HP LaserJet Pro MFP M127fw

BY M. DAVID STONE

Much like the Editors’ Choice Samsung Multifunction Xpress M2875FW$235.49 at Amazon, the HP LaserJet Pro MFP M127fw ($259.99) is small enough to use as a personal monochrome laser multifunction printer (MFP) for light-duty print needs, but also capable enough to serve as a shared printer in a micro or small office. It’s not as fast as the Samsung printer or the Canon imageClass MF4770n$99.99 at Amazon, but it offers most of the MFP features most micro offices need, and it adds HP’s Web apps as a potentially useful extra.

Connection choices for the M127fw$179.93 at Amazon are essentially the same as for the Samsung M2875FW, with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Wireless Direct, which is HP’s equivalent to Wi-Fi Direct. Just like Wi-Fi Direct, it will let you connect to the printer from a Wi-Fi-enabled smartphone, tablet, or laptop. This is particularly useful if you don’t have a Wi-Fi access point on your network or you want to connect the printer by USB cable to a single PC, rather than connect it to a network.

Mobile printing features include the ability to print from an iOS or Android smartphone or tablet, as well as from a laptop over Wi-Fi, and print through the cloud, assuming the printer is connected to a network that’s connected to the Internet. In addition, you can use front-panel menus to print from a variety of HP Web apps, including printing postage from Stamps.com and printing forms from Biztree.com. However, you can’t scan to or fax from your mobile device using the iOS or Android apps, the way you can with the Samsung M2875FW.

Basics and Setup
The M127fw’s basic MFP features include the ability to print and fax from, as well as scan to, a PC, including over a network, plus standalone faxing and copying. For scanning, you can use either the letter-size flatbed or the 35-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF), which can handle up to legal-size pages.

HP LaserJet Pro MFP M127fw

Paper handling for printing is limited to a single 150-sheet tray. There’s no manual feed, no duplexer (for two-sided printing), and no upgrade options. The tray is enough for personal or light-duty use in a micro office, but not much more than that. If your print, copy, and incoming fax needs add up to more than about 30 pages per day, adding paper can easily turn into an annoying chore. The Samsung M2875FW does far better on this score, with a 250-sheet capacity, a manual feed, and a duplexer.

Setup is typical for a small monochrome laser. At 12.2 by 16.5 by 14.4 inches (HWD), the M127fw is a little bigger than you may want sitting on your desk, but it’s small enough so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding room for it nearby. For my tests, I connected it by its Ethernet port, and installed the drivers and other software on a Windows Vista system.

Speed and Output Quality
HP rates the printer at 21 pages per minute (ppm), which is the speed you should see for printing a text document or other file with little to no formatting. On our business applications suite, I timed it (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing), at 8.9ppm. That’s enough of a difference between it and the Samsung M2875FW, at 10ppm, that you’ll notice it, but it’s not dramatic. On the other hand, it’s significantly slower than the Canon MF4770n, at 12.3ppm, and also slower than the more directly competitive Canon imageClass MF4880dw$124.99 at Amazon, which is Editors’ Choice in this class if you need fast speed. The MF4880dw’s official speed on our tests is 9.6ppm in its default duplex mode. In unofficial tests in simplex mode, it came in at 12.5ppm, essentially tying the Canon MF4770n.

Output quality for the M127fw is a touch above average overall, thanks to better-than-typical graphics quality. Text is at the low end of a very tight range that includes the vast majority of monochrome laser MFPs, making it easily good enough for almost any business need short of high-quality desktop publishing. Graphics output is top-tier for its category, putting it a step above most of the competition. It’s easily good enough for almost any business need, including PowerPoint handouts and the like.

Photo quality, like text, is typical for a monochrome laser MFP. That makes it easily good enough for printing recognizable images from photos on Web pages, but not for anything more demanding than that.

HP LaserJet Pro MFP M127fw

Despite its strong points, the M127fw is outclassed by its competition on traditional MFP features. The Canon MF4880dw and Samsung M2875FW, both Editors’ Choice models, will give you better paper handling and faster speed, with the Canon printer stronger on speed and the Samsung model offering a wider range of features.

That said, the HP LaserJet Pro MFP M127fw still offers enough to make it worth considering. Because of its low paper capacity and lack of a duplexer and manual feed, it’s a little smaller than either the Canon or Samsung models. That makes it easier to find room for if space is somewhat tight in your office. In addition, its Web apps let you print from a variety of websites using front-panel commands, a feature you won’t get with the Canon or Samsung models. If you can benefit from the small size and have only light-duty print needs, it can easily be a good fit.

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Brother HL-L8250CDN

BY M. DAVID STONE

While the Brother HL-L8250CDN ($349.99) matched the Editors’ Choice Xerox Phaser 6500/DN $252.98 at Amazon in our speed tests, and it offers better paper handling, its output quality can’t match the 6500/DN. But if you’re looking for a colorlaser printer for a micro or small office or workgroup, its speed and paper handling are enough to make it worth considering as your office workhorse.

Setup and Speed
The HL-L8250CDN is a little too big to share a desk with comfortably. It measures 12.3 by 16.1 by 19.1-inches (HWD), and it weighs enough, at 34.8 pounds, that you might need some help moving it into place.

Setup is typical for color lasers. I connected the printer to a wired network for my tests and installed the driver on a system running Windows Vista. One key difference between it and the Xerox 6500/DN is that the HL-L8250CDN installs to print in simplex (one-sided) mode rather than duplex by default. That gives it a faster speed than the Xerox printer on our official tests, but only because printing in duplex takes longer.

