TCPglobal - news, views and issues on total cost of printing

Issue #0517/1 - It might seem like a step backwards and it is certainly a step downwards, so is it sidestepping the issue or does it represent a massive leap forwards for small users? Hewlett-Packard’s new Colour LaserJet 2600n certainly pushes the boundaries of single-pass colour down into 4-pass territory.

New from Hewlett-Packard is a single-pass colour laser printer that breaks the mould where single-pass printers are concerned.

Following the vertical in-line configuration first seen in the Colour LaserJet 4600, the Colour LaserJet 2600n has a very small footprint and is a compact machine with exceptional ease of access and ease of use.

Hewlett-Packard
LaserJet 2600n

As indicated, the Colour LaserJet 2600n is a remarkable printer, targeted at small companies, small offices and home offices where colour is required in business documentation or for production of in-house marketing materials.

Perhaps the three features that best characterise its versatility and ease of use are: the low number of consumables, with amazing accessibility; integrated network interface as standard; and the advanced driver functions.

As with the CLJ 4600, the front flap of the printer opens outwards to reveal the paper transport belt and the four toner cartridges. Because the belt is for paper transportation only, it is a long-life unit that will last the entire life of the printer. Each of the toner cartridges, with integral imaging drum, lifts straight out and can be replaced in a matter of seconds. There are no other items that need replacing!
Hewlett-Packard is increasingly building integrated network interfaces into even its low end laser products. The CLJ 2600n is no exception – meaning that the device is ready to be shared as soon as it is unpacked and installed. There is no separate interface to be installed or attached. A USB 2.0 interface is also provided for individual users.
Not all printers offer manual duplex capability incorporated within the driver and certainly not all are easy or intuitive to use. Also, not all have the capability of handling n-up printing (printing two or more page images per page). These two features are required together to allow the user to produce folded booklets – a very useful product for many users, especially where marketing or training materials are concerned. Hewlett-Packard’s Colour LaserJet 2600n does offer this functionality.

While not being equipped with extensive paper input capabilities, 250 sheets as standard, the CLJ 2600n has adequate capacity for its target low-volume environment. An additional 250-sheet tray can be added to boost the capacity to 500 sheets and to permit two media types to be loaded concurrently.

Physically, the Colour LaserJet 2600n is compact and light, weighing in at 18.4kg – a fraction lighter than the magicolor 2400w (at 20kg), 47% lighter than most of the other printers in the group and 43% light than Hewlett-Packard’s own CLJ 2550 (32.5kg)

Together with its compact size and light weight, Hewlett-Packard has also created a colour printer that is barely audible in a typical office environment. Measuring 47dB(A), noise levels from the CLJ 2600n are significantly lower than the 54-55dB(A) of typical single-pass machines, 69.5dB(A) of the Dell 5100cn and the 53-63dB(A) of typical 4-pass machines.

As the decibel scale is a logarithmic scale, for every 6 decibels increase in the sound pressure, the volume, or amplitude, of the sound doubles. So, the CLJ 2600n creates less than half the noise of most other printers. Apparently, the Dell 5100cn is almost 16 times noisier than the CLJ 2600! In fact, the Dell is twice as noisy in standby mode as the CLJ 2600n is when printing!

Hewlett-Packard
LaserJet 2600n

Cost dynamics for this printer are interesting. In the comparison shown in the accompanying table and charts, we have taken single-pass printers that cost up to about three times the £251 that the CLJ 2600n costs to purchase.

This selection has been made because a potential customer considering the CLJ 2600n is unlikely to consider buying a printer that has a price tag that is nearly five times higher. However, in keeping with the underlying and enduring message of TCPglobal, buyers should be wary of making decisions purely on this basis. The Kyocera Mita C5020N (not included in the comparison) may have a price tag of £1,154 but, for a user printing a total of 180,000 pages over three years (5,000 page per month), each page will only cost the owner 2.12 pence against the 4.24 pence of the CLJ 2600.

This means that the owner will ultimately spend double by buying a cheap printer - £7,626 against £3,815!

Taking this point further, Hewlett-Packard claims, “First in-line Colour LaserJet on the market at this price point: the HP Colour LaserJet 2600n is ahead of the market in offering very low cost-per-page colour printing.”

