Best Overall: Color Laser Printers

Performance is important for these fastest of color printers, but not as important as print quality, a past concern with color lasers. That's why we gave print quality a 40 percent weighting in our overall rating score, followed by print speed at 26 percent. The print quality scores ranged only from good to very good, a small range that masked some strong quality differences within specific tests, particularly those involving color. Getting one of these printers to produce sharp text, good line detail, photographic halftones, vibrant color bars, and lifelike color images is beyond current capabilities. Every one of these printers had strong and weak scores in the print quality tests.

Tektronix's 1200-dpi Phaser 550 laser, for example, has some of the best scores in the monochrome tests and did well with the CorelDraw color graphic. However, it faired poorly when performing other color tests. The solid-ink Phaser 350 has the highest overall print quality score, but it did poorly on the line tests. The Phaser 350's other monochrome scores are only average, but its color scores are top-notch, thanks to the solid, vibrant colors it prints.

Best Overall

IBM's Network Color Printer has strong scores where it matters most: print quality and performance. As our Best Overall printer, its weak points are price (the highest at $9778) and feature set. The IBM laser's high print quality score came from top ratings on the line, text, and subjectively judged color-image pages. Like the Lexmark Optra C Pro, the IBM laser uses contone color, and color images are made up of finely variegated vertical lines (200 lines per inch) visible only with a loupe. Only the Optra C Pro was faster in the performance tests.

Th e Network Color Printer uses the same easy-to-set-up Canon engine found in the Apple and Lexmark printers, and that strengthened its usability score. The voluminous but poorly organized IBM manuals and crude setup software for NetWare detracted from its usability, however.

IBM's secret weapon may be the Electronics for Imaging (EFI) XJE controller card that provides its text resolution and color capabilities. The easy-to-access card slides out of the printer after you loosen two thumbscrews, revealing a hard drive, a 100-MHz Mips R4600/4700 processor (under a heat sink), and three EFI Fiery ASICs. The latter off-load management functions (e.g., drive, memory, and network) from the processor so it can concentrate on raster image processing. The card is essentially a downsized version of the controllers used in EFI's XJ color servers (used with color copiers). One performance function the controller provides (that we did not test) is RIP while print (i.e., while printing the current page, the board can st art image processing on the next page).

The other two Canon-based color lasers came in second and third in the overall ratings: first the Lexmark and then the Apple. Lexmark's Optra C Pro had the fastest printing speeds by far of any of the tested printers, which certainly cannot be explained by its 25-MHz AMD 29030 processor. The Optra C Pro does, however, provide the 29030 with an L2 cache, unusual for a printer. Compared to the IBM and Apple printers, the Optra C Pro's print quality is a weakness, particularly in its color scores.

Like other Optra lasers, the Optra C Pro has a four-line LCD control panel with a similar button-based interface. A 100-MB hard drive is optional. The Optra C Pro is unusual in that you can vary the gloss level on the printed page (probably by adjusting melt with fuser heat). You can also select between contone (128 color levels) or two types of dithering for color images. Contone is the slowest.

Apple's Color LaserWriter 12/660PS has its relative strength in pr int quality over performance. It's also the least expensive of the Canon lasers. The Color LaserWriter has a strong text score and did well on the subjective scoring of color images. It did poorly only with the monochrome photo image. It uses a 30-MHz AMD 29030 processor.

Compared to its predecessor, the 12/600PS, Apple's new model has more RAM and improved firmware, both of which improve its performance. For the Mac, it comes with native PowerPC drivers. Like other Apple printers, the front panel is minimal. Apple includes on-site installation in the price.

Tying the Apple in overall scoring is Tektronix's Phaser 350 solid-ink printer. With its fat crayon-like ink cartridges, shape-keyed for foolproof installation, it's the simplest printer to set up and the most carefree for maintenance. It has the highest usability score. More important, the Phaser 350 has the highest print quality score, just edging out IBM's laser. Performance (with text printing) is its weak point. Text pages print at the sa me speed as color (3 to 6 pages per minute), depending on the quality level.

Best High Quality

With its high print quality score, the Tektronix Phaser 350 ties the IBM color laser in the Best High Quality category. Where the IBM laser is strong in monochrome and some color tests, the Phaser 350 is strongest with color printing, thanks to the vivid color of its solid ink, and only average with text due to its 300- by 600-dpi resolution (with 24 MB of RAM). We're also comparing the highest- (IBM) and lowest-priced (Phaser 350) printers in this review.

The Phaser 350's color pages are brilliant, but not overly so. It's a great printer for charts and graphics. We found that we could scratch off the waxy ink with a fingernail pressed hard, but we don't believe this is a problem. Like the Phaser 550, the 350 comes with Tektronix's PhaserLink Web-browser interface (see the article "Browse This Color Laser," May 1996 BYTE), which means you can configure it and check print status over a network with any Web browser.

Compared to the Phaser 550, or any color laser, the Phaser 350' s advantages are price, slightly faster color printing, and more vibrant color. It is slower with monochrome text printing and has less detail (300 dpi), and is therefore a good adjunct for adding color when you already have a monochrome network laser.

Coming in third in the High Quality category is the Apple LaserWriter 12/660PS already discussed, followed closely by the Tektronix Phaser 550, HP's Color LaserJet 5M, the QMS Magicolor CX-32, and Lexmark's Optra C Pro. As mentioned earlier, the Phaser 550 laser's 1200-dpi engine served it well in the monochrome tests, particularly with the photographic halftone image. It also did well with the CorelDraw color graphic, but not so well with other color tests.

The Phaser 550 scored strongly in features, and it even did well in usability, despite a difficult and involved installation procedure. Software setup, on the other hand, is fairly simple from a W indows-based installation program. In spite of the 14-ppm rated speed of its KME (a division of Matsushita) engine, the Phaser 550 didn't prove to be an exceptionally fast printer.

The HP Color LaserJet 5M scored well in features but about average in other categories. It did well in many of the color tests, but its 300-dpi native resolution hurt it with text and especially the monochrome photograph tests. With color images, you can make out a pinstriping effect, because HP uses a discernible 150 lines per inch with its contone mode. HP has also achieved a matte finish that it claims is desirable for business documents.