Brother rates the printer at 30 pages per minute (ppm), which is the speed you should see when printing a text document or other file that needs little to no processing. On our business applications suite, (using QualityLogic’shardware and software for timing) I clocked it at 6.6ppm, making it significantly faster than the Xerox 6500/DN’s official speed of 5.4ppm. However there’s a metaphorical asterisk that goes next to the Xerox printer’s speed.

In my unofficial tests with the Xerox printer in simplex mode, it came in at 6.5ppm, which means the two printers are actually tied for speed. (A 0.1ppm difference in our tests isn’t significant.) As another point of reference, both printers are a bit faster than the Samsung CLP-415NW$263.00 at Amazon, at 6ppm.

Output Quality
The HL-L8250CDN’s output quality overall is best described as good enough for most business use, but far short of impressive. Text quality is typical for a color laser, although it’s at the bottom of a very tight range where most color lasers fall. It’s not quite suitable for high-quality desktop publishing, but you shouldn’t have a problem with it for anything else, including printing with smaller fonts than most business documents use.

Graphics quality is a touch below what’s typical for a color laser, which still makes it easily good enough for any internal business use. Most people would consider it good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like as well.

Photo quality is good enough to print recognizable photos from Web pages and such, but most photos in my tests had obvious quality issues, including banding, posterization (shading changing suddenly where it should change gradually), and visible dithering in the form of both graininess and dithering patterns.

Also worth nothing: If you connect the printer to a network, you can print through the cloud and from mobile devices over a Wi-Fi access point on your network.

If you need good quality for photos and graphics as well as for text, you’re better off with either the Editors’ Choice Samsung CLP-415 for light to moderate use, or the Editors’ Choice Xerox 6500/DN for more heavy-duty printing complete with duplexing. That said, if what you need is a medium- to heavy-duty workhorse color laser, but graphics and photo quality aren’t crucial, the Brother HL-L8250CDN’s speed and capable paper handling make it worth considering.

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HP Officejet Pro 8630 e-All-in-One

BY M. DAVID STONE

With its 500-sheet paper capacity, the HP Officejet Pro 8630 e-All-in-One ($399.99) is clearly aimed at micro and small offices or workgroups with unusually heavy-duty print needs. More expensive than some laser multifunction printers (MFPs), including the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M177fwBest Price at Amazon, this inkjet MFP is meant to go toe-to-toe with low-end laser MFPs and come out on top. This very capable machine can be a great fit in a small office that can take advantage of the high paper capacity.

The 8630 offers almost any feature you can think of for an MFP. Its core functions include the ability to print and fax from, as well as scan to, a PC, including over a network, and also work as a standalone copier, fax machine, and email sender. In addition, it can scan to, and print from, a USB memory key, and it supports mobile printing as well.

If you connect it directly to a network by Wi-Fi or Ethernet, you can print to it via a Wi-Fi access point on your network using AirPrint with iOS devices or HP’s free print apps with iOS, Android, and BlackBerry devices. Assuming the network is connected to the Internet, you can also print through the cloud and take advantage of HP’s Web apps. Even if you don’t connect it to a network, you can use the printer’s Wireless Direct—HP’s proprietary equivalent to Wi-Fi Direct—to connect directly with, and print from, a smartphone or tablet.

The MFP also lets you print using near-field communication (NFC), but the support is more limited than you might expect. The NFC Touch-to-Print feature in the 8630 is a new standard. According to HP, the only mobile device it will work with at this writing is the HP ElitePad 900$468.99 at Amazon. If you don’t happen to have one, the printer’s NFC support is useless.

The good news is that NFC Touch-to-Print is defined as part of the new standard from the Mopria Alliance, a group that includes HP, Canon, Samsung, Epson, and Xerox, among others. The feature should become more useful over time, as more mobile devices come out that support the standard.

Paper Handling
The 8630 earns lots of points for paper handling, starting with its 500-sheet capacity, divided into two 250-sheet paper trays. If also offers a built-in print duplexer (for printing on both sides of a page) and, for scanning, both a legal-size flatbed and a 50-page automatic document feeder (ADF) that can duplex as well.

Being able to both print and scan in duplex lets you copy from both single- and double-sided originals to your choice of single- or double-sided copies. You can also scan, fax, or email both simplex and duplex documents. Even better, the 4.3-inch front-panel color display offers a particularly well-designed menu to make it easy to find and change settings.

Not surprisingly, given the legal-size flatbed and the 500-sheet paper capacity, the 8630 is bigger and heavier than most inkjet MFPs, measuring 15.7 by 19.7 by 18.5 inches (HWD) and weighing 35 pounds. It’s also a little too big to share a desk with comfortably. Assuming you have room for it, however, setup is pretty straightforward.

Speed and Output Quality
For my tests, I connected the printer using its Ethernet port and installed the drivers on a Windows Vista system. On our business applications suite, I clocked it (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing) at an impressive 5.9 pages per minute (ppm).

That makes the 8630 a lot faster than some low-cost color laser MFPs. The HP M177FW, for example, managed only 2.9 ppm. On the other hand, it’s not unusually fast for a business-oriented inkjet. The Editors’ Choice HP Officejet Pro 276dw MFP$282.00 at Amazon in particular tied the 8630 at 5.9 ppm. Both inkjet MFPs also did well for photo speed, at 48 seconds for the 8630 and 50 seconds for the HP 276dw.