Note that for this level of machine, the mixed mono/colour CPP over three years shown in the accompanying table is calculated on the basis of 5,000 pages per month using maximum capacity toners and takes into account any standard, or starter, toner cartridges shipped with the printer and includes the purchase price.

Purchase Price

Long-Term CPP

Certainly this is true of the purchase price – coming in at 38% lower than its nearest competitor, the 12/20ppm Oki C3100, which is the only device in the group that is not network-ready! The price of the CLJ 2600n is 47% lower than (nearly half) the price of the nearest network-ready printer, Dell’s 5100cn.

One point to note though – the CLJ 2600n prints at 8ppm in both mono and colour while the Dell 5100cn prints at 25ppm in colour and 35ppm in mono!

Note that for this level of machine, the mixed mono/colour CPP over three years shown in the accompanying table is calculated on the basis of 2,500 pages per month using maximum capacity toners and takes into account any standard, or starter, toner cartridges shipped with the printer and includes the purchase price.

Purchase Price

Long-Term CPP

However, where operating costs are concerned, the situation is rather different and the claim doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Nominal mono Cost Per Page for the Colour LaserJet 2600n is the highest in the group by a minimum of 12% (again in relation to Oki’s C3100), and the colour CPP is almost the highest. In this instance, the nominal colour CPP of the Oki is nearly 5% higher than the CLJ2600n but these two machines stand out significantly from the crowd. The CLJ2600n, at 9.37 pence, is 25% higher than the next nearest competitor, Konica Minolta’s magicolor 5430DL.

So, unless the final prices for the consumables on Hewlett-Packard’s Colour LaserJet 2600n are modified before the machine is available at the beginning of July, the claim to be “ahead of the market” is wide of the mark.

Unfortunately, one cannot even look at the overall, long-term, CPP for assurance that the low purchase cost will make the difference over the life of the printer because, again, the CLJ 2600n has the highest long-term CPP in the group – by 2%, again with the Oki C3100 as the closest competitor. The nearest network-ready device (Konica Minolta magicolor 5430DL) has a long-term CPP that is 15% lower than the CLJ 2600.

Perhaps then, we should consider the Colour LaserJet 2600n simply as an ultra low-end colour laser printer rather than specifically as a single-pass printer and compare it with other low cost, ultra low-end printers.

Here we’ve selected the usual range of 4-pass machines, in their base versions, with the CLJ 2600n, and used the usual 2,500 page per month figure for the long-term CPP calculation (as opposed to 5,000 pages per month as used for the single-pass machines).

As part of this grouping, the CLJ 2600n sits comfortably in the middle on purchase price with a specification that would attract a number of potential customers. Network ready and 8ppm colour is justification enough for a price tag higher than the model from Canon, and particularly the C510 from Lexmark, but when we have lower cost models from Dell that are also network-ready, the positioning is not quite as comfortable.

This is true particularly when the Cost of Printing is brought into the equation. Here Hewlett-Packard’s Colour LaserJet 2600n is the most expensive of the group by at least 6% (Xerox Phaser 6100BD) and by as much as 85% (Dell 3100cn).

Clearly, Dell’s intention is to undercut anything and everything in sight as a means of purchasing market share and customers must take into account the relative advantages or disadvantages of selecting devices for purchase that are aggressively positioned in this way.

Hewlett-Packard’s reputation, like its market share, is second to none in the printer market. Customers must decide whether there is a risk associated with buying the cheapest from a company that has been producing printers for only 10% of the time that Hewlett-Packard has dominated the laser printer category.

Single-pass machines are, generally, a little more expensive to run in the long-term than their 4-pass competitors (the exception to the rule being the Dell 5100cn). But, if the slightly faster colour print speed is desirable in the environment in question, perhaps it is a small price to pay – especially for tripling the colour print speed (4ppm colour to Oki’s 12ppm colour where 20ppm is available in mono mode).

Not so clear is the justification for buying the Hewlett-Packard Colour LaserJet 2600, where colour print speed is doubled but mono print speed is actually cut by two-thirds when compared with the company’s 4-pass printers.

If the comment from Hewlett-Packard (see TCPglobal Issue #0516 – "… and HP makes three"), that users are primarily concerned about high mono print speed, is true, then the potential market for this new printer may be restricted.

~End~

This entry was posted on Friday, May 20th, 2005 at 12:02 am and is filed under Hardware, New Products, News, Total Cost of Printing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.