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Entered CNET Catalog: 07/14/2006
SKU: 311INB
Manufacturer: Dell, Inc.
Manufacturer description
Dell brings high quality, highly affordable printing to color lasers. Designed for departmental or workgroup use, with networking as standard, the Dell Color Laser 3110cn is a mid-range color laser printer. The 3110cn prints crisp high-speed output in color or monochrome for impressive, easy to read business documents. Running costs are very competitive in both monochrome and color print modes, and this printer can be fitted with high-capacity toner cartridges for optimum economy.Product summary
The good: Lightning-fast mono prints; low per-page costs; built-in networking; 24/7 tech support.
The bad: Print quality needs to be improved across the board; duplex costs extra; slow color prints.
The bottom line: The Dell 3110cn is a decent color laser that should satisfy casual home office users, but we think the Lexmark C530dn is an overall better product.
CNET editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 01/09/2007
The Dell 3110cn is a midpriced, middle-performing color laser printer for small or home offices. For $500, you get a fairly basic feature set; add-ons, such as a duplexer, will jack up the price. For that money, we far prefer the Lexmark C530dn, which comes with a built-in duplexer, enhancements that make it environmentally friendly, better print quality, and faster color prints. Its mono prints do lag behind those of the Dell, however. Also, this particular Lexmark model doesn't offer expanded paper options, but the built-in paper handling should be sufficient for home users.
The Dell 3110cn is a honkin' big printer, owing to the fact that it's a color laser (the four individual toner cartridges take up a lot of space). The black-and-silver unit stands 15.8 inches wide, 19.1 inches deep, and 18.5 inches tall and weighs a hefty 53 pounds. It has two input sources: the 250-sheet tray and a 150-sheet multipurpose tray. The multipurpose tray engages when you pull down the front panel of the printer, with the panel serving as the paper support, so the printer takes up even more room in this setup. You can purchase an optional 550-sheet drawer ($230) for a total input of 950 sheets. The output tray sits atop the printer and holds 250 sheets. This model also offers an optional duplexer, but that adds an additional $200 to the price. The top-mounted control panel is basic, comprising a two-line, backlit text LCD; a Menu button; menu navigation buttons; and a Cancel button.
The Dell 3110cn ships with a 400MHz processor and 128MB of RAM, upgradable to up to 1,152MB. It comes standard with a 10/100 Ethernet port (for network printing), a USB port, and a parallel port. If you need to print wirelessly, the optional wireless adapter will set you back $150.
Print costs for the Dell 3110cn are reasonable. It ships with a 5,000-page black cartridge and 4,000-page color cartridges. Replacement cartridges come in regular and high-yield options; the high-yield options are generally more cost effective. The 5,000-page black cartridge costs $76, and the 8,000-page version costs $110. Each 4,000-page color cartridge (cyan, magenta, and yellow) costs $120, while the 8,000-page versions cost $215 each. Using the high-yield cartridges, per-page costs are roughly 1.4 cents for black prints and 9.4 cents for color prints. Both numbers are at the low end for color lasers in this range. Because Dell sells its products only through its own site and stores, you'll have to order replacement supplies directly--less convenient than a quick trip down to your local Staples. If you've set up your printer on the network, it can keep you updated on the levels of toner left and remind you to order replacement toner or even do it automatically for you.
The Dell 3110cn was one of the fastest color laser printers we've seen when handling mono prints, but it didn't impress us with the speed of its color prints. It churned out black text at a speedy 23.36ppm and mono graphics at an impressive 22.58ppm. The next fastest performer we've seen in this category is the Oki C5500n, which posted 17.92ppm for black text and 18.41ppm for mono graphics. With color prints, the Dell fell behind the Lexmark C530dn, with a score of 12.41ppm for color text and 13.30ppm for color graphics. The Lexmark posted times of 15.94ppm and 13.56ppm respectively. The combination of fast mono prints and slow color prints would be fine if you mainly print in mono and want to have the option of the occasional color print.