Output quality is best described as easily good enough for business use, but not impressive. Text quality falls in the middle of the range that includes the vast majority of inkjets, making it good enough for most business use, unless you have an unusual need for small fonts.

Graphics quality is similarly good enough for most business use, but at the low end of the tight range where most inkjets fall. Unless you’re a perfectionist, the quality is good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like. Photos in my tests were standard for an inkjet, making them easily a match for drugstore prints.

If you need better output quality, you’ll want to take a look at the HP Officejet Pro 276dw MFP. It not only offers better looking output, particularly for text, but it matches the HP Officejet Pro 8630 e-All-in-One’s speed and its support for the PCL printing language, while also adding Postscript, which is essential in some offices. That said, if you don’t need the extras that make the HP 276dw our Editors’ Choice, and your print needs are heavy-duty enough to make good use of a 500-sheet paper capacity, the HP Officejet Pro 8630 e-All-in-One can be an excellent fit, and may be the better MFP for your needs.

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Xerox Phaser 6600/N

BY M. DAVID STONE

Basically the same printer as the Xerox Phaser 6600/DN$474.99 at OfficeDepot, but without a duplexer (for two-sided printing), the Xerox Phaser 6600/N ($549) color laser printer offers the same capable paper handling, along with solid output quality across the board. Like its near-twin, it’s a little on the slow side. However, it’s a good fit for a small to medium-size office or workgroup that doesn’t need duplexing, needs to print a lot of pages by small-office standards, and needs the output to look good.

Literally the only difference between the 6600/N$403.19 at pcRUSH.com and Xerox 6600/DN is the lack of a duplexer. That means that if you don’t need automatic two-sided printing, you can save about $100 by getting the 6600/N. But before you buy it, be absolutely sure you don’t need to duplex. Xerox doesn’t offer an upgrade to let you add the feature later.

The printer’s paper handling is otherwise a match for its duplexing doppelgänger. It comes with both a 550-sheet drawer and 150-sheet multipurpose tray standard, which is enough for heavy-duty printing in a small office. If you need even more capacity, you can add a second 550-sheet drawer ($299) for a total of 1,250 sheets. Not so incidentally, the 550-sheet capacity for the drawers is a welcome convenience. It lets you refill the drawer with an entire ream of paper even before it’s fully empty.

Setup and Speed
As you’d expect for any printer with this level of paper capacity, the Phaser 6600/N is too big to comfortably share a desk with, at 15.1 by 16.9 by 19.2 inches (HWD). It also weighs a touch over 56 pounds, which makes moving it into place a two-person job for most. Once in place, however, setup is both simple and typical for a color laser.

Connection options include the expected Ethernet and USB ports, with an optional Wi-Fi adapter ($99) also available. The only mobile printing support is for AirPrint, which requires a Wi-Fi access point on your network, whether you connect the printer itself by Wi-Fi or Ethernet. I connected the printer by its Ethernet port and ran my tests from a Windows Vista system.

Xerox rates the printer at 36 pages per minute (ppm) for both monochrome and color, which is the speed you should see when you’re printing files that require little to no processing. On our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic’s hardware and software), it came in at a much slower 4.5 ppm. That’s essentially a tie with the Xerox 6600/DN, which came in at nearly the same speed for both duplex and simplex modes.

As a point of comparison, the Editors’ Choice Xerox Phaser 6500/DN$350.00 at Amazon was faster even in duplex mode, at 5.2 ppm, and much faster in simplex mode, at 6.5 ppm. Less important for an office printer, but still worth pointing out, is the fact that the 6600/N was unusually slow for a color laser for photos, averaging 45 seconds for a 4 by 6 in our tests.

Output Quality
Given speed that’s best described as tolerable but a little slow, it helps a lot that the output quality is good enough to be worth waiting for. Text is at the low end of the range where the vast majority of color lasers fall, but that’s still good enough for any business use. Depending on how critical an eye you have, you may also consider it acceptable for moderately serious desktop publishing. Graphics quality is on par for a laser, making it more than good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like.

Photo output on plain paper was at the high end of the range you can expect from a color laser. If you mounted most of the color photos from my tests in a frame behind glass, you’d have trouble telling that they weren’t true photo quality and printed on photo paper. I would rate the photos, along with the text and graphics, as good enough for printing your own marketing materials like tri-fold brochures or one-page handouts and mailers.

The Xerox Phaser 6600/N’s strongest points are its paper handling and output quality. If you don’t need the high paper capacity, the Editors’ Choice Xerox Phaser 6500/DN will give you essentially the same output quality with faster speed for $150 less. If you need the high paper capacity plus duplexing, the Xerox Phaser 6600/DN is the obvious alternative. If you print enough to take advantage of the high capacity, however, but you don’t need duplexing, and especially if you need high-quality output, the Xerox Phaser 6600/N could easily be the right printer for your office.

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Xerox Phaser 6500/DN

BY M. DAVID STONE

Theoretically identical to the Xerox Phaser 6500/N$318.16 at pcRUSH.com, but with a print duplexer (for two-sided printing) added and with a faster speed on our tests, the Xerox Phaser 6500/DN color laser printer ($499) delivers an impressive balance of speed, output quality, and paper handling, making it a potentially excellent fit in a micro office, small office, or workgroup, and an easy Editors’ Choice for color laser printers.

