The HP Color LaserJet 2605dtn printed black text at 9 pages per minute (ppm) and color graphics at 7ppm, which is not terribly fast for a laser printer but still considerably more efficient than your average inkjet printer. Its ink costs are also considerably lower. Going by HP's estimates, a page of black text should cost about 3 cents, and a page of color text should cost about 4 cents. We also appreciate that HP includes full toner cartridges with the printer, rather than mostly empty starter cartridges that others provide. The printer really shines when it comes to output quality. We printed color and monochrome documents at the default settings: HP ImageREt 2400 for color and 600 dots per inch for monochrome. Text was crisp and solidly black, without being overly bold; grayscale graphics were extremely detailed and smoothly blended. Color text was also surprisingly well blended--most color lasers make a spotted mess of this test document because they can't blend the trickier shades--and color graphics were similarly smooth, with very bright, bold color for a color laser printer. The printer also does an excellent job of blending skin tones and colors in photo elements. There was almost none of the dithering (visible dots) that we usually see in both color lasers and inkjets, and the colors were bright instead of faded looking.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
 |
Color graphics | |
Color text | |
Black graphics | |
Black text |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
|
Color graphics | |
Color text | |
Black graphics | |
Black text |
The HP 2605dtn comes with a standard one-year warranty, but you can expand this to three years with next-day exchange service for $129. HP's support options are exhaustive. The Web site offers live chat with a technician Monday to Friday from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. MT. You can also access user support forums, e-mail support forms, manuals, driver downloads, and an online diagnostic tool. Toll-free phone support is available 24/7, but like many tech companies, HP buries the phone number deep in the support site in the hope that you will eventually give up and try one of the cheaper (for them) automated options.
What You'll Pay
- Set Price Alert
