HP Color LaserJet 2550L Review Buffalo NY

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Originally published at Internet.com

Want a Color Laser Under $1,000? Buy Two

Never mind the pro tours and celebrity showdowns on TV -- printer vendors are in a high-stakes poker game of their own, albeit one where the betting goes backward as small offices and even solo users shop for newly affordable color laser printers. "I'll see your $999 and lower you $799!" "I'll match your $799 and lower you $699!"

Now HP has lowered the stakes to break another psychological barrier: While Konica Minolta's year-old Magicolor 2300W has been available at this figure for some time, HP boasts that the Color LaserJet 2550L is the first color laser introduced at a price below half a grand -- i.e., $499. In other words, HP isn't just targeting Konica Minolta, Samsung, and company. It's targeting anyone who prints more than a couple of hundred pages a month and thought she could only afford a color inkjet.

Of course, HP won't give you the sun, moon, and stars for $499. The 2550L's advertised speeds of 20 pages per minute for black and white and 4 ppm for color are near the bottom of the color-laser class (although its 30,000-page monthly duty cycle is ample). While it has USB 2.0 and parallel interfaces, it doesn't come with an Ethernet print server; networked offices will pay an extra $100 for the model 2550LN.

And the economy model's paper capacity is way short of workgroup specifications: Instead of a photocopier-style drawer, all you get is an inkjet-style, fold-down paper tray that holds a skimpy 125 sheets, which do a half loop to exit face down atop the printer (although HP earns points for the fold-down back panel that offers a straight-through path for envelopes or special stock).

The $699 model 2550N (shown in the PR photo at left) comes with both the print server and a 250-sheet bottom tray that expands input to 375 sheets, as well as with cyan, magenta, and yellow toner cartridges good for an estimated 4,000 pages compared to its siblings' starter-kit 2,000 (all three come with a 5,000-page black cartridge). You can buy the 250-sheet tray separately for $149 and a 500-sheet third tray for $299.

Discount Dj vu

We could also quibble about HP's calling the the Color LaserJet 2550L a brand-new debut: As you might guess from its model number, the printer bears a strong resemblance to the Color LaserJet 2500 we reviewed in November 2002. But back then, the entry-level 2500L with similar specs -- USB and parallel ports, the 125-sheet input tray, and 64MB of memory -- hit a different psychological barrier at $999. Ain't progress grand?

Like its forebear, the 2550L has an 18 by 19-inch desk-space footprint and stands some 13 inches tall; like its competitors, it's movable by one person, but safer and less of a strain for two (the printer weighs just under 50 pounds). As for its footprint in your electric bill, HP says it draws 368 watts, dropping to 17 watts in standby mode.

Its rotary technology makes for some thunking and clunking noise as the toner-cartridge carousel rotates through four print passes for each color page. Subjectively, it didn't seem quite as loud as we remember the Color LaserJet 2500 and 1500 being, but you probably still wouldn't put it next to your phone.

Spin the Drum Slowly

With just blinking lights instead of an LCD menu on the control panel, setup is a matter of following directions in HP's printed guide: Tossing aside plenty of plastic bags, orange plastic plugs, and strips of tape along the way, you open the hood and insert first the imaging drum and then the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black toner cartridges, briefly closing the hood and pushing a button after each of the first three toners to bring the next slot to the top of the carousel.

When it's supply-replacement time, an approximately-5,000-page black cartridge costs $79, with ditto-4,000-page color cartridges $95 apiece. After 10,000 pages or so (technically, after 20,000 black or 5,000 color), you'll have to replace the imaging drum, priced at $165. That lets us guesstimate consumable costs of 2.4 cents per page for black and 12 cents for color, a bit high by enterprise standards but a fraction of the price of desktop inkjet printing.

HP's software driver offers the usual, helpful variety of watermark, N-up, size-to-fit, and manual duplex- or booklet-printing options. But despite the presence of a 264MHz Motorola processor and genuine PCL 6 and PostScript 3 software drivers, you won't mistake the Color LaserJet 2550L for a high-performance print-shop machine: Hooked up to our admittedly poky Windows 2000 desktop, it took just under 18 minutes to print the 55-page Adobe Acrobat manual which Lexmark's C510 finished in less than nine.

On the other hand, the new HP's time was eight minutes under that of the outwardly identical Color LaserJet 2500 from late 2002. It also printed our one-page Microsoft Word business letter with spot-color, company-logo letterhead in a competitive 35 seconds, though its time for 20 pages of black text trailed other under-$1,000 color printers (and most under-$200 monochrome ones) we've tested -- 2 minutes and 35 seconds.

Six full-page PowerPoint slides with white backgrounds printed in just under 2 minutes, although the same number of slides with dark backgrounds took a plodding 5 minutes and 45 seconds. Our 8 by 10-inch digital-camera photos appeared in an average 1 minute and 53 seconds.

Better Than Expected

But while its speed was underwhelming, we were pleasantly surprised by the 2550L's print quality. The 600 by 600 dpi engine's text was dark and sharp in big and small font sizes alike, as we expect of all laser printers, but we did a double-take at our Acrobat and PowerPoint printouts: Even using cheap copier paper, solid colors and gradients looked bright and clean, with only minimal banding -- noticeably less than most color and far less than most monochrome lasers we've seen.

And while they were predictably no match for the vividness and detail of glossy inkjet prints, digital photos were downright attractive instead of grim and grainy. Compared to its older models, HP says the 2550L takes advantage of new fuser technology for a wider gamut of brighter colors; some pictures we printed on the company's high-gloss laser paper ($37 for 200 sheets) now adorn our cubicle wall.

So where does the $499 Color LaserJet 2550L fit in among today's printer choices? Well, breaking psychological price barriers helps break psychological prejudices: We may snort at the idea of a color laser with a weenie 125-sheet input tray, but until six or eight months ago we automatically snorted at the idea of a color laser with just desktop USB and parallel instead of a network interface, and now the things are blooming like wildflowers.

The new HP isn't (and doesn't claim to be) a cost-effective choice for an office that prints thousands of color pages, but it's a truly tempting -- if not very speedy -- one for an office that prints hundreds. If anything could make inkjet printer manufacturers cut their profit-gouging cartridge prices, this is it.

Pros: * It's a color laser printer; it's $499 * Above-average color graphics as well as typically handsome text quality

Cons: * The printer's bulky; the paper tray's tiny * Slow performance