As with the 6500/N, an obvious point of comparison for the 6500/DN$362.62 at pcRUSH.com is the directly competitive Dell 2150cdn, which it replaces as Editors’ Choice. The three printers are similar in many ways, with all three built around the same engine and all three rated at 24 pages per minute (ppm) for both monochrome and color output. But where the Xerox 6500/N lacks the duplexer the Dell 2150cdn offers, the 6500/DN adds the duplexer and delivers faster speed as well. Note, too, that the 6500/DN includes support for AirPrint, which Xerox has added to the 6500 series firmware since I tested the Xerox 6500/N.

The printer’s paper handling is easily enough for most micro or small offices or workgroups, with a 250-sheet tray, a one-sheet manual feed, and a duplexer standard. For heavier-duty needs, you can also add a second 250-sheet tray ($199), making the 6500/DN a good choice for moderate- to heavy-duty printing by small-office standards.

Setup and Speed
As is typical for the breed, the 6500/DN is too big to share a desk with comfortably, at 16.4 by 15.9 by 16.8 inches (HWD). It’s also heavy enough, at 40 pounds, so you’ll likely want some help moving it. Once in place, however, setup is standard fare. For my tests, I connected it to a wired network, and installed the driver on a system running Windows Vista. Note too that if you prefer to connect wirelessly you can add an external Wi-Fi option ($219).

The printer’s speed is both a key strong point and a pleasant surprise. Like many duplex printers, the 6500/DN’s driver installs to print in duplex by default, so the official speed for our tests is for two-sided printing. On our business applications suite (using QualityLogic’shardware and software for timing) I clocked it at 5.4 ppm.

That makes the 6500/DN essentially tied with the Dell 2150cdn, at 5.5 ppm. However, the Dell printer’s speed is for printing in simplex (one-sided) mode. When I set the 6500/DN to simplex, it came in significantly faster, at 6.5 ppm. Somewhat surprisingly, the 6500/DN in simplex mode was also significantly faster than the Xerox 6500/N, at 5.2 ppm. The difference was entirely due to the 6500/DN printing a PowerPoint file faster, which suggests it offers faster, more efficient processing for that file format.

Output Quality
The 6500/DN’s output quality isn’t as impressive as its speed, but it’s easily good enough for almost any work need. Text in my tests was at the low end of the range where the majority of color lasers fall, but even then, it’s high enough quality for almost any business use. Depending on how critical an eye you have, you may consider it suitable for moderately serious desktop publishing. Graphics quality was on par for a color laser, making it suitable for anything up to, and including, PowerPoint handouts. Most people would consider it good enough for marketing materials like one-page handouts or trifold brochures.

Photo quality on plain paper was at the high end of a tight range where most color lasers fall. If you mounted the color photos in our tests in a frame behind glass, they could pass for true photo quality.

Note that the Dell 2150cdn offers somewhat higher output quality, particularly for text, and it may still be your preferred printer if your primary need is absolutely top-tier quality. Alternatively, if you can do without a duplexer, the Xerox 6500/N will give you very similar capability to the 6550/DN. As already discussed, however, it was slower than the 6500/DN in our tests. And for most offices today, the lack of a duplexer can be a significant liability, which is why the 6500/DN earns a higher rating.

All told, the Xerox Phaser 6500/DN’s balance of speed, output quality, paper handling, and price makes a compelling argument for the printer, and the combination is enough to make this color laser printer an Editors’ Choice.

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Dell B2375dnf

BY M. DAVID STONE

Meant for light- to medium-duty use in a mid-size office or workgroup, but also a good fit for heavy-duty use in a small office, the Dell Mono Multifunction Printer – B2375dnf delivers on both multifunction printer (MFP) basics and convenience features, like its touch-screen control panel. It isn’t as fast on our tests as you might expect from its 40 page-per-minute (ppm) rating. In fact, the Editors’ ChoiceOKI MB471, is faster despite a slower rating. The Dell printer is fast enough, however, so speed shouldn’t be an issue, and it offers enough overall to make it a potentially good choice.

The B2375dnf starts with a full set of MFP basics. It can print and fax from as well as scan to a PC, including over a network, and it can work as a standalone copier, fax machine, and direct email sender. It can also print from and scan to a USB memory key. Even better, it’s 4.3-inch touch screen and menus make it reasonably easy to use for copying, faxing, and email, although the touch screen is a little less responsive than it could be for scrolling through the choices.

Paper Handling and Other Basics
Paper handling is a big part of what limits the printer to light to medium-duty use by mid-size office standards. It comes with a 250-sheet paper drawer, a 50-sheet multi-purpose tray, and an automatic duplexer (for two-sided printing) standard. You can also add a 520-sheet second drawer ($149.99 direct), for a total 820-sheet capacity. If you need more than that, however, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Paper handling for scanning is similarly one step short of being suitable for heavy-duty use. The letter-size flatbed is supplemented by a 50-page automatic document feeder (ADF), which can handle up to legal-size paper for copying, scanning, faxing, or email. Even better, the ADF can duplex, by scanning one side, turning the page over, and then scanning the other.

Combined with duplex printing, the duplexing ADF lets you copy both single and double-sided originals to your choice of single or double-sided copies, which is obviously a welcome convenience. However, it isn’t as desirable, or as fast, as scanning in duplex, meaning both sides of the page at once.

