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

Brother HL-10h Genicom 7610

Rating: * 1/2

WIN / DOS

The Brother HL-10h and the Genicom 7610 are essentially the same 10-ppm printer; the main differences lie in their list prices ($1,695 versus $1,599, respectively) and some options. Those differences narrow even further--on the street both products sell for about $1,300. Despite sharing some nice aesthetic features, both units also suffer from software driver problems.

The PCL5e emulation seems to work at 300 dpi, though not always with the best results. But move up to 600 dpi in PCL mode, and we often wound up with overrun errors that kept us from printing some graphic images whole. The printers also host a Brother-designed, PostScript-compatible interpreter, called BR-Script. Neither printer shipped with a PostScript driver in the box, however. We tried a 300 dpi Apple Laser-Writer II NTX driver, a standard PostScript implementation, and both printers failed to work properly with it on our graphics tests. To correct this, the companies directed us to drivers downloadable from bulletin boards. We were able to print out PostScript graphics with these, but the 300 dpi output was unimpressive and at 600 dpi images weren't any better than those we got at 300 dpi.

The units handled 600 dpi PCL text and graphics files at a good clip, but PostScript text files meandered out.

The printers have a smartly designed exterior. The control panels can be tilted so that the single-line LCD display is visible at different heights. The entire top of the printers open backward to the extreme, giving you access to clear paper jams and replace the toner cartridge. Both printers ship with one PCMCIA slot (but neither company directly sells options for it) and one slot for font cartridges.

With the unpredictable 600 dpi behavior and PostScript problems we had, these two printers are hard to recommend.

Canon LBP-860

Rating: *** 1/2

WIN / DOS

The Canon LBP-860 has all the bases covered: It offers high-quality construction, an excellent control panel, generous paper handling, fast performance, and some of the best output we saw.

You can pick up this 8-ppm model for about $1,300 (street), which includes 2MB of RAM, parallel and serial interfaces, PCL5e for true 600 dpi output, and a robust design that is suitable for intensive printing tasks. You can further equip it with the Adobe PostScript level 2 option that just began shipping as we went to press.

Like the HP LaserJet 4Plus, the LBP-860 takes up a bit of real estate, but it's space well spent. A flip-up panel reveals the easily removable toner cartridge, and the 250-page input tray sports a mechanical gauge indicating how much paper is left. Flip down the multipurpose input tray for quick access to additional stock, such as envelopes. A bright green LED control panel readout delivers useful descriptive messages, such as the name of the program a job is being printed from.

The output was great all around, though the two HPs had a slight edge in producing smooth grayscale gradations. A test photographic image was nearly flawless, at precisely the right brightness and contrast using default settings. The Canon LBP-860 won't let you down.