Apple Color StyleWriter 2400 and 2200 and HP DeskWriter 660C
New Crop of Razzle-dazzle Color Inkjet Printers.
Tony Bojorquez
Reviews Printers/
COMPETING HEAD TO HEAD for years with their printing products, Apple and Hewlett-Packard are at it once again with a new crop of color inkjet printers for home users and small offices. Apple's two new offerings -- the Apple Color StyleWriter 2400 and the portable Apple Color StyleWriter 2200 -- feature excellent software controls and fairly speedy performance. The HP DeskWriter 660C couldn't keep pace with the Apple printers, but it boasted the best-looking text. All three printers are easy on the budget -- each comes with an aggressive price tag of $500 or less.
Apple Color StyleWriter 2400
The StyleWriter 2400 cranks out excellent output quality at speeds that are impressive for an inkjet printer. It offers a choice of two print settings -- 720 x 360 dpi for black text and line art and 360 x 360 dpi for grayscale and color images. Setup is a snap, literally. Snap in two pieces -- one for the ink cartridge and one for the two ink tanks (CMY and black) -- and you're done.
You connect the printer to your Mac's serial port or plug it directly in to your network by using the optional $105 LocalTalk module. For those who use the serial connection, Apple's ColorShare technology lets you share the printer on your network -- an especially useful feature for EtherTalk and TokenTalk networks, because Apple doesn't make an interface module for those networks.
Its software is what makes the StyleWriter 2400 a standout. Support for Apple's Desktop Printing lets you print simply by dragging your document to a printer icon on the desktop. During the printing process, the icon changes to give you feedback on how the job is progressing and alerts you if there's an error. You can also specify what time you want your document printed as well as which pages you'd like to print.
In addition, the software lets you print two or four reduced-sized pages on a single sheet of paper. You can also print watermarks -- transparent text or graphics that overlay a document. Apple includes some ready-made watermarks, but you can create your own, using any application that supports the PICT or PICT2 formats. This is a great feature, but we wish the watermarks would show up in print previews. We also would have liked the Print dialog box to contain an indicator that tells you whether the watermark is enabled.
Watermarks aside, Apple has included plenty of other useful information in the StyleWriter 2400's Print dialog box. You can select media (plain, coated, or glossy paper; transparencies; or back-print film), print quality (draft, normal, or best), and halftone and ColorSync options. You can also activate a utility that cleans the print head. Additionally, the printer comes with a good selection of 64 TrueType fonts.
Apple Color StyleWriter 2200
Weighing only three pounds, the sleek StyleWriter 2200 closely mirrors the print quality and speed of its larger sibling. It also features the same settings, the same versatile and convenient software, and the same selection of 64 TrueType fonts.
Like its sibling, the StyleWriter 2200 has only two pieces to snap into place -- an ink cartridge and an ink-tank component. The ink tanks are tiny and empty quickly, so you probably won't want to use the StyleWriter 2200 as your primary desktop printer. If you're printing only black-and-white documents, you can opt for a higher-capacity black-only ink cartridge.
The printer's cover opens to provide an automatic sheet feeder that can hold as many as 30 sheets of paper or 5 envelopes. You connect the StyleWriter 2200 to your Mac's serial port -- a LocalTalk connection is not available, but you can share the printer over an AppleTalk network, using ColorShare.
The one disappointment with Apple's portable printer is its battery design. The battery itself is small and compact and provides about 200 prints per charge, but to use it, you have to connect a rather cumbersome battery attachment to the back of the printer. It would be nice to be able to use the battery without having to lug along the attachment. And there's no way to check the status of the battery.
HP DeskWriter 660C
Like the StyleWriter 2400, the DeskWriter 660C uses two ink cartridges, one CMY and one black. Setup and installation are simple. The DeskWriter 660C comes with a LocalTalk connection built in. It also has a serial connection and includes 27 TrueType fonts.