One other notable convenience is mobile printing support. If you connect the printer to your network, you can both print through the cloud (assuming the network is connected to the Internet) and print over Wi-Fi from iOS and Android phones and tablets (assuming you have a Wi-Fi access point on your network).

Note that the printer itself doesn’t offer Wi-Fi. If you want a printer that can connect wirelessly, you can get the Dell Mono Multifunction Printer – B2375dfw, which sells for the same list price. According to Dell, the two models are otherwise identical, which means almost all of the comments in this review should apply to both. Keep in mind, however, that printing over Wi-Fi will probably give you a different speed than printing with the Ethernet connection I used for testing.

Setup, Speed, and Output Quality
As is typical for this class of printer, the B2375dnf is far too big to share a desk with comfortably, but small enough, at 18.8 by 18.2 by 16.5 inches (HWD), so you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding room for it even in a small office. Setting it up on a network, with drivers installed on a Windows Vista system, was standard fare.

As I’ve already mentioned, the printer was slower than expected in my tests. Dell rates it at 40 pages per minute (ppm), which is the speed you should see for text documents with little to no formatting. I clocked it on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing), at just 5.9 ppm.

As one point of comparison, when I reviewed the OKI MB471, which is rated at 35 ppm, I pointed out that its 9.5-ppm speed on our tests qualified as respectable, but not particularly impressive. Other printers do far better compared with their ratings. The 24-ppm Canon imageClass MF4770n, for example, came in at 12.3 ppm on our tests.

Output quality for the B2375dnf is absolutely typical, with text, graphics, and photos each falling within a tight range that includes the vast majority of mono laser MFPS. For text, that translates to being easily good enough for virtually any business need, but a little short of what you’d want for serious desktop publishing applications.

Graphics output is similarly good enough for any internal business need. Depending on how critical an eye you have, you may also consider it good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like. Photos are good enough for printing recognizable images from Web pages, which is about as much as you can expect from a mono laser.

Also demanding mention is that the B2375dnf offers other useful conveniences, including private printing, for example, which lets you send a job to the printer, but not print it until you enter a password through the front-panel touch screen.

If what you need in a printer is fast speed, high input capacity, or above-par output quality, you’ll obviously need to look elsewhere. What keeps this printer in the running, however, is its long list of conveniences, from private printing to scanning to a USB key, along with its full set of MFP basics—for printing, scanning, copying, faxing, and email. If you need those MFP features more than raw print capability (meaning speed, output quality, and paper handling), the Dell Mono Multifunction Printer – B2375dnf can be a highly attractive choice and could easily be the right fit for your office.

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Dell C2660dn

BY TONY HOFFMAN

As a color laser printer suitable for a small office or workgroup, the Dell Color Printer | C2660dn showed good speed and above-par output quality thanks to stellar graphics, and has competitive running costs and a generous paper capacity for its price. All this makes it easy to recommend for a small business looking for a workhorse color laser.

The all-black C2660dn measures 14.9 by 17.3 by 19.1 inches (HWD) and weighs 56.5 pounds. It’s a little too large to share a desk with, a monochrome display, four arrow controls with a central Enter button, and an alphanumeric keypad for entering choices as well as for password-protected Secure Print, which requires a user to enter a PIN to release a print job.

and you may want 2 people to move it into place. The front panel has

The C2660dn’s paper capacity of 400 sheets, split between a 250-sheet main tray and a 150-sheet multipurpose feeder, is generous for its price, and it comes with an automatic document feeder for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper. It has a maximum monthly duty cycle of 50,000 pages, with a recommended monthly duty cycle of 3,500 pages. An optional 550-sheet tray ($185.99 direct) is also available.

The C2660dn offers USB and Ethernet (including Gigabit Ethernet) connectivity. Wi-Fi is available as an option ($99.99 direct). I tested it over an Ethernet connection with the printer’s drivers installed on a PC running Windows Vista.

The C2660dn integrates with the new Dell Document Hub, which enables users to print documents from many cloud platforms, including Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive and Microsoft SharePoint Online. Use of Dell Document Hub is free until March 2014.

Printing Speed
I timed the C2660dn in its default duplex (two-sided printing) mode on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing) at an effective 6.5 pages per minute (ppm), a good speed for its rated speed of 18 page per minute for duplex printing (for both color and monochrome). Rated speeds are based on printing text documents without graphics or photos—our test suite includes text pages, graphics pages, and pages with mixed content. Although our official timings are in the default printing mode (duplex, in this case), I also timed it in simplex mode (for which it’s rated at 28 ppm), where it turned in a slightly faster 6.8 ppm, the same speed at which we tested the OKI C531dn$436.78 at pcRUSH.com. It’s faster than the Editors’ Choice Dell 2150cdn$302.13 at Amazon, and it edged the Samsung CLP-680ND$349.99 at Amazon, which I timed at 6.2 ppm.

Output Quality
Overall output quality was a plus for a color laser, with average text quality, above-par graphics, and photo quality on the low side of average. Text was suitable for typical business applications short of demanding desktop publishing applications and the like that use very small fonts.

Graphics quality is fine for PowerPoint handouts, even ones meant for important clients I was seeking to impress. Colors were well saturated, although a few darker backgrounds looked somewhat blotchy. Dithering in the form of dot patterns was apparent in some illustrations.

