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Review:HP Color LaserJet CP1518ni

By kshitij ⋅ July 3, 2008 ⋅  Send this to a friend.. ⋅  Print this article. ⋅ Post a comment ⋅ Add to Technorati Favorites

HP’s Color LaserJet CP1518ni is a cut-rate color laser printer with a polite design. Compared with about equally priced printers as the Brother HL-4040CN and the Dell Color Laser 1320c, however, it’s a lot slower and has limited paper handling.
The Color LaserJet CP1518ni turn out plain text pages at a paltry 11.2 pages per minute and graphics pages at 2.0 ppm or slower. At least the results were pleasing having black and crisp text look. Though a little dark, photos looked reasonably natural. Grayscale images were free of the green or pink overtones that we often see. ImageREt 3600 technology, HP’s own image enhancement technology might have helped here: Among other behavior, it also manipulates the size and position of the dot within the usual resolution grid, to deliver smoother images having more natural look.
The toner cartridges are having low-capacity and high-priced. The printer comes with starter supplies of each color good for 750 pages of output. A 2200-page replacement black cartridge costs $70 (which works out to 3.2 cents per page), while each 1400-page color cartridge costs $65 (the equivalent of 4.6 cents per page).
In addition being slow, the printer has design and configuration shortcomings. The 150-sheet capacity of its main paper tray is below average. When extended to accommodate legal paper, the tray sticks out the front of the printer; technically, this occupies the same amount of space as the more common rear extension, but it looks out of the ordinary. Duplex (two-sided) printing is not available. The front control panel (with a two-line, monochrome LCD) is unintuitive: There’s no clear indication that you must use the ‘OK’ button to summon the menus. Access doors and other parts feel flimsy or move clumsily. On the brighter side, the Color LaserJet CP1518ni comes with five photo card slots on the front and has an easily accessible side door for accepting a RAM upgrades (maximum 352MB).
For individual users or a small office, the Color LaserJet CP1518ni’s minimal paper handling and toner supplies are probably satisfactory. One must have extreme patience to put up with the slow engine, especially when similarly priced models are much faster and have better features.

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