The $399 HP Color LaserJet 2600n is easy to maintain and is best suited for a small workgroup with modest demands. Lightweight at only 40.5 pounds, the printer is also compact and should squeeze into the most cramped of workspaces.

The 2600n's paper drawer holds up to 250 sheets of plain paper. For $149 you can add a second 250-sheet tray, which might be handy for printing your letterhead, but hardly turns this unit into a high-capacity workhorse. No optional duplexer is available; however, the 2600dn includes this feature.

The 2600n printed some of the sharpest-looking text we saw, albeit slowly, at 6.8 ppm. On plain paper color images looked grainy with lots of banding. Colors were oversaturated, and skin tones had an unnatural orange tint. Glossy photos looked slightly greenish, a little grainy, and had faint banding.

The four toner cartridges are the only replaceable parts, and they slide easily into individual slots behind the fold-down front door of the printer. The 2600n comes with full-capacity cartridges, though their rated capacities are modest: just 2500 pages for the black cartridge, and 2000 pages for the color cartridges. The 2600n has the highest estimated costs per page of any printer in our tested group: 2.9 cents per monochrome page and 14.9 cents per color page.

Upshot: Given the 2600n's high costs per page and lagging print speeds, consider spending $50 more for the much faster and more efficient Dell 3000cn.