The DeskWriter 660C prints at 600 x 600 dpi for best-quality black text and line art, 600 x 300 dpi for best-quality color and grayscale images printed on glossy or transparent media, and 300 x 300 dpi for normal-quality color and grayscale images printed on premium and plain paper. HP's ColorSmart technology automatically selects the right settings for each print job and optimizes print quality for each type of element on a page -- text, graphics, and photographic images.
Software controls provide options for media selection (plain, coated, or glossy paper, or transparencies) and print quality (best, normal, or EconoFast). Clicking on the handy preview button shows you what each page will look like before you print it.
Print Quality and Speed
To see how the three new color inkjet contenders compare in print quality and speed, we printed several types of documents at a variety of print settings. We compared the results of the Apple Color StyleWriter 2400 with those of the HP DeskWriter 660C and the results of the Apple Color StyleWriter 2200 with those of HP's veteran portable printer, the DeskWriter 320C. Our test platform was an Apple Power Macintosh 6100/60 that had 24 MB of RAM and was running System 7.5.
For black text, the two full-sized printers produced output that was very similar in quality, although the DeskWriter 660C's 600-x-600-dpi setting -- combined with HP's proprietary Resolution Enhancement technology -- gave it the edge. The text produced by the Apple printer was of a very high quality but wasn't as smooth as the DeskWriter 660C's.
For color output, however, the Apple printer was the clear winner. Although the DeskWriter 660C produced vibrant colors for business graphics, the Apple printer boasted sharper, crisper details, for better-looking photographic images.
The Color StyleWriter 2400 also bested the DeskWriter 660C in terms of speed. This is not surprising when you consider that the HP printer, with its higher resolution, is processing much more data than the Apple printer. We also suspect that the HP printer would deliver better speed results if it were using a PowerPC-native driver, which was not available at testing time.
For portable printing, the Apple Color StyleWriter 2200 ran away with the show, outclassing the HP DeskWriter 320C in print quality and overall speed. The HP printer really falls short when you're printing documents that contain color and black elements. For those types of documents, the DeskWriter 320C uses a process black with the CMY cartridge, which results in a muddy, dull brown rather than a true black.
The StyleWriter 2200 not only blew by the HP portable printer in every speed test but one but it also bested its larger sibling, the StyleWriter 2400, in several of our tests. To be fair, it's important to note that the DeskWriter 320C represents old technology -- HP plans to introduce a new portable printer this fall.
The Bottom Line
If you're looking for an affordable desktop color printer, you can't go wrong with the Apple Color StyleWriter 2400, with its feature-rich software, accurate color printing, and relatively zippy performance. Although the HP DeskWriter 660C is a solid offering, especially if you plan to print mainly black text, its speed isn't as impressive as the Apple printer's. For portable printing, the Apple Color StyleWriter 2200 is a three-pound wonder that boasts amazingly good color-output quality -- we recommend it as the perfect PowerBook printing companion for Mac users on the go.
Apple Color StyleWriter 2400
Rating: (4.5 out of 5 mice) Very Good/Outstanding
Price: $400 (estimated street).
Pros: Excellent speed and output quality. Well-designed software.
Cons: No preview for watermarks.
Company: Apple Computer, Cupertino, CA; 800-538-9696 or 408-996-1010.
Reader Service: Circle #401.
Apple Color StyleWriter 2200
Rating: (4 out of 5 mice) Very Good
Price: $400 (estimated street).
Pros: Excellent speed and output quality. Well-designed software. Compact and lightweight.
Cons: No battery-management tools. Cumbersome battery attachment. Small-capacity ink tanks.
Reader Service: Circle #402.
HP DeskWriter 660C
Rating: (3.5 out of 5 mice) Average/Very Good
Price: $500 (estimated street).
Pros: Sharp text. Vibrant colors for business graphics. Built-in LocalTalk.
Cons: Not as fast as the Apple printers. Dense color in photographic images.
Company: Hewlett-Packard, Santa Clara, CA; 800-752-0900.
Reader Service: Circle #403.
Battle of the Inkjets / Speed-testing New Desktop and Portable Color Printers
