Dell 1600n All-In-One Laser Printer

The Dell 1600n is a triumph of and reflects the current state of the art in multifunction B&W laser devices. It has an integrated 22ppm laser printer, a wonderful scanner which can be used in flatbed or adf mode (in flatbed it's restricted to 8.5x11 standard paper sizes or smaller, though the adf is fully removable allowing bulky things which fit into an 8.5x11 form factor to be scanned, like books or small 3d objects). Connection is either via USB (USB 2 capable) or via ethernet.

The firmware and drivers initially shipped by Dell do not support network scanning (they do support network printing) however a new downloadable firmware and driver set released by Dell in January 2005 supports a network scan capability in it's firmware, the network firmware greatly increases the value of this unit (firmware version 1.22 or later). If your unit didn't ship with network scanner support (this would be most devices through January of 2005), you'd do yourself a favor to upgrade the firmware and drivers as soon as you can. Firmware upgrade is not too difficult and can be done via USB or Ethernet (I used ethernet without issue, it's done via the browser pointing to a file and may be OS independent). Scanner results are about the best I've ever experienced (when done in USB mode which supports higher resolutions than network scan), and are fast. Two firmwares must be upgraded in sequence to achieve support for network scan (the first the printer OS firmware the second the network firmware).

My experience with personal laser printers (B&W) for PC's goes back about 20 years, as does my experience with scanners. My own purchases of these devices, outside of use in a corporation goes back about 15 years. I recall when a HP LaserJet would cost over $2,000 and mundane scanners would run over $500, scanners such at that on the Dell 1600n would cost over $2,000 and require exotic connections to get running in PC's. The current pricing and quality of MFC devices really was unimaginable even a decade ago by the majority of users. Dell has taken the most wanted MFC features and bundled them in a very low priced device. Not only are the specs great, but it looks awesome, and performs just as well as it looks and specs. Some of the products features are surprisingly well thought out, and make use easier, for example buttons to set various aspects of copy, fax and what not are all easy, intuitive, and don't require scrolling through a display. While deciding which buttons make life easier and which confuse or clutter is somewhat a subjective aesthetic, for my personal taste Dell has done the best job to date of deciding what to make easy and what to require a scroll through an LCD screen.

The 1600n consumes only a smallish desktop footprint, and is reasonably light weight, the body consisting of a plastic shell, though it is a bit bulky (it does however have handles where you want them to lift it). Quality of laser output can be adjusted from 300x300dpi through 1200x1200dpi. The unit appears to be a modified and rebadged Samsung SCX-4720F with the ethernet option (this costs typically $499 for the Samsung MFC and $179-$400 for the ethernet capability, Dell delivered this for under $200 but without the USB CF card reading ability of the SCX-4720F, this may even work on the Dell, I haven't tried), the laser engine is Samsung, some of the drivers reflect authoring by Samsung. You will be a bit surprised by the verticalness of the 1600n compared to most modern laser / MFC devices, it sort of sits a bit high on a table. Output instead of going on top goes into a slot in the middle/upper portion of the printer. You literally pull paper which sticks only an inch or so out of the slot after it's printed. On the bottom of the unit is a 250 sheet fully enclosed paper drawer (it holds a half ream of paper which is very nice, you can purchase an additional paper drawer if necessary, output capacity is to 150 sheets). Unlike other MFC devices, paper doesn't sit exposed, where it can collect dust. The drawer and output slot for the most part protect the paper. For example, my home office uses 2 large overhead fans to circulate air to improve comfort. This often resulted in output from my Brother MFC 3800 being blown around the floor as it sat on the bottom entirely outside of the unit on a small plastic holder, with the 1600n this no longer happens. Output is now stable, and unaffected by airflow or passers by. Generally this device looks better when doing work and loaded up than most other MFC's. Thus it provides a less cluttered overall appearance in my home office. Like most current SOHO MFP's this is an energy star approved device (20W when sleeping, 350W when operational).

