HP's Color LaserJet 1600 is based on the 2600n, which we first reviewed in What's New, Shopper August 2005. Both printers are single-pass colour lasers with a maximum print speed of eight pages per minute (ppm) in mono or colour, but the 1600 doesn't have the 2600n's network port. Otherwise, the printers look identical and both take the same consumables.
The Color LaserJet 1600 is one of the most affordable colour laser printers. Its price is particularly competitive for a single-pass printer, in which all four colours are placed on the page in a single operation rather than via four separate passes. Unusually, there's not much of a difference in price between the 1600 and the network-capable 2600n, which costs only around £20 more.
Like the 2600n, the Color LaserJet 1600 is easy to set up and install. It uses just four consumables, which arrive already installed in the printer. You need only pull off a few bits of packing tape and clip on a couple of plastic parts before it's ready to print. HP's setup program offers no options and completes quickly. Unlike most other HP printers, it installs no additional software.
In our first colour test prints, we noticed that individual colours weren't perfectly aligned. This was most visible at the edge of large red text characters in our Normal test, where black dots overlapped one edge. We used the comprehensive on-printer menu to run an automatic calibration routine. This took a couple of minutes, but it solved the problem.
This glitch aside, print quality from the 1600 was high. Black text printed with crisp outlines, while curved characters looked smooth and step-free to the naked eye. Graphics printed with accurate colours, although unusually for a colour laser we noticed some subtle horizontal banding in areas of solid colour.
Photographs were a little less impressive, with colours in some seeming too light. The 1600 struggled to reproduce a smooth gradient of shades in the blue sky of our barn test print. Epson's AcuLaser C1100 prints significantly better graphics, but the 1600's output is by no means poor.
In theory, a single-pass printer such as the Color LaserJet 1600 can print mono or colour pages at its maximum speed. In the case of the 1600, though, that's only 8ppm. In mono, it's one of the slowest laser printers we've ever tested, but it proved slightly quicker than the 2600n. In colour, the 1600 outpaced the 2600n further, managing nearly one extra page per minute in our Normal test.
HP's Color LaserJet 1600 is one of the cheapest colour laser printers you can buy. It's a slow text printer, but it's faster than most of its competitors when printing in colour. If you won't often print long text documents, its compact size and simple consumables make it a good choice for the home.
Single-pass colour laser printer, 600x600dpi resolution, 8ppm mono/colour maximum speed, USB Hi-Speed interfaceAuthor: Simon Handby
HP Color LaserJet 1600