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As for print quality, we were slightly underwhelmed. Black text is sharp and clean, but not as dark as we like. Additionally, the text becomes hard to read at very small point sizes. The black graphics print suffered from the same problem: the areas that should have been jet black were merely very dark, and the print had an overall faded look to it. The color text was only mediocre: at larger point sizes, the text is sharp, but at smaller sizes and with more difficult colors, we saw some blurriness and fuzzy edges. The same problems crop up in the color graphics print. Edges that should be sharply defined are blurry, it showed problems with handling bar-code graphics, and the color gradients showed banding. Additionally, the photo elements on the page were overly red, resulting in ruddy skin tones. We preferred the print quality of the Lexmark C530dn to that of the Dell 3110cn.
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The standard warranty for the Dell 3110cn lasts one year, but you can upgrade it to up to four years. Dell provides free, toll-free phone support 24/7, but it recommends trying the live online chat option first. For less urgent inquiries, you can e-mail Dell's support team or check out its user forums. Dell's Web site also has product-specific support in the form of online user guides, drivers and software downloads, and a troubleshooting tool. You can find basic tips on common how-tos, as well, such as how to change the toner cartridge.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 User Rating: 
9/10
Great product for price, fast but not so easy to setup
Pros: fast, good quality print (surprisingly good for color), quiet, good price, networked
Cons: difficult to setup (static ip, no color management options as they were too confusing)
about 50 pounds per high capacity toner
heavy
not double sided?
User Rating: 
8/10
Great for Business Documents - Not for Heavy Graphics
Pros: Fast, easy to set up, relatively quiet, good price for the performance.
Cons: Poor quality with color photos. High power use in standby mode. Big and heavy.
PRINTING SPEED: Black and white is very fast. I have a Brother MFC-8440 which is faster to print the first page, but the 3110 will overhaul it after printing around 5 pages. Color is much faster than the C510, from the first page on.
PRINT QUALITY: As mentioned by others, the B&W is great. I have not been able to reproduce the problems with small fonts mentioned by CNET's review. Many reviewers have been unimpressed with this printer's color print quality. They're right. It handles photos poorly, but is fine for PowerPoint presentations, web pages and other color documents, as long as they don't rely on detailed photos. Since these simpler color docs are what I bought the 3110 for, I have no regrets about the purchase.
ARRIVAL AND SETUP: Dell delivered it very quickly. Once I had wrestled it into place, setup was easy, quick and well-documented. The driver installation process might confused a few people, but it offers nice features to help IT managers. Don't let a clumsy person install toner or the duplexer, though, since the fragile belt unit is easy to damage and in the installation path.
OTHER:
* Noise - After the C510 the 3100 is blessed relief. The 3100 makes little noise when starting, and the fan goes nearly silent right after a print job. Nice work.
* Power use - with 95 watts used for standby, you may want to switch it off at night.
Updated on Mar 18, 2009WARNING TO USERS WITH MULTIPLE COMPUTERS: The 3110 does not maintain its IP address through power cycles, which means network users have print a settings report from 3110, then to go into each computer's printer port settings and update them to the new IP address, each time the 3110 loses power.
Dell's support team will tell you to set fixed IP addresses in your router. Most routers won't allow this, though.
My Brother MFC printer never has problems with this. My Lexmark C510 didn't either. This is a truly stupid oversight in a network printer.
User Rating: 8/10
Very Good Reliable Printer
Pros: Color good enough for reports with photos on plain paper
Cons: Toner Cart Price is a total ripoff
You can buy a Brand Spankin new 3110CN for about $379 with all four 4000 page yield toner carts included.
If you want to replace your carts with Dells 8000 page yield carts it costs you $719. the standard yield are about $500.
Any damn fool can see where this is going to lead. To a landfill full of perfectly good printers. Its the old inkjet game of give them the printer for a song and stick it to them for the supplies taken to a new level.
