Stephen Withers25 August 2008, 12:51 PM
A big, fast colour laser that's ideal for a busy office team. Just don't trust the manual.
HP's CP3505dn is an A4 colour laser printer with USB 2.0 and 10/100 Ethernet interfaces. In keeping with the flavour of the times, a duplexer is fitted as standard, although the printer is also available in models without either it or the network interface. It measures a fairly chunky 39 x 47 x 42cm (excluding paper catcher), and the styling is 'traditional business machine' rather than 'funky modern office'.
Installation would have been straightforward, but a couple of the instructions in the setup booklet did not match the reality. Fortunately, the colours of the toner cartridges are clearly marked inside the printer, so it was no big deal that the setup leaflet showed cyan and magenta transposed. Although the cartridges were pre-installed, it was necessary to remove them to release part of the packing materials. They are located behind the front flap, so changing cartridges is a quick, clean and easy process.
The other issue took a little more investigation, in that the menu structure that had to be navigated for network setup wasn't quite as shown in the manual. Not a major problem, but an unnecessary one, especially as the small two-line display is inconvenient to use at the best of times. Once setup is complete, the network settings can be controlled from a web browser, which is a much easier arrangement.
Drivers are provided for Windows 2000, XP and Vista (HP's universal driver), and Mac OS X 10.2 to 10.4 (it also worked on our 10.5 system). The printer supports PCL as well as PostScript (emulated). A Windows autostart file that didn't work even when launched manually, so that it was necessary to identify the program that had to be run in its place, hindered software setup. Again, a minor niggle but not what we've come to expect from major vendors. Once that was out of the way, we were soon up and running. The Mac installer leaves the user to manually add a printer, but that's a minor irritation.
No software other than the necessary utilities is provided, which is par for the course with this category of printer. The main documentation is provided on CD in Windows help and PDF format. We're fighting a lost battle on this, but the relative complexity means printed manuals would be very welcome.
The primary paper tray holds around 350 sheets, and has an indicator to show how full it is. The front-mounted flap-down multipurpose tray is handy for envelopes and other special stationery, but is obtrusive and ugly when open. An optional third tray can be fitted below the main unit to add another 500 sheets. The output tray holds a nominal 250 sheets.
HP claims a quick 'first page out' time for this model, and we were not disappointed. The first page of our test document emerged in just 8 seconds, with the second arriving in another 5 seconds. Nominal speed is "up to" 21 pages per minute, but we'll forgive the shortfall as most print jobs are only a few pages long and getting the first one out quickly is often more important than peak speed.
The physical margins on an A4 page are between 2 and 3mm. All-black pages revealed an acceptable degree of leathergraining, but the evenness of tone left something to be desired. The graining was also noticeable in darker areas of photographs and business graphics, which were otherwise attractive and without excessive shine. Text was crisp and dark.
The CP3505dn is on the noisy side, so it's one of those printers best relegated to a corner of the office well away from anyone's desk. Apart from that it would be an asset to a busy team that needs quick, good quality colour output, especially if the extra paper tray was installed.