Decent Personal Printer but not for high volume work

The HP 3600n is a reasonably good personal color laser printer although the cartridges are quite expensive and printing large files can at times be problematic.

I leave the printer off when not in use (to conserve energy), the printer takes about 30 seconds to a minute to warm-up before the first page may be printed. Once ready to print the HP 3600 is rated at approximately 17 pages per minute (color and b&w), this rating seems accurate for basic documents and pages that are not too graphically intensive. However, I print 60 and 70 page power point presentations and these often can take more than 15 seconds per page. Another issue I have noticed is when printing very large files the buffer overflows and the printer errors out before the printing job is complete. I frequently need to resent the printer, empty the print que on my pc and reprint the missing pages. NOT GOOD.

Print quality is where I think this printer really shines. Black and grey tones are deep and rich; color is vibrant with a raised texture. I strongly recommend using a high quality paper with a glossy finish for presentations. This printer does fairly well on card stock however; I noticed roller marks on all my holiday cards. I think this speaks to the quality of the internal components. HP seems to be using cheap components these days and when changing the cartridges (did I mention how expensive they are?) you have to be very careful not to break off the clips of the rollers holders.

Graphics are sharp and line detail seems spot on and printing the first page is somewhat noisy, however, once the printer is operating is quiets down. I also don’t understand why HP chose to only have a 350 sheet paper tray. It appears with a little bit of an engineering effort they could have easily fit the other 150 sheets underneath to accommodate an even 500. Well reloading the paper is easy enough.

The only other oddity I don’t care for is the way it handles envelopes. I am not sure at this point if this is a heat issue or a pressure issue, but when envelopes are ran though the printer they automatically seal. I have had several other laser printers over the year and never has this problem, but I had to reopen most of the holiday card envelopes and many of the ripped. When I place the contents inside the envelope (to let the printer seal it), the printer makes creases in the envelope and it does not look clean.

Finally, have I mentioned that the cartridges are expensive? I think our company pays upwards of $130.00 per cartridge. The printer takes 1 black, 1 magenta, 1 cyan and 1 yellow cartridge. They do last though, my back cartridge has lasted for about 5000 sheets of high quality graphic the color cartridges are good for at least that many as well.

All in all this is a good printer, but I don’t think I would buy one for myself. Since my company provided it, I will keep it. However, I think there are several printers out there with smaller footprints, quieter operation and less expensive cartridges