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 - Worth it - Ships with full tanks of toner (vs 1600)I have had this for over a year, and am very fairly with it. I have yet to buy any toner/ink for it, and would have spent perhaps $100 on inkjet cartridges with my old printer. Note that this printer comes with FULL tanks of toner. When I was comparing it with the HP 1600n, I found that the 1600 came with HALF-FULL tanks of toner, so the 2600 gives you the equivalent of 2 more tanks of toner, so it was clearly worth it to go with the 2600n. It also came with an Ethernet port, which allowed me to put the printer anywhere in my house. One downside is that the original black cartridge (still going) makes makes a faint line across every page :( so I am almost tempted to replace it. Rating: - HP 2605dn vs HP 2600n - Features vs Toner ConsumptionWhen it comes to purchasing a printer, I look for three things: reliability, features and toner consumption. I have had both 2605dn and 2600n for a year now and I can say that when it comes down to features and memory, the 2605dn comes out shining, but in toner consumption, the 2600n is the king. Both printers have Toner Limit Override, which allows you to keep printing after the cartridge reaches its "limit" giving you hundreds of extra prints. But only the 2600n has the option of printing color in 600dpi and true black without using some color in the prints. The 2605dn prints color only in 2400dpi and always uses a bit of color on its black prints even for you set it for 600dpi (600dpi applies only for black prints in the 2605n). I can honestly tell you that the difference in toner consumption is INSANE. I can print FOUR TIMES more color prints with the 2600n than with the 2605dn, and you cannot tell the deference in quality between the two. Yes the 2605dn is faster, has more memory, can print both sides of the paper automatically and handle heavy paper better, but for me toner consumption is too much of a deference to not notice it. Oh, and my 2605dn burned down on its first birthday. Here are some more details if you are interested: 2605dn - Pros: Fast, excellent quality. The automatic two-side printing feature is awesome and saves you a lot of time. Can print on transparencies, and cardboard paper. Easy to load toners. Can upgrade memory. It is HP Solution Center compatible, which gives you a run down on how many prints are left, etc. without the need of accessing the internet. Cons - Costs $200 more that its 2600n sister. No low quality color printing option available. Black prints will always use color. When printing pictures this printer will burn even the HP Photo Color Laser quality papers, believe me, it's a mess. 2600n - Pros - Cheaper than the 2605dn. Excellent quality. Fast and reliable. Over the top toner consumption when using the low quality color option, which in fact prints as good as the higher quality option. This option has given me over two thousand more prints per cartridge which is incredible. Can also print on transparencies and cardboard. Just be sure to set the printer correctly or it will smudge. It can print both sides of the paper manually. Cons - A bit slower than its sister and less memory. After using the automatic two-side printing feature this printer seems outdated. It's not HP Solution Center compatible, so you get no nice software with it. Will also burn photo quality paper even if it is made from HP. Bottom line - The features on 2605dn may be cool but when it comes to saving 75% more toner on the 2600n, I go with the underdog. Too bad the 2605dn does not have the option to print low res in color. Both are bad for photo printing. Well there it is; the table is set and you as the customer must make your move. Rating:  - Nice, but sssslllllooooowwwwwwwupdate: After owning the printer for several months, I'm happy to report that toner usage is nowhere near as bad as I had initially feared. I've removed those comments. Make sure you find the "black only" option for printing grays. I would update the rating to a four, but Amazon won't let me change it. ------------------------------------------------ First, the good news. The HP 2600n works well. Setup over the network was simple and it produces nice looking documents. But, there's not so nice news. First of all, it's slow. Really really slow, slowest laser printer I've ever owned. Second, it has problems with handling stiff cardstock. It appears to bump the paper against some internal mechanism so that a horizontal line of text will appear smeared. Not every card, but about half of them. Overall, pretty happy. Especially since I caught it during a 50% off sale. Rating:  - good value for the priceThis is probably the cheapest color laser jet you can find. and it does its job well! Rating: - Wake up inkjet users!For the past few years inkjet users have been paying dearly for color printing capability. Two or three years ago a color laserjet printer that uses dry toner was very expensive (commonly $1000). Then prices on these machines began to crash. Other manufacturers were first to market with less expensive printers. When HP, which always produces best of class hardware entered the fray with this beauty it was time to move. It has commonly been available for about $250-$300. While the full retail price of 4 dry toner cartridges is about $300, the cost per print is less than 3 cents. A new machine comes with a full set of cartridges (so the machine is actually free!). Inkjet cartridges are very expensive by comparison, about 12-13 cents per print (thousands of dollars per gallon). If you go on vacation for a few weeks you are at risk of having liquid inks dry out in feed lines. I've never been able to keep an inkjet working for more than 2 years. I retired a HP laserjet that was still functioning well after a decade opting for a faster machine. The only downside is that this is a fairly large machine better suited to an office than home environment (depending on the size of our home, I guess).
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