Dells save the planet, return your empty cartridge routine is a smoke screen, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves. I mean c'mon guys, do you really have to make $160 bucks on every damn cartridge you sell?????
User Rating: 
2/10
A big disappointment
Pros: Prints very quickly for a color laser
Cons: Poor print quality; bad color alignment
The installation and configuration of this printer didn't go as simply as the quick-start guide would make it seem, but I was able to set it up without too much trouble.
The biggest problem I have is the print quality. I'm retiring a 4+ year old Konica/Minolta 2300DL MagiColor printer, which has a lot of jams and needs a new drum unit. The MagiColor still prints when treated gently, however, and prints beautifully when compared to what my new Dell 3110cn is printing. Side-by-side printouts of documents have revealed that the Dell is awful by comparison.
I printed a flyer and a mixed text/photo document on the same type of paper on both printers. The Dell's colors are far less intense, and black print almost appears grey. The Dell has a persistent color alignment problem, and a very thin white line separates the top side of black print from colored background.
I'm going through Dell's tech support avenues in the morning. If they can't improve on this printer's capabilities, it's going back to them (I'm also dreading what it will cost me to return 72 pounds of junk printer to Dell).
User Rating: 2/10
Toner use and costs kill the value of this machine
Pros: Great quality
Cons: Expensive to operate!
User Rating: 9/10
for home user, very good
Pros: price per page is low ,very good
Cons: toner is expensive,not available everywhere!
i've tried it for some pamphlets in the 2000
pcs range and it did very good, will see in the future for higher quantity range.
User Rating: 9/10
Better than the big HP's at the office
Pros: Great print quality, ease of setup
Cons: Slow to start from standby but once it starts printing it goes quite fast, even color prints.
User Rating: 
4/10
Great printer for the first year... then standby!!!!
Pros: Decent quality and OK cost per page... very reliable for 1 year.
Cons: Was a little dismayed by the toner cartridge cost... Warning messages come up way to early when you have weeks of use left in the cartridges and of course you have to live with these messages.
User Rating: 4/10
Great B&W, Terrible Color
Pros: Nice black text
Cons: Unacceptable color
User Rating: 9/10
Good, fast, AND cheap. Can't beat that.
Pros: Awesome quality, fast, low initial cost, and low cost per page.
Cons: High power drain. And, of course, it's a Dell.
I discovered that Della is a very hungry little girl and uses plenty of power. When I first plugged her in, she used enough power to knock out my accounting server.
I was a little disappointed when I printed my first test page, but I soon realized that the issues I was seeing were because I was using low quality paper. I bought some 32lb glossy laser paper and tried it out and the results were absolutely awesome. (It wasn't even that expensive at $0.05/sheet.)
I had some DVD trap sheets that I'd printed on a very expensive commercial Xerox copier and printed the same trap sheets with Della to compare. I was pleased to discover that blacks were blacker with Della. I did notice Della's image to be very slightly pixelated, (the reason for 9/10 instead of 10/10) but I could only tell this at four inches or closer.
I tried out all of the various options for image enhancement, but found that the finished product looked best with image enhancement turned off. The colours were near identical to my monitor.
All in all, a great printer. And you can't go wrong for $30 + toner.
I asked Della out. She didn't answer. She must be playing hard to get.
User Rating: 
7/10
That's an ok printer, not so impressive as many say
Pros: Good Color and Gray Printout
Cons: Terrible support, Mac ignorants, very bulky, ugly, and heavy
(2) B&W is pretty good. Speed is excelent
(3) Replacement tonner is very easy.
(4) Set up is not well done. These people don't know what is doing things easy for the custumer. Horrible for Mac (but if you know how to do it, it is even easier than with windows), Ok for Windows (like any other printer). They don't support Macs, but it is advertised as Mac compatible. So, I returned the printer, and I bought the same model, I repeat the operation 12 times until they learned the lesson. Next time I talked to them I said that I will sue them if they don't give me support for Mac, for it is advertise that it works with them (and I realy was able to do it). They support my Mac by outsourcing the help.