With photos, colors were well saturated. Some images showed a loss of detail in bright areas, and dithering (graininess) was evident in others. I also noted some mild posterization, the tendency for abrupt shifts in color where they should be gradual. A monochrome image was tint free, but the background was blotchy and showed traces of banding. The quality is good enough for in-house use, printing photos from Web pages and the like, but whether it’s suitable for outputting photos for a company newsletter depends on how picky you are.

Running Costs

The C2660dn’s running costs of 2.3 cents per monochrome page and 12.8 cents per color page are the same as those of the Dell 2150cdn and comparable with the OKI C531dn (2.4 cents per monochrome page and 12.3 cents per color page). Its monochrome costs are the same as the Samsung CLP-680ND, though the Samsung costs nearly a penny more per color page (13.7 cents).

Like the C2660dn, the Samsung CLP-680ND has good graphics quality and they have similar text and photo quality, but the C2660dn beats it in speed and paper capacity. The C2660dn matched the OKI C531dn in speed and has a slightly higher paper capacity (400 sheets to the OKI’s 350). The C2660dn had better output quality, for graphics and photos.

The C2660dn is a bit faster than the Editors’ Choice Dell 2150cdn, and has greater paper capacity. Although its overall output quality is good for a color laser thanks to its great graphics, it could not match the Dell 2150cdn’s. Due to its high-quality output (if, for example, you want to bring the printing of basic marketing materials in house), the Dell 2150cdn remains the color laser in its price range to beat. But the C2660dn offers a well-rounded feature set, good paper capacity and speed, competitive running costs, and output quality that should be good enough for most in-house business needs. All that could make it worthy of a place on your business’s short list.

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Xerox Phaser 3610/N

BY M. DAVID STONE

Basically the same printer as the Xerox Phaser 3610/DN Printer$621.41 at pcRUSH.com that I recently reviewed, the Xerox Phaser 3610/N Printer offers all the same features except one. Unlike the DN model, the 3610/N doesn’t duplex (print on both sides of the page). If you need to duplex, or even think you might need to duplex, ever, that rules the 3610/N out, especially since you can’t add a duplexer to it as an upgrade. If you’re sure you’ll never need to duplex, however, it will give you all the same capability as the DN model otherwise at a slightly lower price.

Like its duplexing near twin, the 3610/N is designed as a workhorse mono laser for a small to mid-size office or workgroup. Aside from the lack of a duplexer, it’s particularly strong on paper handling, with a 550-sheet main tray and 150-sheet multipurpose tray standard, and the option to add up to three additional 550-sheet trays ($199.99 direct each) for a maximum 2,350 sheets. It lacks any output options, like a finisher or stacker, but the input capacity is enough for heavy-duty use by small to mid-size office standards.

Setup and Speed
The printer measures 12.4 by 15.5 by 16.8 inches (HWD) with its standard complement of trays, and it weighs in at 28.7 pounds, which makes it light enough for one person to move into place. Beyond that, setup for the 3610/N is typical for the category. I connected it to a wired network for my tests and installed the drivers on a Windows Vista system. You can also connect by USB, with Wi-Fi available as an option ($99.99 direct).

Xerox rates the 3610/N at 47 pages per minute (ppm), which should be close to the speed you’ll see with text or other files that don’t require much processing. On our tests, however, I clocked it at 12.0 ppm (usingQualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing). That’s a tie with the 3610/DN in simplex (single-sided) mode and a little faster than the 3610/DN in its default duplex mode, at 11.1 ppm.

Unfortunately, both printers are a little slow for the price and engine rating. The Editors’ Choice Dell B3460dn$649.99 at Dell Small Business, came in at 15.3 ppm, for example, and the less expensive Editors’ Choice Dell B2360dn$249.99 at Dell hit 15.0 ppm.

Output Quality and Other Issues
The good news is that as with the Xerox 3610/DN, the 3610/N largely makes up for its slow speed by offering somewhat better than par output quality overall.

Text quality is good enough for virtually any business need, which, for most offices, is the most important quality issue for a mono laser. Graphics quality is at the high end of par, making it easily good enough for any internal office use. Depending on how much of a perfectionist you are, it’s also potentially good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like. Photo quality is easily above par for a mono laser. Many people would consider it good enough for photos on output like one-page handouts with photos.

Also on the plus side for the 3610/N is a low claimed running cost, at 1.7 cents per page, and several potentially useful conveniences, starting with mobile printing.

The mobile printing support includes printing through the cloud and printing over Wi-Fi from an iOS or Android phone or tablet. To use either feature, the printer has to be connected to your network. In addition, the network needs to be connected to the Internet for cloud printing, and you need an access point on the network for printing over Wi-Fi. Adding the Wi-Fi option to the printer doesn’t eliminate the need for an access point, since the optional Wi-Fi doesn’t support Wi-Fi Direct.

Two other noteworthy convenience features are private printing (which Xerox calls secure printing), and the ability to save jobs in the printer. With private printing, you can send a job to the printer, and it won’t print until you enter a PIN code through the front panel menu. This can be handy if you’re printing something you don’t want others to see.

Saving jobs to the printer lets you store pages, like forms that need to be filled in repeatedly, so you can print them quickly and easily with front panel commands. Note that with the basic version of the printer, the forms are stored only in standard memory, however, so you’ll lose them if you turn the printer off. For the feature to be truly useful, you need to add the optional Productivity Kit ($349.99 list), which saves the files to non-volatile memory.

