High time for high-resolution - 10 600 dpi laser printers are evaluated - includes related summary article - Hardware Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, Oct, 1994 by Stephen W. Plain

SO YOU THOUGHT YOUR 300 DPI LASER PRINTER WAS the ultimate choice for getting high-quality output on your desktop? Then you haven't looked at the output from 600 dpi laser printers.

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These printers have been around for a while, but never in such force and never at such low prices. For a street price as low as $650, you can get 600 dpi (or 600 dpi--class) resolution, and that translates into dramatic improvements in such graphic images as scanned photographs, as well as line art and, in particular, small-point text.

Here's why. Doubling the resolution from 300 by 300 dpi to 600 by 600 dpi more than doubles the quality. The increase in both the horizontal and vertical resolutions produces a roughly fourfold improvement in sharpness, since each dot on the page is replaced by four. There are nine printers in this review that take this approach. But the Okidata OL410e--the least expensive unit we saw--helps keep costs down by using a 1,200 dpi vertical resolution to provide 600 dpi-like images, rather than implementing a true 600 dpi print engine.

Qualitative improvements aren't limited to a 600 dpi resolution, however. All but the Canon LBP-860 and TI microLaser Pro 600 PS23 provide resolution enhancement technologies that smooth text. But such techniques are generally most beneficial at 300 dpi, simply because there's more room for improvement. You'll also find that some of these printers--the IBM LaserPrinter 4039 12R plus and the pair from HP, for example--offer 100 shades or more of gray, so scanned photos reproduce superbly.

The Contenders For this review, we asked manufacturers to send us their 600 dpi-class printers that sell for under $2,000 on the street. All of the printers support versions of PCL (Printer Control Language)--usually PCL5 or PCL5e. This language tells LaserJet-compatible printers where to place text and graphics on the paper or whether to print text as italic or bold, for example. We allowed companies to include any options, such as the Post-Script language for specifying how documents look, as long as the price of the configuration remained in the same range. The products we chose support 600 dpi-class output in either PCL or Post-Script modes, or both.

And this is just the start of a flood of affordable, if not downright cheap, 600 dpi units. As we went to press, for example, Lexmark (whose 600 dpi Win-Writer 600 received our Best Buy award in "Laser Printers Do Windows"; May, page 80) began shipping its $899 5-ppm ValueWriter 600. In addition, Digital Equipment Corp.'s $1,599, 8-ppm DEClaser 5100 and LaserMaster's 1000 dpi, $1,095 WinPrinter 1000 were on store shelves.

We tested our review printers for both speed and the quality of their output at 600 dpi; for the printers that did not support 600 dpi using PCL, we stepped down to 300 dpi. Our tests included printing such things as word processing documents that were rich in TrueType fonts and scanned photographs that stressed the printers' abilities to produce high-quality grayscale images.

Memory and More Since 600 dpi printers handle four times as many dots as 300 dpi models, and therefore require more memory to store the data for a page (particularly for a complicated graphic or heavily formatted text page), printers sometimes come equipped with more than a basic 1MB or 2MB. Usually, that's most appropriate if PostScript is included (not surprisingly, the reviewed printers that shipped with 6MB or 7MB did come with PostScript). Memory technology that lets you produce complex graphics with even a mere 2MB of RAM is a technique that manufacturers such as Canon, Brother, Genicom, and HP have implemented on their models (with varying success). If you run into problems, remember that any file that is too big to make it out at 600 dpi will probably be printable if you drop back to 300 dpi--and faster, too.

Most of these printers provide flexible paper handling and control panel features that make them easy to use. Combined with high-resolution output and tempting price tages, these desktop lasers are the cream of the crop.

Apple LaserWriter Select 360

Rating:***

WIN / DOS / MAC

With parallel, serial, and LocalTalk interfaces standard, the Apple LaserWriter Select 360 conveniently hooks up to multiple computers for a reasonable price--about $1,450 on the street. This 10-ppm printer produces great PostScript level 2 output, but since it does not provide PCL5e emulation, you're limited to 300 dpi in that mode. Although text and graphics are quite attractive at 300 dpi, they can't compare to the printer's crisp 600 dpi PostScript output.

The Select 360 comes with a 250-page input tray, as well as a 50-sheet, flip-down multipurpose tray that is useful for envelopes and letterhead. It's as smart looking as other Apple printers and, like them, lacks a control panel. That's fine if you don't mind using a software utility for all your settings.

The printer zipped through PostScript text documents, though it lagged behind in PCL text tests and had somewhat disappointing speeds in outputting PostScript graphics. But overall, if you print more PostScript documents than anything else, you'll be pleased.