The HP Color LaserJet CP3505n Printer ($899 direct) delivers both more and less than you might expect from a printer aimed at a small to mid-size office or workgroup. On the more side, the printer comes with both a standard driver and an alternative that adds a useful print-preview capability. In addition, HP provides a link to a Web site that can calculate the cost of a print job for you. If you need to print a large job for, say, a mailing, the Web site can tell you whether it's cheaper to do it yourself or pay someone else to do it. On the less side, the CP3505n's text quality is subpar for a laser, speed is less than impressive for the price, and paper handling is limited. Whether the pluses and minuses balance each other out is debatable, but there's no question that this is an interesting package overall, with some highly intriguing features.

The CP3505n is one of three related models. The other two are the CP3505dn ($1,199 direct), which adds duplexing, and the CP3505x ($1,449), which adds both duplexing and a 500-sheet tray for a maximum capacity of 850 sheets. The second tray is available as an option ($249) for the n and dn models, but the duplexer isn't available as an option. If you get the n model and later decide you want automatic duplexing, you can't add it. According to HP, however, the three models are otherwise essentially identical, so most of the comments in this review should apply to all three.

Setup is typical for a small color laser. At 16.9 by 16.25 by 20.1 inches (HWD), the printer is a little large to fit comfortably on a desktop. It's also relatively heavy, at 59.6 pounds, so you'll probably need some help moving it into place. Once it's in place, you can remove the packing materials, load paper, plug in the cable and power cord, and run the fully automated network installation routine.

The CP3505n's speed on our tests is best described as better than acceptable but less than impressive. Its total time on our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic's hardware and software, www.qualitylogic.com) was 11 minutes 44 seconds. The Editors' Choice Lexmark C534dn is just a little more expensive, but it comes with a duplexer, and it finished our test suite in a speedy 8:26. Even the significantly less expensive Editors' Choice Xerox Phaser 6180N was faster, at 10:22.

Similarly, output quality is acceptable but less than ideal, particularly for text, which is subpar for a laser. More than half the fonts on our text test qualified as easily readable at 5 points, but character spacing was a problem for most of the test fonts even at 20 points (an adjacent r and t touched even in such standard fonts as Arial). I'd call the text good enough for most business needs but not appropriate for output such as desktop publishing, or for projecting a sense of professionalism in important correspondence or reports—unless you pick your font carefully.

The printer did better relative to other lasers in graphics and photo quality. I saw some visible dithering, in the form of both graininess and a slight unevenness in graphic fills, but the graphics were easily good enough for any internal business use. Depending on how much of a perfectionist you are, you might consider them good enough for output you'd hand over to an important client, or for things such as trifold brochures and flyers for mailings.

Photos were a match for most color lasers, hence suitable for items like client newsletters and handouts, and more than good enough for output like printing Web pages with photos.

With the CP3505n, it's important to consider the extras, too. The HP Print Cost Estimator is particularly noteworthy. One of the best arguments for getting a color laser is that it lets a small office—including a branch office of a large company—print certain kinds of materials itself. For small print jobs, such as a mailing of 200 or 300 one-page flyers, going to your local copy shop can be much more expensive than doing it yourself. But whether that's true for any particular print job isn't always obvious.

The Cost Estimator will tell you the cost of any given job, but it works only for specific HP printers. You give the Web site your printer info and which file on your disk you plan to print, or pick a sample page from the site. The Cost Estimator then calculates the cost of printing, so you can compare it with what you'd have to pay at a copy shop. Unfortunately, the Web site gives only a per-page cost for a single page (including duplex pages), which limits its usefulness for longer documents. On the other hand, it's just right for copy such as one-page mailers or trifold brochures.

Another extra that demands mentioning is the Print View tool, an alternate interface for the print driver that works together with the standard driver. Print View is similar to the print-preview feature you find in some programs. When you use the Print command, Print Preview takes you to a print-preview screen that lets you see what the output will look like and lets you adjust the settings before printing.

Print View is potentially useful, but it's highly limited in this first incarnation. It will scale an image to different paper sizes, for example, but it won't scale a wide Web page down so that you can print it without cutting off the right side of the page. HP says it will add that feature in a future version.

More frustrating is that some features described in the help file, notably duplexing and booklet printing, aren't available with the CP3505n. They don't even show as grayed out options. HP says that's because this particular model doesn't have a built-in duplexer. (Booklet printing requires duplexing. It prints two document pages on each side of the physical page, and rearranges the order, so when you fold a stack of printed pages down the middle to form a booklet, the document pages are in the right order to let you read the booklet from front to back).

HP says Print View is designed so these features won't be available for printers that lack hardware duplexing. The only problem it acknowledges is that the help file doesn't say so explicitly. Manual duplexing is possible, of course, but HP says that the emphasis for Print View was on ease of use. The company ruled out manual duplexing as too complex, because it depends on the user to turn the paper over and reinsert it in the right orientation.

Maybe so, but I've seen manual duplex wizards that give explicit, easy-to-follow instructions for reinserting the paper. There's no reason why Print View couldn't do the same. Besides, the main CP3505n driver interface has a manual duplex feature. At the very least, it's inconsistent to argue that manual duplexing is easy enough to include in the main driver but too complex to include in Print View. In any case, the Print View tool is more interesting for what it might become in the future than for any features it offers now.

Judged by itself, the HP Color LaserJet CP3505n Printer is a perfectly acceptable choice for a small or mid-size office or workgroup. Given its price, however, I'd hesitate to recommend it over either the Lexmark C534dn or the Xerox Phaser 6180N. Both are faster and produce better output. The CP3505n's Cost Estimator and Print View tools just aren't enough to make up for the difference.

Check out the HP Color LaserJet CP3505n's test scores.

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