Canon imageFORCE Floor‑Standing Color Printer Guide

Canon imageFORCE Color Floor-Standing Printers: A Simple Guide for Busy Offices

When your team prints enough that a desktop printer can’t keep up, it’s time to look at floor-standing models. These are the bigger, heavier machines you usually see in a copy room or shared office space. They print faster, hold a lot more paper, and handle bigger jobs like brochures, booklets, and oversized sheets.

At Novatech, we help businesses pick the right printer for their size and workload every day. In this blog, we’ll walk through Canon’s imageFORCE color floor-standing lineup so you can understand what each model does and who it’s built for.

What Are Canon imageFORCE Color Floor-Standing Printers?

These are A3 multifunction printers, which means they can print on larger paper (up to 12″ x 18″ on some models) in addition to regular letter and legal sizes. They print, copy, scan, and in most cases handle advanced finishing like stapling and hole punching.

Canon’s imageFORCE color floor-standing lineup has three main families:

imageFORCE C3150 – The entry point. Good for medium-sized offices.

imageFORCE C5100 Series – The workhorse. Built for busy teams with heavy print needs.

imageFORCE C7165 – The top of the line. Made for businesses that print a lot and care deeply about color quality.

The imageFORCE C3150

This is Canon’s starting point for color floor-standing printers. It prints up to 50 pages per minute in both color and black-and-white. It can scan up to 270 ipm (images per minute) at 300 dpi, which is fast. It also delivers up to 4800 x 2400 dpi print resolution for sharp, detailed output.

Who it’s built for: Medium-sized offices with 20 to 50 people who print regularly but aren’t running huge color jobs every day. A good fit for insurance offices, real estate firms, accounting practices, and similar businesses.

The imageFORCE C5100 Series

This is the middle of the lineup, and it’s probably the sweet spot for most growing businesses. There are four speed options:

• C5140 – 40 pages per minute (color and black-and-white)
• C5150 – 50 pages per minute
• C5160 – 60 pages per minute
• C5170 – 70 pages per minute

All four models print up to 12″ x 18″, which opens up real design flexibility. You can print tri-fold brochures, booklets, and marketing pieces in-house instead of sending them to an outside print shop.

The C5100 series also uses Canon’s D2 Exposure system, which is a newer print technology that delivers industry-leading 4800 x 2400 dpi resolution. In plain language: crisp text, clean lines, and colors that look the way your designers meant them to.

Who it’s built for: Mid-sized businesses (50 to 200 people), marketing teams that do their own design work, and any office that prints a lot of client-facing material.

The imageFORCE C7165

This is the top of the color floor-standing lineup. It prints at 65 pages per minute in both color and black-and-white. It delivers high-quality output with features designed for light production printing, which means it can handle jobs that would normally go to a commercial printer.

A few features that set it apart:

• Real-Time Adjustment from Estimation. This feature measures and adjusts toner density every five sheets, which keeps color consistent across long print runs.
• Synthetic paper support. It can print on water-resistant and durable media, useful for menus, tags, and outdoor signage.
• Long sheet printing. It can handle sheets up to 12 5/8″ x 51 1/4″, which is a niche feature but valuable if you print banners or panoramic pieces.
• Dual controller support. You can use Canon’s standard controller for everyday jobs and the optional imagePASS controller for more advanced color work.

Who it’s built for: Larger businesses (200 to 500 people), in-house print shops, marketing departments that produce a lot of high-quality color pieces, and any company that wants professional print results without outsourcing.

What They All Have in Common

Across the color floor-standing lineup, you get:

Massive paper capacity. The C3150 and C5100 Series hold up to 7,650 sheets. The C7165 can hold even more with optional accessories. That means less time loading paper and more time working.

Strong security features. All imageFORCE models include user authentication, secure print, FIPS 140-3 storage encryption, and Trellix Embedded Control to help block malware. If security matters to your business (and it should), these are built with that in mind.

Cloud and software integration. They connect with Microsoft OneDrive, SharePoint, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and Microsoft Teams. They also work with Canon’s uniFLOW Online platform for print management and cost tracking.

Future-ready updates. Canon’s Unified Firmware Platform means these printers can get new features over time through software updates, not just at the time you buy them.

ENERGY STAR certified. All the models meet federal energy efficiency standards, which helps with both power bills and sustainability goals.

How to Pick the Right One

Here are the questions that actually matter when choosing a color floor-standing printer:

1. How many pages do you print in a month? Under 10,000 pages, the C3150 is probably enough. 10,000 to 50,000, look at the C5100 Series. Over 50,000, consider the C7165.
2. Do you print client-facing materials like brochures or booklets? If yes, the 12″ x 18″ capability on the C5100 and C7165 is worth it.
3. How important is color accuracy? For basic color, any of these work. For marketing-quality color that stays consistent across long runs, the C5100 Series or C7165 is the better choice.
4. Do you want finishing options like stapling, hole punching, or booklet making? All of these models support optional finishing accessories, but the C5100 Series and C7165 offer the most flexibility.

A Word of Honest Advice

Floor-standing printers are a bigger investment than desktop models. They also last longer and cost less per page over time. That said, buying more printer than you need is a common mistake. A lot of businesses get talked into a model with features their team will never use.

At Novatech, we start with your actual print volume and your actual workflow, then match you to the right model. If you’d like help thinking through whether a C3150, C5100, or C7165 fits your office, reach out anytime. We’d rather help you pick the right one than the biggest one.