(5) The network setting with macs it is pretty easy, the problem is that the support guys are Mac ignorants and Unix ignorants. You have to figure out how to do it or repeat the painfull steps I did.
(6) USB is the easiest way to print here, even in Macs.
(7) I you use the Mac driver 2.1.3 Build 5, thinks are ok.
(8) The easiest settings with Macs and Windows in a LAN is to assign an IP to the Printer (use the panel).
User Rating: 
3/10
For $450, you get what you pay for
Pros: Good B&W text performance, cheap consumables
Cons: Miserably poor color performance
If all you do is print out excel sheets, this will be okay, but you'll still be annoyed by the text ghosting. The Ricoh Afico CL3500 with duplexer runs for $700 these days, and is a much better value. On the lower end, a decent Epson on HP inkjet is also a much better value. I would not recommend this printer to anyone.
User Rating: 9/10
it will be hard to find a better printer for the money
Pros: fast, quiet, very good print quality, easy to configure
Cons: could be better looking
User Rating: 9/10
Wow!!! I was just in the market for a color laser with average performance and a low price.
Pros: Nice color print, great text print, low cost
Cons: Big and heavy printer
User Rating: 9/10
Great Color laser for the Money (Don't Hesitate)
Pros: Price, Print Quality Photo/text/Graphics, Quiet, Speed
Cons: Large size for home office, toners can only be replaced by dell at this time
I agonized over which color laser printer to buy in this price range. I read all the reviews everywhere on HP, Lexmark, Oki, etc. and it seemed like there wasn't an obvious choice. The 3100cn got really good reviews. I than researched this printer like it was the one to buy but still had my concerns. At this time I found Dell had replaced it with the 3110cn which had no reviews from professional reviewers. I than read all the user options I could find, they all gave the unit high marks. I than found some reviews from the UK and Japan which gave the printer good reviews.
I saw the 3110cn on Dell's site for $349 plus tax and free shipping and I bought. It arrived in two days in very secure packing. Like other reviewers, it took very little time to set up on my wireless network. I must say that I've only printed a few items, including photos, graphic logos, and text, and I'm very pleased with the quality. I think the printer is very fast and quiet.
So, in conclusion after the agonizing search I?m thrilled with the purchase. This print has great quality, speed and workmanship for the money. I would like to say Don?t Hesitate on this printer. The only cons of the printer are it size and that the toner can only be replaced by dell at this time..
Ps: My Client is also thrilled with this purchase
User Rating: 9/10
BEAUTIFUL, don't hesitate
Pros: speed, quality, affordability
Cons: doesn't come with a duplexer, quite tall
I think this is a lot better than the 5110CN, which is based on the Xerox Phaser 6100 series -- I've used that Xerox and the quality is so underwhelming. Blacks and colors are muddied and its forte is business graphics. The 3110CN gives crisp blacks and colors.
Networking options worked beautifully with my Linksys wireless router. Quite easy.
I had an extra DDR2 SODIMM RAM stick from upgrading my laptop, which I was able to put in quite easily (just loosen the back panel and insert).
Speed was excellent, pages came spitting out, in both black and color.
However, the printer is huge -- but built well and looks extremely stylish. Make sure you have place to put it. The box it comes in is 72 pounds, so thank your UPS man.
I wish it came with a duplexer... I have to refeed documents if I want to print on the other side. I might buy this, but at $200, it can wait for some time. The 5110CN comes with duplex, but the quality is not as good as of this printer.
This printer is less noisy than the HP color laserjets I tested out.
The 3100CN (older model) could take refilled cartridges, and I think in the next few months, generic manufacturers will figure out a way to refill this. There is a menu option in the printer that allows generic cartridges, but won't display the "toner left" for 3rd party toner.
