BIOS: Technology Means Business

Epson's AcuLaser 2600 series boasts many features to make it good laser printer of choice for demanding office users. It can print up to an impressive 30ppm and prints the first page out in around 12 seconds in black and white, which is faster than many monochrome-only laser printers. Furthermore, with a standard paper input capacity of 650 sheets (further expandable to 1150 sheets) and output capacity of 250 sheets, the AcuLaser 2600 has one of the highest standard paper capacities in its category. However, the biggest selling point of the printer is its unique ability to switch between mono or colour printing, or vice-versa, by simply changing the colour toner cartridges. If you don't expect great results in terms of output quality and prepare yourself for noisy printing, your business should be more than happy with the Aculaser C2600.

Pros: Converts from mono to colour; excellent paper handling; fast
Cons: Noisy; limited finishing options; no hard disk or security features

Epson's AcuLaser C2600 series is unique in that it allows you to switch between mono or colour printing, or vice-versa, by simply changing the colour toner cartridges - eliminating the need to have two laser printers. Part of Epson's key strategy to increase its market share in the business workspace, the AcuLaser C2600 series is relatively fast too, offering print speeds of up to 30ppm in mono and 7.5ppm in colour, making it a great choice for relatively busy small offices.

The Aculaser C2400 (431x518x425mm, 37kg) ships as standard with a 350MHz processor and 64MB of RAM (512MB maximum), and also has a relatively large paper input capacity of 650 sheets as standard (expandable up to 1150 sheets), backlit LCD, as well as Hi-Speed USB 2.0 and parallel connectivity ports. The Aculaser C2600N, reviewed here, further adds Ethernet network connectivity as standard (EtherTalk for Mac interfaces).

The 'convertible' design is a breakthrough in engineering. The main reason for this is that it allows you to purchase the model as a monochrome printer, should your budget already be stretched, and then buy and use colour toner as and when needed. The innovative design also allows black-and-white prints to continue processing even when a colour toner is empty. If you don't need colour, ever, the AcuLaser 2600N (£379 ex. VAT) is a new monochrome-only model.

The printer is designed to be a general office workhorse, so its finishing options and print quality are relatively moderate. Having said that, the AcuLaser C2400N uses Epson's RIT (Resolution Improvement Technology) to print crisp business graphics up to a resolution of 600x600dpi. We also liked the way you can print in colour immediately after adding colour toners, and the way that the four-cycle print engine produces prints with no traces of black toner on colour prints or vice-versa.

A really neat feature of the printer is that it can hold a combination of colour and black toner cartridges simultaneously, allowing you to print in black-and-white in situations when colour toner has run out. When holding one black toner cartridge, or one black toner cartridge and three colour cartridges, you can print up to 5000 pages. When holding four black toner cartridges, the printing capacity can be increased to up to 20,000 pages in black-and-white before needing to replace the toner cartridge.

Epson developers have supplied the printer with a specially designed driver, which allows the equal usage of every four cartridges. For instance, after printing 15 pages, the active cartridge is changed, so the toner is taken in equal parts from all four cartridges. Nevertheless, sometimes, it would be more convenient to have one cartridge run out of the toner than all four cartridges simultaneously.

Standard emulations bundled with the printer are good and include ESC/Page Colour, ESC/Page, PCL6, ESC/P2, FX, IBM's Mode I239X and Adobe's PostScript 3, with PCL5c being an optional extra. Paper support is also respectable, including A4, A5, B5, LT, GLT, HLT, EXE, C5, C6, DL, Monarch, and ISO-B5 (from 98x148mm to 216x297mm and 64 to 163gsm). In addition to the accommodating paper input capacity of 650 sheets (150-sheet multi-purpose tray and a 500-sheet paper cassette), a paper output capacity of 250 sheets is also impressive (most competing products can house just 150 sheets).

Similar to most inkjet and laser printers, the quality of prints depends greatly on the chosen settings in the printer driver. There are five preset modes which the you can choose. Moreover, the software allows you to perform the manual adjustment of the printing parameters. In addition, the AcuLaser C2600N permits the printing of the photographic images, thanks to a colour correction mode. However, quality is only on the sufficient level and it should not be considered for high-quality proofing. It's also on the noisy side at 56dBA (40dBA in standby mode), which will likely disturb those sitting close to the device.