HP Color LaserJet 2600n review

HP Color LaserJet 2600n Review

Reviewed by: Dan Littman

Reviewed on: 21 July 2005

In terms of print quality, our plain-text samples looked great, with a crisp black that few colour lasers achieve, and sharp, clean letters, even at 2-point size. It also printed greyscale graphics well, with some blotchiness in areas but good detail, particularly on photos. The weakest area was probably colour graphics: gradients made abrupt transitions, solid colours had odd mixtures of extra colours, and photos came out unpleasantly dark and brown, though they did preserve detail well.

CNET Labs' colour laser quality
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Colour graphics

Colour text

Black graphics

Black text

Dell 3100cn

excellent

good

excellent

excellent

Konica Minolta Magicolor 2430DL

good

good

good

excellent

HP Color LaserJet 2600n

fair

good

good

excellent

Brother HL-2700CN

fair

good

good

good

Samsung CLP-510N

good

good

good

fair

Upkeep for the 2600n is expensive. A page of black text uses about 2.5p worth of toner, and a lightly covered colour page uses about 12p worth, according to vendor specs. However, there are no other consumables to replace, and HP provides full cartridges in the box instead of the increasingly common half-full 'starter' cartridges.

Edited by Elsa Wenzel
Additional editing by Nick Hide