Laser printers

HP LaserJet 2605dn
The LaserJet 2605dn is HP's up market model from the 2600 series, but with additional features. It looks identical to the LaserJet 2600dn, though under the hood it adds a duplexing unit.
The paper cassette holds up to 250 sheets, and you can manually feed in a single sheet at a time. The duplexing capability can be activated automatically via the driver, and is unchecked by default. Duplexing helps reduce paper usage and is useful when printing, say, an e-book.
Installation was child's play-and took no more than ten minutes. HPs toolkit allows a user to administer the printer and set various options such as paper type and size, toner density, etc. We had no problems setting it up on a network either--a network address is directly added using the onboard controls or via the toolkit. There is a plethora of options for managing the printer remotely--great for system administrators.
HP Claims a speed of 12 ppm for black, but it only managed 8 in our test. The six-page colour document took 2 minutes to complete--really slow. The Combi-document took 34 seconds to print, and the photo document took 48 seconds. Overall, the LaserJet 2605dn was a really slow printer.
What it lost in speed, it made up for in terms of quality. The text document printed flawlessly, and the Combi-document saw every element reproduced as displayed on our screens. This is also the first colour laser printer we've seen that matched an inkjet's ability to reproduce skin tone correctly.

Specifications
12 ppm (black and colour); 8 MB memory plus system memory used; 250-sheet paper cassette; USB 2.0; optional Ethernet

HP LaserJet 2600n

The HP LaserJet 2600n is an entry-level colour laser printer with an Ethernet port; a version without inbuilt Ethernet is also available.
The LaserJet 2600n is fairly bulky, but clever design makes it look compact. The paper cassette is located at the bottom, and fits snugly inside the body. It can hold up to 250 sheets; you can increase this by adding an optional paper cassette. A manual paper feed lets you feed in a single sheet at a time.
The 2600n is targeted at work-groups, so it has a two-line LCD display. This is placed at an awkward angle; you’ll have to bend to be able to see it, and it’s not backlit. It’s handy when setting up networking, or while troubleshooting. Apart from drivers, you also get Business Marketing Toolkit—links to How-Tos for marketing material, tutorials on Microsoft Office products, and more.
The front of the printer pops open to reveal the cartridges. Installation is simple. The developer unit is on the inside of the front panel, so you have to be careful not to drop anything on it.
HP claims 8 ppm for black printouts, and this one managed between 6 and 7. The same ppm speed is claimed for colour, but our six-page test document took 1 minute and 5 seconds to complete—reasonable for this category of printers.
The 2600n delivered crisp test printouts, and even 2-point text was sharply reproduced and perfectly legible. With the Combi-document, finer details were spot on, and even colour gradations were near-perfect. In the photo-target document, only skin tone lacked a little.

Printing Speed
Thanks to its one-pass technology and Instant-On Fusing, the LaserJet 2600n is particularly at ease with small color documents. It can put out three or four pages in twenty or so seconds, while other printers are still in their warm-up phases. On the other hand, the 8 ppm printing engine was a little slow with monochrome output. It took three times as long to print 20 pages of text as some other models.

Print Quality
A lot of progress has clearly been made with the driver, compared to the first version of this printer, which we tested last year. This time around the colors were fairly accurate overall, and we noted very good reproduction of contrast on documents with a lot of black.

Cost Per Page
Since HP doesn't offer high-capacity cartridges for its LaserJet 2600n, and since the price recently increased by more than 20%, its cost per page was by far the highest of all the printers we tested: 5 cents for a black page and 22 cents for a color page. But ironically, on this model, that's not of major importance. Since the combined cost of the four cartridges is actually higher than that of the printer itself, it's actually better to replace the whole printer when the cartridges are empty. This also gives you the benefit of a fresh warranty.