One minor issue is that the menus on the front panel aren’t as straightforward as they could be, making it hard to find some options quickly. However, you can easily print a Menu Map page, which shows you exactly how to navigate to the option you’re looking for.

As with its duplexing doppelganger, the Xerox Phaser 3610/N Printer delivers on paper capacity, low running cost, better than par output quality, and convenience features like mobile printing and private printing. Not being able to add a duplexer later means that if you have any question about ever needing to duplex, you’ll be better off paying a little extra for the Xerox Phaser 3610/DN Printer, or an equivalent model that also has a duplexer. If you’re sure you’ll never need to duplex, however, the Xerox Phaser 3610/N Printer is a more than reasonable choice.

original article

Samsung Xpress C410W

by Jon L. Jacobi

Most low-priced color lasers are big disappointments: slow, with mediocre color images and costly toner prices. The Samsung Printer XPress C410W rises above some of the stereotypes, offering impressively good print quality and decently priced black toner. However, its color toners are costly, and print performance is agonizingly slow. Its ability to print via near-field communication (NFC) is interesting, though still somewhat niche. Call it an adequate low-volume printer for the home or small office, with a couple of bonus features.

Typical low-end color laser in most respects

Physically, there’s not a lot to talk about with the XPress C410W. It’s your standard, boxy laser printer that’s been with us since the first HP Laserjet. There’s a 150-sheet paper cassette at the bottom of the unit and a 50-sheet output tray integrated into the top. The front panel folds down to reveal the four svelte toner cartridges and other replaceable parts. There’s no automatic duplexer. Dialog boxes coach you through manual two-sided printing. The controls on top of the XPress C410W are simple and easy to use. The printer may be connected via Wi-Fi, Ethernet, or USB so you can place it wherever you see fit.

It took me a while to get the NFC printing to work—basically because I didn’t read the manual, which instructs you to match the tag on the back of your mobile device with the tag on the top of the printer. The lab guys got quite the kick out of my tapping manically everywhere except where I should have been.

Obviously, you must have a mobile device capable of NFC (Samsung provided a Galaxy SIII). Match tags, select what you want to print, match the tags again, and you’re golden. How often you’ll be standing next to a printer to match tags is questionable. Most of the time, printing via Wi-Fi will be more useful.

Color toner is costly

Whether the XPress C410W’s pricey toner costs will ever catch up with you depends on how much you print. The cartridges don’t last long—just 2,000 pages for black and 1,000 pages for each color. Samsung was selling them for $63.99 (black) and $54.99 (each color) at this writing, which comes out to a good 3.2 cents per page for black and a pricey 5.5 cents per color, per page. A four-color page would cost 19.7 cents. We saw lower prices for the same cartridges at other sources, so shopping around might save you a bit. This printer is designed for people who don’t print much, so it could take you a while to get through even these modest-sized cartridges. Still, you’re going to feel it when you re-supply—and that will be soon, as the Xpress C410W ships with 700-page black, and 500-page color starter cartridges.

Additional costs include a $98 imaging unit, which is good for 16,000 black pages and 4,000 color pages, as well as a $13 toner waste container that’s good for 7,500 black pages and 1750 color pages. Eventually those replacements will add another 0.8 cents per page. Not the stuff of a bargain hunter’s dreams.

Very slow performance

The XPress C410W’s speed is strictly ho-hum for a laser printer, but acceptable for the printer’s intended small- or home-office role.Text and monochrome graphics pages printed at an aggregate 8.2 per minute on the PC and 7.9 on the Mac. Small (4-by-6-inch) photos printed at about 2 pages per minute in graphics mode and 1.5 pages in photo mode. A full-page photo printed on the Mac took about 54 seconds.

What makes this all arguably worthwhile is the print quality, which is surprisingly good for a low-end model. Although we sometimes had to fiddle with settings to get the best possible quality, even the default colors printed smoothly and looked fairly realistic, whether they were fleshtones, landscapes, or objects. An inkjet in this price range, such as the HP OfficeJet Pro 8100 ePrinter, will deliver even better color quality—and likely, better ink prices and speed—but if you must stick with color laser, you could do worse than the XPress C410W.

Though the Samsung Printer XPress C410W’s NFC printing is a neat trick, it’s compelling only in a world where NFC is everywhere. It’s not. Of its other qualities, the look of the XPress C410W’s output is its best suit and may compensate for the unit’s mundane speed. We’d like this printer a lot better with more reasonable supply costs, though—at least a half-star better.

original article

Oki C331dn

Introduction

One word that’s often used to describe a printer is “workhorse,” and the Oki C331dn ($349) is one such example. Like the Dell C1765nr, the C331dn is an LED color printer, which uses a fixed width printhead containing LEDs to “write” the image on a photoconductor drum, rather than a scanning laser beam. Workhorse printers like this aren’t marketed toward the home user, but, having said that, it’s worth considering if you print a couple of hundred pages a month. In a house with a fair number of users doing a lot of printing, you can easily bump up against a typical consumer laser printer’s recommended monthly duty cycle. That’s not going to happen with the C331dn. Its duty cycle is up to 45,000 pages a month – that’s seven cases (not reams) of paper a month.

Obviously, most home and even small business users will approach that duty cycle. But combined with Oki’s three-year warranty, it underlines how durable the printer is – you’re not going to break it by using it.