Quality of the laser engine is wonderful! The copier with the touch of a layout button can put copies of 2 or 4 source documents on a sheet of paper (2 up and 4 up), or can turn a single sheet into a 3 sheet by 3 sheet blow up (literally turning a source document into a poster sized document if you paste the 9 sheets together). Drivers exist for PCL6 (a semi-generic but still HP standard) and PostScript 3 (a public standard), and GDI ( Graphical Device Interface a Windows standard) because of the embedded webserver and ethernet with postscript while not an expert, I'd believe this printer will easily be configurable as a network printer on a Linux or Mac ethernet network (the scanner is more problematic). Generally network postscript printers (which this IS) support a very wide range of operating systems. The built in webserver uses standard html and permits all configuration that you could do via USB or via front panel. Generally the printer automatically (by default) applies the appropriate interpretation for the incoming data (PostScript, PCL or GDI are automatically selected as needed to process a particular stream).

Bundled software includes Paperport 9, which can scan directly into PDF format, included also is OCR software. Input can be scanned directly into any of several windows applications (additional applications can be added), the scanner can manage color, b&w or halftone at resolutions up to 600x1200dpi (non-interpolated or optical). The scanner is surprisingly fast.

When I made my first copy, I was surprised at the speed. The scan was quick, the output was also quick, literally about 10 seconds from push of copy to first output, under 5 seconds for subsequent copy / scans as the laser needed no warm up. My prior experience was with another MFC device (a brother MFC 3800) and comparing specs between the two units would have led me to believe that the Dell would be twice as fast. It feels faster than twice as fast, it also offers a more solid feel in terms of paper management (when you look at MFC's they almost always don't show them loaded with paper, as it tends to hang over the sides and bend, the Brother MFC 3800 suffered this, and I assumed it was an inevitable part of MFC devices, Dell has re-written this rule, there is only a small portion of output in the front of the printer secured in an easy to access slot). The print engine is rated at 22 ppm (pages per minute) and while that may be optimistic, output overall seems decently fast, I haven't measured exact ppm throughput however.

Connection of the printer to a USB port WAS problematic. I called Dell and they issued a replacement. My attempted install was at 11:55PM on a Sunday night a bit before Christmas. Dell support was there, no not someone from India, and they issued me a replacement unit authorization within 20 minutes. It arrived before 10AM on the following Tuesday (my call ended about 12:15AM on a Monday). When you get an RMA, Dell ships you a replacement, then you bundle the old unit back, and put a prepaid label on it, call a carrier (whose phone number is included with the replacement unit) and it's picked up for you. All at no cost.

The USB problem turned out to be with my PC, out of 8 USB ports for some reason only one worked properly with the printer. I removed all my USB devices and went down them in order. It is still a mystery to me why only one port works with this printer, but if you have issues I'd suggest trying all USB ports before calling Dell. As an aside the malfunctioning PC is itself a Dell.

Paperport was also a problem, it didn't upgrade from Paperport 8 (which was bundled with the Brother MFC 3800) to Paperport 9 automatically. I had to visit the Scansoft (makers of Paperport) and search their support forums and FAQ's to find that this isn't an uncommon problem, and was resolvable... the solution is inelegant and messy. I strongly advice anyone to first uninstall any existing Paperport from their system before installing the Dell printer.

Ethernet was easy to set up. Default configuration is via DHCP, a check of DHCP clients tells me where the printer is. Dell also provides a printer search engine to locate it's IP on a LAN, in case your router doesn't support easy access to DHCP clients (or if you restrict that access). Changing the TCP/IP configuration was also easy, Dell includes a nice manual, it is also available online in PDF or HTML. Basic choices for most will be to configure via DHCP (the default) or via static IP, I use static then directed all users on my LAN to the static address. The drivers had no problem, we are an all Windows XP home. It turns out to be easier to set these things up via the ethernet web server on the printer (that is to direct your browser to the webserver built into this unit).

To get the best out of this printer, I'd strongly suggest using the the ethernet software over the USB software. The built in ethernet webserver not only provides tons of great information (easy to click and fill in via browser), it provides it in a format that is easy to read, and gives you what you want to know. I have used numerous print servers, and this is the best by far. Other makers should look at what Dell has done and imitate it (the world would be a better place). USB set up isn't as easy, and set up at the MFC console itself is the most difficult, but may be necessary for some features which the USB configurator cannot manage.

