Described as a ‘colour laser printer for the small workgroup', Kyocera Mita obviously has busy small workgroups in mind. This is a substantial machine, quite high off the desk, at least partly because it comes as standard with a 500-sheet paper tray. This is a much healthier size than is often found with printers of this type and it reduces paper storage requirements, as you won't need to store part-used reams.

There's also a 150-sheet multi-purpose tray, which folds down from the front of the machine, and all documents feed out at the front to the top surface of this FA Porche-designed device.

The controls consist of eight buttons, including a diamond for menu navigation and Start and Stop buttons. There's a USB socket for direct printing, but it's oddly positioned at the bottom rear of the left-hand side panel, rather than with the controls. Still, it's something to have walk-up print facilities; the FS-C5200DN can directly print PDFs and also JPGs and TIFs.

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Like most Kyocera Mita printers, it uses the company's patented drum technology which should last the lifetime of the printer (it's specced at 200,000 pages), so setting the machine up simply involves lifting the top cover and clipping the four toner cartridges into place. To match the high capacity of the paper tray, the toner cartridges have yields of 6,000 pages for each colour and 7,000 for black. Even in a workgroup, you won't need to replace them too often.

Running costs work out at 1.1p per page for black print and 5.9p for colour and these are low in both cases, compared with a variety of colour lasers we've tested. With simple access and high capacity, maintenance costs will be low.

Kyocera Mita claims a print speed of 21ppm for both black and colour prints and on longer black text jobs we saw 17ppm, which isn't far off. Duplex, which is a standard function of the FS-C5200DN, reduces the speed to around 10spm, but that's still reasonable for a £500 colour laser. PostScript and PCL emulation are both provided with the machine, too, and it can connect via USB or be networked via Ethernet.

Print quality is good throughout, with crisp black text and bright colours, though in our tests colour registration was a little off. Despite the vibrant colours, the printer handled a photographic test print well, with a better colour gamut than we often see. Kyocera Mita claims advances in its toner design which produce more regular particle shape and size.

Kyocera Mita has a quality colour laser printer here, which is well geared to the small workgroup and SME markets at which it's aimed. The original purchase price may be a little higher than some of its competition, but you should make up for this in consumables costs and the ease of keeping it going.