Labs

HP's Color LaserJet 3600 is one of the heavier printers in the group at 27kg, but setting it up is easy and involves little more than removing packing material from round the toner cartridges shipped inside it. The included cartridges are fully filled rather than starter models, and have a capacity of 6,000 mono and 4,000 colour pages. This version of the printer has only a USB Hi-Speed connection, which was easy to set up. A network version, the Color LaserJet 3600n, is available from around £385 if you need a more flexible way to print from multiple PCs.

Like HP's Color LaserJet 2605, the printer driver defaults to Letter format, so you have to change it to A4

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in the Properties page. We were impressed by both the speed and quality of the 2605's prints. Colour print speeds were the second-fastest in the group at 9.6ppm. Some dark images looked a bit murky, but light colours and flesh tones were reproduced with great detail and accuracy. Black text was solid and well defined. Shaded greyscale images weren't as smooth as we'd have liked, and they suffered from faint coloured tints when printed as part of a mixed-colour document. A tray pulls out from the front of the printer for loading envelopes and other special media. This was easier to use than the single-sheet feed slots favoured by many other printers on test.

The photoconductor drum is built into the high-capacity toner cartridges, so there are no hidden costs in the form of expensive consumables. As a result, the 3600 has the lowest total ownership costs in the group.

HP's Color LaserJet 3600 produced great results in all our tests, and had some of the fastest colour print speeds in the group. Its colour printing doesn't quite match that of Canon's i-SENSYS LBP5100, but the LaserJet 3600 is the cheapest printer to run in the long term in this month's Labs. This fast, economical USB printer is a great choice for everyday tasks, and it's our Best Buy.