Network printing and scanning is faster than USB printing and scanning, but you can do more with Paperport and a USB scanner (for example, network B&W scanning must be 100, 200 or 300 dpi, color scanning is only 200dpi). When you install the ethernet drivers on your PC it'll ask for an ID, use your name, or nickname, or your PC's name. This will be the name you'll be allowed to choose when scanning from the front of the scanner later. You'll configure the scan button to use ethernet, then when pressing scan it'll ask you for the id of the system to send the scanned document(s) to, the name will be the id you entered when configuring the drivers on your PC (we use first names of family members on our LAN).

The way network scanning is implemented in the 1600n, you set up your id, then from the front console of the 1600n, select target program, then press the scan button (it remembers the last target program and scan resolution settings, so if you do the same type of scans, all you need do is go through the userid list which is refreshed every scan from the currently online and powered up PC's). It'll send the scan via ethernet to your PC and automatically open the appropriate software (which will automatically open or launch the selected application once the scan arrives). Network scanning means you can scan remote from your PC, then use scab at your PC as if it had made locally. This provides every PC on your home or small office LAN with a virtual scanner (and printer), it also works well on my wireless PC's. You can install Paperport 9 as needed / wanted on each PC. The result is you've scan enabled every PC in a home or office for the price of a single MFC device (in my case $199). If you have one PC close to the MFC it can be connected via USB, and then it can choose to use either USB or ethernet, to print or scan. Providing at least one PC with the greater scan resolutions and a bit more scan options than currently supported over ethernet.

The web server can be programmed to send email for various events (low toner, jam, out of paper and what not). You can also see the status by going to the web server and seeing the status live via the browser. I like the idea of it sending an email as there will be times that being remote from the device it may not be checked out for a bit, an email may get to me before I notice a jam through other means.

The toner is useful for 3,000 or 5,000 sheets (depending on which toner you order), and is only available from Dell (list price is $70 and $80 respectively, cost is under a 1,6 cents a page).

I purchased this at a cost of $199 plus tax from the Dell Small Business site with a half off coupon. To the best of my understanding Dell has offered this printer twice at $199. More common discounts bring the price to under $300, typically $269-$299. As usual with Dell it is always a good idea to search for a decent coupon and if none exist to wait for one, shipping was as always free but there was state sales tax.

Support is first rate, I suggest buying the unit from the Small Business site if support is a concern, it seems better than the home / home office support.

I had no need to upgrade to a new MFC device, in fact I was relatively happy with my prior unit (a Brother MFC 3800). However, I'm glad to have made the upgrade to the Dell. The quality of the output from the laser, the speed, low cost, great support, bundled software, network capability and more convenient buttons to do what I want are all bundled wonderfully with this unit. If you are considering a B&W laser based MFC, do not look any further, you will not be disappointed.

Some people have posted about fan noise, the 1600n is silent except when printing and for a few minutes after it has printed. The fan noise is noticeable, but not loud in the sense of making conversation near the printer difficult. It's mostly guilty of just being noticeable. It is nosier than it should be in my opinion, my Brother MFC 3800 was quieter. Another con is lack of a backlit LCD display, this makes reading the display difficult unless room light is high. It may be worth mentioning that a sheet left in the flatbed can cause the first sheet fed through the adf to crumple badly and will prevent the adf from working, there doesn't seem to be any detection by the adf of any blockage sitting in the flatbed (this was annoying the first which was also the last time it happened).

The 1600n seems to work with Samsung SCX-4720F drivers for all but network scan. It may be worth noting for anyone interested that Samsung has released MAC and Linux drivers for the 4720F and it seems very likely to me that they'd have no trouble printing using the Dell 1600n. If I could find the firmware to the 4720F, I'd try to flash it into my 1600n as the drivers and software from Samsung appear a bit more advanced than those provided by Dell.