HP Color Laserjet 4600 Review

If you need a color laser printer that can take care of your high volumes then the HP 4600 series could be what you need. With high speed color printing, expandable memory and input paper capacity and the HP name you are making a safe choice with this model.

The HP color laserjet 4600 is big and chunky.

With a standard input paper capacity of 600 sheets and 96mb of standard memory this printer is ready to take care of business right out of the box. Input paper capacity can be expanded to 1100 sheets while the memory can be expanded to a whopping 416 mb.

With the name HP you know your getting a well supported product and the software that is bundled is quality stuff. Web JetAdmin, HP's network printer administration utility, remains on top.

The utility is unquestionably one of the most capable printer administration programs available, as well as one of the easiest to learn and use, thanks to dynamic drop-down menus. This is important in a busy office when the last thing you want to be doing is fiddling with a printer.

Here are the specifications:

• black: up to 17 ppm
• color: up to 177 ppm
• Total Media Capacity 600 sheets expandable to 1100 sheets
• 600 dpi x 600 dpi for both black and color
• Maximum monthly volume 85,000 sheets

Performance is of course a strong point. The 4600 is impressively quick in producing 8-by-10 photos. You can expect printed speeds impressively close to the claimed 17 pages per minute.

Text and photo output quality is good to excellent. However the driver chooses to print the monochrome photos in composite black rather than true black, giving the photo a distinct pink tinge. This is not a major critisism considering that this printer is designed with office work in mind.

One thing that should be mentioned is the impressive networking options with the highly regarded HP network print servers options.

My conclusion on the HP Color LaserJet 4600?

This is a high volume design and really is for people who value high speed and reliability over high quality printing.

Don't get me wrong this printer makes great quality color documents but you must consider it in light of its true 1200 dpi compeditors.