HP Laserjet 3380

The $699 HP LaserJet 3380 is a large, full-featured multifunction printer with an automatic document feeder. Scan, copy, and fax buttons sit on the console, along with speed-dial and number pads.

As a printer, the LaserJet 3380 is fairly quick. It churned out text at 16.4 ppm and grayscale graphics at 3.1 ppm--both rates faster than our test group's average. Its straight, clean text matched most of the other lasers' output in excellence, and it handled narrow parallel lines well in our line art test. Grayscale graphics weren't as impressive, however, looking dark and overly contrasted with a grainy texture. Copy speeds were somewhat slow at 4.7 ppm, and copies appeared dark enough to obscure much detail.

The LaserJet 3380 earned a Very Good score for its color scan quality, but it was slow in our tests. It took 40 seconds to scan a 4-by-5-inch photograph at 100 dpi, slower than most other MFPs we tested--even the inkjet models. However, the scanner driver has some handy controls for adjusting scans, allowing you to resize, lighten and darken, sharpen, adjust color, invert colors, and create a mirror image. You can save scans to a folder or send to an e-mail address.

The unit has a full-featured fax, with features such as broadcasting, polling, setting up billing codes, and printing activity logs. It comes with a separate and extensive manual dedicated just to faxing.

You can't add any paper trays on top of the standard 250-sheet input tray (an option even the $399 Dell 1600n offers), but you can upgrade the memory from the standard 32MB to 96MB. Also, of all the laser MFPs we tested, only the LaserJet 3380 excludes an ethernet port; you have to buy HP's optional JetDirect 175X external print server, which costs $160. We tested the LaserJet 3380 over our network using this accessory.

Upshot: The HP LaserJet 3380 makes high-quality scans and offers a lot of features, though it was slow at scanning, copying, and printing graphics.

Lisa Cekan