As far as networkable colour laser printers go, Epson's AcuLaser C4200DN is handcrafted for the small to medium business.

The 35kg gray and beige machine features a silver front panel with a sparse collection of buttons to drive functions. A small LCD screen is also present to help guide users through any issues that may arise. Drivers ship with the product for every version of Windows from 98 onwards, and Mac is covered from OS 9. The machine itself stands around 45cm tall and 43cm wide, but you'll have to make sure you have a deep desk to install it on as it measures nearly 60cm from front to back.

Epson ships the unit with all toner cartridges installed, so all you need to do is remove the photoconductor from its sealed bag and drop it into the printer. The company has cleverly designed the machine with serviceability in mind, and all four toner cartridges are located on the top of the unit under a single plastic panel. Replacing each takes no more than a few seconds, and it's a job that anybody in the office could do. The photoconductor unit is also towards the top of the machine, and the paper tray is accessible from the front. The rear panel includes parallel, USB, and 10/100 base Ethernet ports, which provide ample interfaces to keep up with the demands of a busy small office.

The C4200DN is able to store up to 700 A4 sheets of paper in the document trays, which should be plenty to keep a business running. The standard output tray holds 250 sheets, and it's possible to add an 1100-sheet feeder and duplexer to really beef up the output.

As is to be expected with a high-powered colour laser of this ilk, the Epson unit includes support for a number of emulations including ESC/Page and Adobe PostScript 3. PCL 5c is also available for those that demand specific support. The unit ships with 128 MB of memory by default, which is upgradeable to 640MB in total and helped the machine notch up some impressive print times. The C4200DN is a single pass colour laser, meaning that the paper only means to roll through the print engine a single time for all colours to be printed on it. This leads to blisteringly fast print speeds, and the AcuLaser was able to reach 23 pages per minute in colour draft mode, and 33 in monochrome.

While the output in draft mode appeared a little washed out, high-quality settings really up the ante. Epson's AcuBrite toners deliver outstanding colour accuracy, and Epson is also able to optimise the printer's 1200dpi output and achieve up to 4800dpi by scaling the dots printed on the page. The result is exceptionally clear, with consistent shading and colour accuracy.