HP LaserJet Pro 1606dn Monochrome Laser Printer

Like its close cousin the HP LaserJet P2055d, this HP monochrome laser printer offers few bells and whistles except for instant-on technology and automatic duplex printing; it does, however, one-up the P2055d by offering built-in wired networking. Instant-on is as good as its word, and the printer quickly comes out of its sleep mode and starts printing. Speeds are excellent, as they should be; first-pages out took five seconds or less, with pages taking an average of two seconds each to come out.

As always with HP LaserJets, black fonts were sharp and crisp, and unlike some other laser pritners there was no paper curling when using cheap copy paper.

For small businesses and, perhaps, printer reviewers, one nice new feature from HP is "Plug and Print" technology that says goodbye to loading drivers from a CD or DVD, a process that can take a lot of time while simultaneously loading up your computer with unnecessary software. It was as good as its name; I plugged the printer in, connected via USB, and the install process began immediately. The printer was up and running in less than five minutes.

There's no paper documentation except a set-up guide; for the rest, you'll need to follow the on-screen prompts which, unfortunately, took me to some dead links on the HP site when I visited to find out more about duplex printing. I had to hunt around the HP site for a while to locate the digital users-manual.

Duplex printing worked smoothly and quickly. My first test unit had trouble pulling the page back into the printer straight; but the replacement unit worked flawlessly, so it was just bad luck. In fact I found the duplexer worked very quickly.

If monochrome laser printing is all you need, the LaserJet Pro P1606dn is a good deal; it's reasonably priced and offers some nice features. As always, though, there are a good number of laser printers at this price range, so it's worth shopping around a bit first.