HP Business Inkjet 2250TN

WHAT'S HOT: HP promotes the 2250TN as an alternative for workgroups that don't want or can't afford a color laser. That claim exaggerates the 2250TN's capabilities, but the printer does deliver better-looking graphics output than do the low-cost color laser printers it competes against. It prints color with subtle, smooth shading and transitions, and with perfect detail. Colors at the default settings look somewhat cool and muted. The cool tones carry over to gray-scale graphics with a slightly blue-green cast; images show excellent detail with smooth shading and transitions. It also prints clean black text, though the results are not as crisp as laser-printer text. The 2250TN has an immense paper capacity for an ink jet--two 250-sheet trays--and it can print on a wider variety of media than color laser printers can, including glossy photo material, iron-on transfers, greeting cards, and smaller or odd-shaped media. Costs for consumables run a low 2.7 cents per black page and 8 cents per page of color.

WHAT'S NOT: The $999 price tag includes an Ethernet port, but if you're really going to drop that kind of money for a network connection, you can find network color lasers these days for only a few hundred more. And the 2250N's printing speeds of 4.9 pages per minute on text and 1.6 ppm on graphics is fast for an ink jet but not for a laser printer.

WHAT ELSE: HP specifies the capacity for the 2250TN's ink cartridges at 1750 pages, which is several times the capacity of cartridges found in other ink jet printers. That should cut down on the need to frequently replace consumables and on jobs getting stuck in limbo when the ink runs out. Like a laser printer, the 2250TN has a control panel with an LCD and buttons for navigating setup menus. It also supports remote administration through a Web browser interface.

BEST USE: The 2250TN could find a place in offices that occasionally need top-quality color graphics and already have a monochrome laser printer.

SUMMARY

HP Business Inkjet 2250TN Rated 11.0 ppm monochrome/2.5 ppm color, 1200-by-600-dpi maximum resolution, 500 sheets input, 150 sheets output. $999 800/552-8500 www.hp.com