REVIEW: Brother HL-2600CN

[jadison]

WHAT'S HOT: A color laser at $1999 makes a very attractive deal--though Brother's HL-2600CN is not the only color laser at that price. The 12.1-ppm text-printing speed isn't the fastest, but it's speedy enough for an office printer. PC World's print-quality jury liked the 2600's clean, black text output and top-notch ability to print crisp narrow lines. Though there is no printed manual, Brother provides excellent on-screen documentation that includes animated tutorials on many common set-up and maintenance tasks. The driver installer also walks you through getting the printer to run.

WHAT'S NOT: The 2600CN's color graphics looked somewhat off, with a purplish cast throughout. Even without the odd purple hue, the 2400-by-600 resolution appeared grainy and produced blocky transitions in shaded areas. The paper tray holds only 250 sheets, which might be inconvenient for a busy office. The lack of an auxiliary paper feed means you can load only one kind of paper at a time. However, you can add the optional 500-sheet feeder for $649. Brother also charges $1000 to equip the 2600CN with a duplexer.

WHAT ELSE: Brother's driver allows manual duplexing if you don't buy the mechanical duplexer--that's a capability many vendors don't offer for printers that have a duplexer available. The HL-2600CN's graphics printing speed of 1.8 ppm is average among our current batch of color lasers.

UPSHOT:
For cost-conscious small businesses, the 2600CN's great price and fast performance may offset its limited paper capacity and marginal color graphics.

OVERVIEW:
Rated 24 ppm monochrome/6 ppm color, standard 64MB of RAM, 2400-by-600-dpi maximum resolution, 250 sheets input and output.

Price:
$1999

Purchasing Info
http://www.brother.com/usa/usalocal.html
877/284-3238

*Courtesy of PCWorld HERE* (http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,81990,pg,7,00.asp)

[MDS]

jadison I use a HL-3260N with 2 paper trays and doc sorter at work and it does print text really clear, but forget about printing color photo's or graphics they don't come out that clearbut were not suposed to print photo's anyway :) the one I use hold about 2 packs of paper per tray.

[jadison]

Personally, I don't print much in color. I have an Epson Stylus 777 bought for a bargain @ Best Buy, and the print cartridges are cheaper than HP's. Most of the documents I print are just plain text...If I need to do any high-quality photo/color printing I use the high-end HP printers @ work. I've never had any experience w/a high-quality color laser printer, but then again I haven't had much experience w/any more than a couple dozen printers in the past 5 or so years.

Before that, I used Oki-Data's printers, very slow w/the annoying strips of punched holes on the sides that you had to tear off (long time ago;) ). We've come a long way...