HP Color LaserJet 2605dtn

HP's Color LaserJet 2605dtn printer is the missing link between all-in-one inkjet photo printers and budget color laser printers and offers the best of both species. Like photo all-in-ones, it has built-in photo card readers and will print photos directly from a card. Like a color laser printer, it's fast and prints color more cheaply and at higher volume than a costly inkjet. Its color and monochrome output also look great, whether you compare it to a color laser, such as the HP 3600n, or an inkjet, such as the Epson R2400. At $699, this printer is hardly cheap, but for the price you get a built-in duplexer, two 250-sheet paper trays, and an Ethernet connection for networking. Our only major complaints with the HP 2605dtn are that the LCD menu navigation is tricky and you can't expand the paper capacity. (The other member of this series, the HP 2605dn, has only a single 250-sheet paper tray and lacks the photo memory card slots, for $200 less than the 2605dtn. The performance and quality should be the same as that of the 2605dtn.)

Measuring 16.1 by 17.8 by 20.2 inches (width, depth, height) and weighing 52.1 pounds, the HP 2605dtn is not particularly bulky for a workgroup laser, but it is meant to stay put on a desktop. The configuration is classic HP: a 125-sheet output tray on top, two 250-sheet input trays stacked on the bottom of the printer body. The front panel of the printer pops open to reveal the vertically stacked toner cartridges; the image-transfer belt is attached to the inside of the panel. The vertical arrangement (as opposed to a carousel, or a horizontal arrangement) makes it easy to insert and remove the toner and allows faster printing because there's no waiting for each color to rotate into position (this is also referred to as a single-pass setup). Given the cost of this equipment, we were a little surprised by how flimsy the panel door and paper trays feel. In fact, there are no stops on the paper trays, which makes it easy to pull them out for reloading but also means they'll slide right out of the printer body (and onto the floor) if you're not careful when pulling them out. It's also a shame that you can't add any more paper trays, but you can expand the included 64MB of memory to 320MB.

We were similarly unimpressed with the HP 2605dtn's LCD menu. There's no backlight, the LCD is positioned high on the printer so that it's hard to read if you're sitting down, and the menu navigation is confusing. There are four navigation buttons: left and right arrows for scrolling through submenu options, a check button for drilling down into the menu, and a salmon-colored button that cancels print jobs and exits the LCD menu. The problem is that the exit button quits the entire menu, rather than backing up through menu levels, so it's easy to get into the submenus but tricky to get back out. That said, through the LCD menu you can do the usual things, such as reporting on configuration or font lists and specifying which paper tray to use, and you can also access the direct-print functions for the photo card readers, which are located along the right side of the printer. Once you insert a photo card (the printer reads CompactFlash, SmartMedia, MultiMediaCard, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, xD, and SD cards), you can either transfer photos to your computer or print from the card. The direct-print options include printing an index sheet, selecting individual photos or a range of photos, and specifying what size photo to print (from wallet to full-page size). If you want to crop, resize, or do basic photo editing, you can transfer the photos to your computer and use the included HP Photosmart Premier 6 software.

The printer comes with other software: HP Marketing Assistant, which helps you create marketing and sales material; HP Solution Center, which collects and manages all your HP devices under one interface; and HP ToolboxFX, a network management program. ToolboxFX does a good job of tracking the status and configuration of HP printers on a network and also provides a number of troubleshooting, how-to, and demo videos to help you use the printer. What's missing is an account tracking feature, for categorizing print jobs by project. We think that would be useful, given that this color laser will probably show up in small offices and workgroups that track all their work for billing purposes (for example, designers, attorneys, graphics pros).

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