Independent print equipment tester Buyers Laboratory has awarded ‘Outstanding Achievement’ accolades to the most energy-efficient models it has tested in the past four months.

Honours went to models from Canon, Ricoh, HP and OKI. It said the winners exhibited significantly lower than average energy consumption for their respective product categories and offer a variety of environmentally friendly features to help users reduce their overall environmental impact.

After analysing the results for the top performers in a range of printer and MFP categories, BLI awarded Winter 2013 ‘Outstanding Achievement’ awards to the following products:

Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE 6075 Series

Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE 4051i

Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE 4025i

Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE C2030i

Canon i-SENSYS LBP6670dn

Canon i-SENSYS LBP6680x

HP Officejet 6700 Premium e-All-in-One

OKI MB491 MFP

OKI MB471 MFP (Wired) Series

OKI MB461 MFP

Ricoh Aficio SP 5200S

BLI said that Canon’s A3 and A4 printers and MFP units’ estimated energy consumption ranged from 42% to as much as 66% lower than their respective competitive averages. In addition, these units offer a variety of environmentally friendly features to help customers expand their environmental efforts, including job review and proof modes, N-up printing and automatic duplex.

The HP Officejet 6700 Premium e-All-in-One inkjet office MFP offers an estimated annual energy consumption rate about 45% lower than average according to BLI’s environmental test report. It offers automatic duplexing and a draft mode to help reduce ink use. During testing, the unit’s tested ink yield exceeded the rated yields. Unlike most competitive units tested, the Officejet 6700 Premium e-All-in-One enters sleep mode at its set time during an error condition, which helps to further reduce its overall energy consumption.

The three OKI devices are A4 monochrome MFP/small workgroup printers. BLI’s ‘real-world’ environmental job stream test showed that their energy consumption rates were 55% to up to 58% lower than average – the lowest rates tested to date for that group. Each unit also offers automatic duplexing, toner-save mode, blank-page removal and above average tested toner yields that also exceeded their rated yields. Although the MB471 offers a wireless interface, this award applies only to the wired configuration of the product, which was the configuration tested, and its wired sister unit, the MB471w MFP.

The Ricoh Aficio SP 5200S is a monochrome A4 MFP in the midsize/large workgroup category. This has a  projected annual energy consumption and associated cost 49% lower than the competitive average. The unit also offers a faster than average recovery time from daytime sleep, which helps customers reduce energy consumption without sacrificing productivity. Additional environmental strengths include above average tested toner and impression-per-gram yields and lower than average slowdown when duplexing. The Aficio SP 5200S also enters sleep mode at the unit’s set time during an error condition, which helps to reduce energy use.

Contact: www.buyerslab.com