Clearly meant to be a workhorse monochrome laser printer for small to midsize offices and workgroups, the HP LaserJet Enterprise M506dn ($749.99) offers fast performance, excellent paper handling, and extras like private printing (holding a print job in memory until you to enter a PIN from the front panel). Unfortunately, its text quality is at the bottom of the range for a monochrome laser, though good enough for most business purposes. As long as you don't need high-quality text at a small font size, there's enough here to make the M506dn a strong contender.

In most ways, the M506dn can stand toe to toe with the Dell B3460dn, our Editors' Choice monochrome laser for up to heavy-duty use in a small or midsize office. Both include a 550-sheet drawer, a 100-sheet multipurpose tray, and a duplexer standard, and both let you increase the capacity from 650 sheets to a maximum 2,300 sheets by adding up to three additional 550-sheet paper drawers ($199 each for the M506dn). That's more than enough for almost any midsize office, and arguably the most critical issue for heavy-duty print needs.

One useful convenience the M506dn has that's relatively rare for a single-function printer is the ability to print Word, PowerPoint, and PDF files directly from a USB key. The USB Type A port is on the top of the printer, on the left side, hidden behind a small door. All you have to do is plug in a USB key, use the front panel to navigate to the file you want to print, and give the print command.

Setup and Speed

The M506dn is a typical size and weight for its level of speed and paper handling. It measures 11.7 by 16.5 by 14.8 inches (HWD) without the optional additional trays, and weighs 26 pounds 3 ounces. Setup is standard fare.

The only connection choices that come standard on the M506dn are USB and Ethernet. However, you can add a module for standard Wi-Fi ($149), so you can connect the printer to a network wirelessly. A second Wi-Fi option ($59) adds Wi-Fi Direct and NFC. According to HP, you can add either module by itself or add both.

If you connect the printer to a network, you can print to it though the cloud, and also connect to it through a Wi-Fi access point on your network to print from a mobile device. If you get the Wi-Fi Direct module, you can also connect to it directly, even if you connect it to a single PC via USB cable. For my tests, I installed it on a network using its Ethernet port and ran the tests from a Windows Vista system.

As with paper handling, print speed counts as one of the M506dn's strongest features. HP rates the engine at 45 pages per minute (ppm). I timed it on our tests (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing) at 16.1ppm. That makes it a bit faster on our tests than the Dell B3460dn, which Dell rates at 50ppm, and which came in at 15.3ppm. To put the speed in context, however, it's also a bit slower than the less expensive HP LaserJet Pro M402dw, which managed 17ppm on our tests, and it's not much faster than the even less expensive Dell B2360dn, a top pick for personal to medium-duty small office use, which came in at 15ppm.

Output Quality and Running Cost

The M506dn's Achilles' heel is text quality that falls at the bottom of the scale on our tests for monochrome laser printers. The only saving grace is that monochrome lasers as a group handle text so well that even being at the bottom of the range is good enough for most business use.

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The text is actually well formed, even at small font sizes. But at sizes below 8 points, it's also a touch gray rather than a dark black, making it a hard to read. Even so, unless you have an unusual need for small fonts, you shouldn't have a problem with it.

Graphics quality is on par for a monochrome laser, making it easily good enough for internal business use. If you're a perfectionist, however, you may not consider it good enough for PowerPoint handouts or the like. The photo quality is suitable for printing recognizable images from photos on webpages, but not much more than that.

One other key feature for any printer meant for heavy-duty use is its running cost. The M506dn's claimed cost per page is 1.6 cents, which is fairly typical for the category.

Conclusion

For higher-quality text than the HP LaserJet Enterprise M506dn offers, be sure to consider the Dell B3460dn, which delivers significantly better text quality, similar-quality graphics, and lower-quality photos than the M506dn. For most offices, however, the M506dn is a strong choice, with excellent paper handling, better-looking photos than the Dell printer offers, and text that's good enough for most business use.