Thread: Printers Draft Quality

Draft or 'toner save' mode is a compromise between ink consumption and print quality. Obviously, lesser the toner consumed, greater the savings, (the printouts will look duller). The two Canons were the meekest in toner saver mode producing noticeably light prints. This also means that they are saving considerable ink in the process. Canon claims a savings of up to 30 percent, which is significant. But we have to point out that the draft output from the LBP3108B leaves visible white spaces in print, making for difficult reading. The LBP2900B is better though. The difference is hardly noticeable with the Brother printers while with the printers it is minimal.



The Need for Speed ?: A higher printing speed is desirable, but for the kind of applications these monochrome printers will see, it should not be a deal breaker. We tested text printing speed at normal quality and settings and measured the time for the first print (usually longer owing to warm-up time) then measured the time per print (after the first page) by printing 20 pages and dividing the time taken by 20. The HP LaserJet P1S0S was the quickest printer, taking a mere 7 seconds to push out the first page out after hitting the Print button. Very impressive. HP puts this down to their Instant On technology, which, given the performance figures, we have to say works well. After the super-fast first print, the P1S0S took a mere 2.6 seconds per page, closely followed by the Brother HL-21S0N's 2.7 seconds per print (it took a longish 11 seconds for the first page, though). This works out to 23 ppm (page per minute) and 22 ppm, matching HP and Brother's claim for their printers.

The slowest printers, the Canon LBP 2900B and the HP LaserJet P1007, taking 4.8s and 4.4s respectively, are still acceptable for most print applications even in a small work group. A 25 page print will take only about 2 minutes.