subject: Hp Laserjet 4600dhn/4600dn/4600dtn/4600n Color Laser Office Printer [print this page] While the HP LaserJet 4600 series brags to be four times faster than its predecessor, it still ranks only moderately on the level of speed for a color printer in its category. While it was in fact a great improvement over the previous HP LaserJet 4550, advancements in recent color laser printing technology are causing units such as the 4600, and its many variants, to age fast.
HP released the HP LaserJet 4550 as a pioneer in the affordable color laser printing market and, though it was priced under a thousand dollars, it offered only a sluggish 4 page per minute print speed on letter sized paper. The HP LaserJet 4600 and its siblings can print as fast as 17 pages per minute, which is a decent enough rate for color printing, but black and white printing offers no speed increase whatsoever, making monochrome print times slow by todays standards.
One very welcome improvement over the HP LaserJet 4550 is the increase in paper storage size from 250 sheets to 500 sheets in the main tray. The HP LaserJet 4600 also includes a fold out, 100 sheet priority feed slot for multiple media types and a straight through paper path.
When utilizing a straight through path, much thicker media types become compatible with the unit, including card stock, transparencies, and envelopes. Without any bending or folding whatsoever, custom, full color postage and heavy brochures run no risk of unnecessary creasing or warping. Though, when an automatic duplexor is added to the hardware, or when using the models which includes one in box, thick media types must run through the gauntlet of the machine, or be overturned by hand for a manual duplex.
When utilizing the duplex functions of the HP LaserJet 4600d models, paper usage can be cut down considerably, down to nearly half. Thanks to the power of full color laser printing, a world of opportunity regarding two sided color brochures and presentations opens up. Custom flyers and advertisements will stand out above the rest with high resolution color.
Unfortunately, the maximum resolution of the HP LaserJet 4600 tops out at only 600 x 600 dots per inch. This is disappointing due to the fact that it will strictly limit the devices usefulness in printing imagery. Though color charts and graphs should produce without incident, pictures are not really an option with this printer.
Expandability options include an additional 500 sheet tray for a 1,100 sheet total paper capacity, and memory can be upgraded as well up to 416 MBs total by way of 4 160 pin DIMM slots and a single 100 pin DIMM slot. The device comes standard with a decent 96 MBs of random access memory, which should prove to be plenty for printing text and simple charts, but slowdown may result when complex printing tasks such as mixed text and imagery come into play, in which case a memory upgrade may be in order. All in all, the HP LaserJet 4600 series is far from obsolete, but is no longer at the top of its class.