If you've always wanted a color laser printer, now is the time to buy! This is the perfect one for a home or small business.
Tips: Which driver to use? PS or PCL? I was always confused about this and then researched it.
PS: better for complex lines and vectors, and images, but jobs take longer to print because they are processed in the printer itself.
PCL: jobs preprocessed in the computer. Quality for photos was a little flat compared to when I used the PS driver and included ICM file.
User Rating: 9/10
Nothing better for the money...Period!!!
Pros: Price, Quality, Output
Cons: A little bulky
The statement I made "The 3100's (which are almost identical to the 3110, minus a few improvements)" is refering the outside appearance and functionality. The heart of the printer is a far supior design than that of its predecessor, the 3100 series. The fuser is actually built-in to each toner cartridge making the printing speed much faster. The paper path is also more direct thus fewer jams. It also has a 400MHz processor and 128MB RAM compared to the 3100's 300MHz and 64MB RAM.
User Rating: 9/10
Best printer for the price
Pros: Fast, quiet, solid build and excellent print quality
Cons: It's big but I have the room
User Rating: 9/10
Perfect color laser printer for small company or individual
Pros: Great tex and color and extremely fast
Cons: nothing yet
Very impressive speed and great colors. This will save us so much money in color printing cost. Also, the printer is very quiet. It sits five feet from me. The only thing I may have to invest in is more RAM, but I can?t fault dell on that. I knew the RAM that was in the machine before I bought it.
Price: I paid $374, free shipping, and sales tax. Total was $400.18 Dell had a special on the 3110cn when I bought it. Normal price is $499.00
Chris Menard
www.trialityonline.com
User Rating: 9/10
Great buy for solid color laser performer
Pros: speed, solid workmanship, text and graphic/photo quality, quiet
Cons: none so far
I'm pretty well branded by HP for printers so the idea of going to Dell for a private label printer was a bit scary. Also, I read all the negative reviews for the 3100cn and I was definitely concerned. Although in fairness, every printer has both positive and negative reviews.
Nonetheless, I saw the 3110cn on Dell's site for $374 plus tax and free shipping and I bought. It arrived in two days in very secure packing. Like the first reviewer, it took very little time to set up on my wireless network. I must say that I've only printed a few items, including photos, graphic logos, and text, and I'm very pleased with the quality. I think the printer is very quiet. It's certainly a bit quieter than my HP 3380 MFP. I was expecting lots of noise based on other reviews, but I can't support that criticism. It's also much faster than I thought it would be. This is a huge benefit over comparably priced HP laserjets. It is a big black box but it is nicely designed nonetheless. It's VERY SOLID. I had read reviews about cheap workmanship, but I don't agree with that either.
So, in general. . I don't think you can beat this for a $375 every day color laser printer. The photos came out remarkably nice, much better than I would have expected, even on "standard" settings.
One thing is that I don't see where you can easily change the color settings (dark/light). Not sure that this is even possible with color lasers. . I probably need to adjust my monitor presentation to match the output.
Will write more once I use it more.
I just noticed that I got a $125 instant rebate when I bought the 3110cn a few days ago. Now, the rebate is gone and the price is $499 on both small biz and home dell. . free shipping still applies. . .
It's so rare that I actually time these things right!
It's still worth it at $499 but I'd see if the discount comes back.
User Rating: 9/10
Got the 3110CN this afternoon. Seems to be great printer!
Pros: fast setup, network friendly, fast, good photos
Cons: envelopes wrinkle
Since my first post I received a few weeks later the optional duplexer unit. The instructions were simple and it installed securely beneath the image unit. DOUBLE WOW!!!! It is so nice to buy 28lb. Office Depot Color Copy paper (inexpensive) and produce a double-sided brochure that takes half the postage to send clients. I have found the speed per printed side to equal the speed of a single printed page. Nice option if saving postage costs or a professional publishing look is important to you. Will let you know how things fair after a little wear and tear.
