PRINTING. The Dell S2815dn prints using laser technology, which picks up powdered 'toner' on a roller and fuses it to the paper with heat. It prints black-and-white text with Excellent quality, as we've come to expect from a laser printer. Text printing was very quick, 25 pages per minute, costing 2.1 cents per page. It prints black-and-white graphics with some obvious defects, but OK for casual use, at 8.6 pages per minute, costing 5.9 cents per page. It has auto-duplex printing to print both on sides of the page, with no loss of quality. The capacity of the main paper tray is 250 sheets, a generous size. There's a second tray for full-size paper, allowing you to load letterhead paper, for instance.
SCANNING and COPYING. Scanning performance was Excellent, suitable for any task including archiving photos. It can scan or copy an area up to 11.6 x 8.3 inches (letter size). Copying performance was Excellent, producing copies very close to the original. It has an Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) for easily scanning/copying a stack of pages. The ADF can duplex--it's a DADF--which can scan/copy both sides of each page. Includes OCR (optical character recognition) software, useful for making scanned documents editable in a word processor program.
CONTROLS and DISPLAY. The printer has a large, 4.2-inch display screen with a touchscreen that can preview each photo in a 1.1-inch window.
CONNECTIVITY and NETWORKING. You can connect directly to a PC with a USB cable, or to your network router with an Ethernet cable. This model has built-in faxing, can store incoming faxes if the paper runs out, and can send faxes from an attached PC.
COST OF OWNERSHIP AND TONER. When this section was last updated, the printer's purchase price was about $360, very expensive for an all-in-one black and white laser printer. Printing uses up toner. Over time, as you print, the costs add up. This printer uses one cartridge. The Dell toner cartridge used in testing was the 74NC3. At the time, its price was $179. We estimate the cartridge to last an extraordinarily long time: around 5.4 years. After 2 years of typical use, we estimate the total cost to be $425, very high for a mono laser. The estimated yearly cost is $32, low for this printer type. So the 3-, 4- and 5-year estimates are $457, $490 and $522 respectively.
NOTE. The printer takes up a lot of space and might be more suitable for an office than a small desktop.
PRINTER FIRMWARE. Firmware is software that exists inside the printer. All models are evaluated using the latest firmware version available at the time of testing. The firmware version of the Dell S2815dn was 201509180702.
SOFTWARE. The collection of software accompanying the printer may include: the printer driver, printer applications, electronic user manual, (and for all-in-ones:) scanning, faxing, and OCR apps. These get installed on your personal computer. All models are evaluated with a Windows 10 PC using the latest version of printer driver and printer support apps available at the time of testing. The software version was 6.3.9600.17415.
