HP Color LaserJet CM2320nf Printer

SMBs in search of a color laser printer that will make handouts look like they came from an expensive printer will find a match with the HP Color LaserJet CM2320nf all-in-one printer. It's huge and heavy, and it can be quite slow in printing large files; but the color output is extraordinary enough to help you overlook most of its shortcomings.

What this printer does well, it does extraordinarily well; and that is to make color pages look phenomenal. Even on plain paper, colors looked amazingly rich and deep; and when I compared the output with what I had just printed from a (fairly expensive) inkjet printer, they weren't even in the same ballpark.

It's a laser printer, so black fonts should be sharp and crisp, and this printer did not disappoint. Faxing, scanning, and scanning to e-mail are standard features on multifunction printers and again, there is little here to disappoint, except that I gave up on trying to make the Scan to Email feature (which ostensibly sends an e-mail directly from the printer) work, since the configuration was difficult for my one-person help desk (me).

Is it fast? Well, that depends on what you're printing. It took nearly three minutes to print seven pages of a large (14 MB) PDF, with first page out in about 22 seconds. Cutting the document size in half didn't change the print speed at all. A three-page color PowerPoint presentation took 54 seconds with the first page out in about 25 seconds; while the first page of a 10-page Excel file came out in 19 seconds, with the whole job taking only 45 seconds. When file sizes are small and graphics at a minimum, this printer really picks up steam as it goes along, with pages flying out. For large documents chock full of graphics, however, expect it to take longer. Much longer.

This printer seems more fitted to small offices where people are sharing a printer and have some IT support, as it's quite large and can easily overwhelm a home office (plus, it needs two people to pick it up). You'll need a good deal of free space to use it. On the other hand, except for the e-mail feature it was quick and easy to set up and get started; HP's handy video set-up guide ensured that no steps were missed.