simple LCD display for initial setup plus, alongside the usual parallel and USB ports, a 10/100Mbps Ethernet interface for network attachment. Built-in print server emulators allow the laser to be shared on a mix of Windows, Novell NetWare, Apple Macintosh, and UNIX/Linux networks, and you get Windows-based remote management software as part of the deal. However, most users will opt to use a browser for management with, among numerous other options available this way, facilities to see how much toner is left and order more direct from the suppliers.

Documents of all types can be printed using the Intelliprint cL160 and all come out pin-sharp and very crisp, from simple black and white text to full colour photographs. Running costs are inevitably higher than for a monochrome laser, the 6,000-page colour cartridges costing just under £100 ex VAT each. However, the manufacturer, Compuprint Genicom International, is currently offering to supply all the black toner you need, free of charge, for the life of the printer. By life, of course, they mean 5 years or 300,000 pages, but still that could save £500 or more depending on how many pages you print. And that, together with its other advantages, make the Intelliprint cL160 a colour laser well worth considering.

This is an affordable laser printer for companies looking for a single printer to handle both monochrome and colour documents. The Genicom Intelliprint cL160's single-pass technology makes it fast and easy to maintain, while duplexing and network support come as standard. The 'free black toner' offer makes it even cheaper to run.