NEC SuperScript 860

One of the more expensive printers on test, the SuperScript 860 is distinguished by its use of Adobe's new print-gear technology. Print-gear is a software/hardware solution to personal printing, with a print-gear processor on-board the printer which accepts print-gear control commands from the host PC's CPU. NEC calls it a GDI pro printer, as it offers all the benefits of GDI printing in terms of speed and the accuracy of reproduction from screen to page, but with added performance benefits thanks to the use of a page description language. Despite the similarity to PostScript, the printer is able to process complex pages with little on-board memory, thanks to Adobe's Memory Booster technology.

It's clearly well built, with an internal output tray recessed in the top of the case and a detachable paper hopper capable of storing 250 sheets. There's also a fold-out front output tray should you want a straighter paper path. Paper emerges into the main output tray quite heavily curled, but paper handling was smooth and trouble-free. Our headed letter paper caused no difficulties, and 130g/m2 paper was perfectly acceptable, but 190g/m2 paper was more of a problem, particularly as toner was applied patchily or not at all.

Installation of the SuperScript 860 was relatively easy, once NEC had informed us that there's a conflict between the printer and Windows 95 plug and play. If you try installing the printer from the point where Windows discovers new hardware, the installation fails and, more peculiarly, MS Word crashes on loading. Using the included setup program, however, resulted in a faultless installation. The drivers themselves are very comprehensive, covering almost every option you might need, including automatic selection of the correct graphical printing method for different types of documents.

The NEC SuperScript 860 performed at the quoted 8ppm, and in our speed tests it trounced all of the competition. In terms of quality, the output is slightly disappointing when reproducing bitmap images. Text quality is more impressive where the SuperScript was among the top contenders.

The NEC SuperScript is larger than the average personal printer, and more expensive, but it is one of the best. And at just over 2p per page, it's cheap to run.

Author: labs