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The Canon Color imageClass LBP7660cdn ($500 street), a workhorse color laser printer for a small office or workgroup, provides typical speed, a solid feature set, and above-average output for a printer at its price. It?s a very respectable choice, although its running costs are on the high side.

The LBP7660cdn, white with an off-black top, is box-shaped with a curved front edge. It measures 13.6 by 16.3 by 19.7 inches (HWD), bigger than you?d want to share a desk with, and weighs 49 pounds. It has a standard paper capacity of 300 sheets, split between a 250-sheet main tray and a 50-sheet multi-purpose tray; it has an automatic duplexer for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper. If you need more capacity, an additional 250-sheet tray is available ($199 direct).

In addition to Canon?s host-based UFR II driver, the LBP7660cdn comes with both PCL and PostScript drivers.

The LBP7660cdn can connect to a computer via USB or to a LAN by Ethernet. I tested it over a USB connection with a computer running Windows Vista.

Speed and Output Quality

Our standard procedure for testing business printing speed is to test using the printer?s default settings. Canon is one of the few printer manufacturers that makes duplexing (double-sided printing) the default on most of its recent printers. Thus, we tested the LBP7660cdn in duplex mode, which tends to be slightly slower than simplex (one-sided) printing.?

I timed the LBP7660cdn on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing), at an effective 5.1 pages per minute (ppm), a typical speed for a color laser at its price and in line with its 20-ppm rating (for both color and monochrome) that?s based on printing text documents without graphics or photos. It slightly lagged the Editors? Choice

Dell 2150cdn ($399.99 direct, 4 stars), and was slightly faster than the Editors? Choice ?Xerox Phaser 6280dn ($649 direct, 4 stars), which came in at 4.5 ppm. Both the Dell and Xerox were tested in simplex mode.

Output was very good, with text typical of color lasers and photos and graphics both slightly above par. Text quality was good enough for most all internal business uses, though not up to demanding desktop publishing standards.

With graphics, the colors were well saturated. Minor issues included dithering (the tendency for solid areas to break up into fine graininess) and banding (a regular pattern of thin lines of discoloration). In one graph depicting very thin colored lines, the lines were barely visible. Graphics were good enough for internal business use up to and including PowerPoint handouts, though I?d hesitate to use them for documents meant to try to impress an important client.

Photos were slightly above par for a color laser. I noticed some mild blue tinting in a couple of images, and there was occasional loss of finer detail. Photos were good enough to use for marketing materials such as real estate handouts.

Other Issues

Running costs for the LBP7660cdn are 3.9 cents per black-and-white page and 17.2 cents per color page, both high for a color laser. The Dell 2150cdn?s cost per page is 2.4 cents per black-and-white page and 14.3 per color page. The Xerox Phaser 6280dn?s running costs are 3.1 cents per monochrome page, 15.8 cents per color.

The Canon Color imageClass LBP7660cdn provides good output quality as a workhorse color laser printer for a small office. It has very similar specs to the Editors? Choice Dell 2150cdn, identical monthly duty cycles (40,000 pages per month) and slightly higher paper capacity (300 sheets, to 251 for the Dell). They?re comparable in speed and output quality. ?The Dell, however, not only costs $100 less, it has substantially lower running costs. You save $15 per 1,000 black pages and nearly that in color pages compared with the LBP7660cdn?s toner costs.

The Xerox Phaser 6280dn also offers lower running costs than the Canon. As it?s nearing its end of life, it can be bought for a little over $300 from many e-tailers. It offers greater paper capacity (400 sheets) and a more robust duty cycle, while providing high-quality output, especially for text and graphics. That said, the LBP7660cdn is a very solid printer with good-quality output, and worthy of being on the short list of anyone shopping for a color laser printer to anchor a small office.

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