HP Color Laserjet 1600

fastturtle · Post by **fastturtle** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 2:45 pm

Just got one of these babies as my old unit, a Samsung ML1210 finally died and here's my initial impressions of the printer.

1st: It's quiet when busy unlike the Samsung and no I don't have a sound meter but they did a damn good job of cutting the noise levels. In this regards, the noise when printing seems to be a very stable hum and most of the noise is actually from the paper as it ejects. Even when it's handling a long print job, it doesn't get much louder and when idle, it makes no noise at all.

2nd: It's heavy, weighing in at just under 40 pounds and has a 20K page duty cycle. Now in order to get the prices down, they had to compromise somewhere and they did in page speed with it being rated for a meager 8ppm. Certainly not the fastest on the block but it does the job.

3rd: What I appreciate is that everything is accessed from the front. The paper tray, cartridges, LCD display. In fact once it's connected and operational, you have little reason to move it or even look at the back of it.

4th: It's Output. Resolution is pretty meager at 600 dpi and is the result of cost tradeoffs but unless you're looking for a photo-printer, this one does a very good job. Color accuracy - Seems to be very high just a tad darker then on screen and I haven't seen any of the moire/banding and indications of misalignment yet.

5th: One surprise was the minimal difference between a glossy and plain paper in quality even though it's possible to see a difference as the plain paper doesn't have the smooth surface of the glossy it's barely noticeable.

Overall, I'm having to rate this model's initial impression as an 8 out of 10 with most if not all of the downgrade coming from the packaging. The box is 24x24 inches and they did a good job of keeping it to a minimum but still it's a large box. Last but not least, I've not seen any indications that this thing even recognizes Apple as yet, which for many kills any reason to buy it but for windows users, it's well worth it.

EDIT:

According to Linux Printing, this unit is partially supported although notes indicate that Debian has no problems with it. Anyone with a Mac feel free to contribute as the output under Windows is very nice at it's default resolution.