Features and design

The C331dn looks deceptively small when viewed from the front. It’s only 16.1 inches wide and 9.5 inches tall (without the optional second paper tray). But, due to the design of how the cartridges are laid out, the C331dn is very deep, at 19.8 inches – considerably deeper than most of the printers we’ve tested recently. And the setup guide illustrates two people lifting it while unpacking. That’s probably a good idea, as the printer weighs in at almost 50 pounds.

There are few controls on the printer you need to worry about. Besides the navigation and OK buttons for scrolling through menus on a backlit 16-character display, there are the Power Save button, Online, and Cancel buttons. For the most part, once set up, you’ll make most of the adjustments from the print driver on your computer.

One thing that’s notable about the C331dn is that you can get very granular with the color settings. The printer can print a sheet of color swatches that you can use with software, such as Photoshop, to set the RGB values on an image that’s being created or edited to a very specific color. Few home users will take advantage of this, but it’s a nice feature to have if you do a lot of precise color printing.

The C331dn has a large input tray that holds 250 sheets, exactly a half-ream. If you generally run large print jobs, there’s an optional second paper tray that fits underneath the printer and adds another 530 sheets of capacity. A panel on the front of the printer folds down to expose a multi-purpose tray for heavy or specialized stock. Depending on the weight of the paper, it can hold up to another 100 sheets. Auto duplexing (two-side printing) is a feature.

Paper exits at the top of the printer, and a pop-up support just isn’t going to hold the entire input tray’s capacity, so you’ll need to keep an eye on the printer if you have a long print job running, like a copy of a nonfiction book.

The C331dn does not support Wi-Fi. Considering how prevalent Wi-Fi is today in both the home and office, this will be an important factor to home or small business user.

What’s in the box

There were no surprises inside the box. It contains the printer, a power cord, a disc containing drivers Windows and Mac drivers, and documentation. The C331dn has the toner cartridges and drum already installed, so setup is really just attaching the power cord, loading paper, and plugging in a USB or Ethernet cable. Oki also includes a number of utilities on the installation disc, but few, if any, of these will be of use to the typical home user unless they need precision color output.

Performance and use

Setting up the C331dn is completely automated. Running the installation, we were asked whether we wanted to use Ethernet or USB, and instructed to plug in the appropriate cable. The USB and Ethernet ports are hidden behind a door at the rear of the right side panel, but there’s no mention of it on the setup guide. The C331dn gives you a choice of printer drivers: You can install the PCL driver that almost every application uses, or the Postscript driver which is somewhat better for use with graphics software and when you need to do precise color matching. You can, of course, install them both and choose which driver to use at print time.

Once we started testing, we were impressed with the C331dn’s performance and print quality. The print driver offers four settings: ProQ/High Quality, Fine/Detail, Normal, and Draft. Our speed testing was performed using the Normal setting, which is the default, while we set the driver to its highest quality when we tested for image quality.

Oki rates the C331dn at up to 23 pages per minute in color mode, which is exactly what we achieved in our testing. Oki didn’t recommend a particular paper for the best image quality, so we used HP Office paper as well as the Premium Inkjet & Laser paper from Hammermill. Printing our test images yielded spot-on color with both papers. The images, however, were noticeably brighter when printed on the more expensive Premium Inkjet & Laser paper.

While the Oki C331dn is priced about the same as other color lasers in its class, its operating costs are on the high side. Toner cartridges will print 3,000 pages (color) and 3,500 pages in black. High-capacity cartridges are not available for this model. With color cartridges costing about $146 and black about $98, the cost-per-page works out to an expensive 20 cents per color page printed.

Conclusion

The Oki C331dn is a workhorse of a printer. The printer itself is relatively inexpensive, but the cost of supplies is on the high side at about 20 cents a page.

But the output quality is really good, and the printer is fast. The C331dn also offers automatic duplexing and a large paper drawer. With the optional 530-sheet second paper drawer, you can load up to a ream-and-a-half of paper and print away, which makes the C331dn perfect for long print jobs or when you need lots of copies of a flyer or report.

By Ted Needleman, DigitalTrends

SPECIFICATIONS

Key Features

  • Features :

Release Information

  • Release Date :
  • Release Price : $349.00

Design

  • Width : 16.1″
  • Height : 19.8″
  • Depth : 9.5″
  • Weight : 48.5 lbs
  • Compatibility : Microsoft® Windows® 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista®, Windows XP Home/XP Professional, Windows Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, Server 2003; Mac® OS X 10.5 and higher
  • Memory : 128 mB
  • Type : Laser

Printer specifics

  • Technology : Laser
  • Output : Color
  • Black print speed : 25 ppm
  • Color print speed : 23 ppm
  • Color print quality : 1200 x 600 dpi
  • Print languages : PCL® 6, PCL 5c; PostScript® 3™; IBM® ProPrinter®, Epson® FX
  • Duplex printing : Yes
  • Max. duty cycle : 45,000

Paper Handling/Media

  • Input capacity : 350sheets
  • Max. input capacity : 880 sheets
  • Output capacity : 250 sheets
  • Media type : handles card stock, labels, envelopes (max. 10) and banners, plain paper
  • Media sizes supported : 4.1″ x 5.8″ to 8.5″ x 14″; 3″ x 5″ to 8.5″ x 52″ banners3, 5.8″ x 8.3″ to 8.5″ x 14″

Ports

  • USB ports : 1

Connectivity

  • Network ports : 10/100 Base-TX Ethernet
  • Wireless : None

Power

  • Requirements : 120v
  • Consumption : < .5W, 1.5W, 14W, 90W
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