The World’s Fastest Printers

By Peter Lavelle
Friday 19 February 2010 14:53 GMT

Forty seven pages per minute. That’s how quickly the recently released Dell 5130cdn spits out colour pages. Dell calls it the world’s fastest colour laser printer. But wait - surely there are even faster printers? Surely there are printers so speedy you’d need oven gloves to retrieve the printouts? Surely there are printers so bowel-wobblingly quick the document tray resembles an avalanche?

Not quite. But we’ve compiled the world’s fastest printers below – and they’d all outpace the Dell 5130cdn in the 100m sprint.*

HP PhotoSmart 8250 Photo Printer

Speed: 4 photos per minute
Price: $183
Rating: Dormant Volcano

Though technically slower than the Dell 5130cdn, this Hewlett Packard is a photo printer – and a really speedy one!

Silverbrook Research Memjet

Speed: 60 pages per minute
Price: $2995
Rating: Caffeinated Tortoise



The Memjet technology used by Silverbrook Research took 10 years to develop! Though this printer was announced in 2007, it has never seen commercial release.

Brother Codenamed Cobra

Speed: 170 pages per minute
Price: $499
Rating: Angry Humming Bird

Brother’s Codenamed Cobra was displayed at the World Fair in Japan five years ago. Since then, the super-fast inkjet has been off the radar.

Océ VarioPrint 6250

Speed: 250 pages per minute
Price: $540,000
Rating: Concord’s Cousin

Océ claims the VarioPrint 6250 is available at ‘Lightning Prices.’ That’s presumably what customers think has struck them after they receive the bill.

IBM InfoPrint 4100

Speed: 330 pages per minute
Price: $1,000,000
Rating: Fuel Injected Cheetah

The IBM InfoPrint 4100 can print Tolstoy’s War and Peace in under a minute. Wow.

Mitsubishi Diamondstar 90

Speed: 1500 pages per minute
Price: ?
Rating: Complete Deforestation

Mitsubishi’s Diamondstar 90 is actually a newspaper press. It stands taller than a 4 storey building, and prints 100 newspapers a second.

Sources

Anonymous, ‘World’s Fastest Inkjet Printer,’ Redferret.net, 7 June 2005.
Tudor Raiciu, ‘IBM Proposes The Fastest Laser Printer In The World,’ Softpedia.com, 12 September 2005.
Conrad Quilty-Harper, ‘Silverbrook Research Claims 2 Pages / Second Inkjet Invention,’ Endgadget.com, 18 March 2007.
Cory Doctorow, ‘Fastest Printer In The World,’ BoingBoing.net, 20 August 2005.
Tina Arakaki, ‘Silverjet’s Memjet Technology Available Soon, Says Company,’ Texyt.com, 21 March 2007.

*Obviously they’d need legs.