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[ Go to May 1997 Table of Contents ]
WinLab Reviews
-- by Cheryl Dominianni
NEC's SuperScript 660plus Laser Printer delivers the goods-and at an impressively modest price. Efficiently designed with both paper trays in front, the SuperScript 660plus has an input capacity of 150 sheets and an output capacity of 100. An optional 250-sheet cassette is available. The 19-pound unit is svelte enough, at 9.9 by 13.8 by 13.3 inches, to fit easily into tight spaces. It handles standard paper sizes-letter, executive, A4, A5, B5 and legal, in weights from 16 to 28 pounds-as well as heavy stock, transparency film, adhesive labels and various envelope sizes. A straightforward installation procedure offers a choice of GDI drivers or GDI and PCL 5e drivers for those who want to print from DOS. Watermarks, manual duplexing and proof sheets (up to four reduced pages on one side) are among the advanced features. In testing, the SuperScript 660plus lived up to its promised 6 pages per minute. After a wait time of 16 seconds, a 12-page Word document with a variety of fonts and type sizes printed in 1 minute, 59 seconds. Text was uniformly dark and crisp, comparing favorably with the output from more expensive laser printers. The SuperScript 660plus comes with a parallel cable, 256KB of RAM expandable to 4MB using industry standard SIMMs and a duty cycle of 2,500 pages per month. Anticipated cartridge life is 3,000 pages at 5 percent coverage, about 2.3 cents per page, with replacement cartridges running $69. You'll need a new photoconductor module, $125, at about 20,000 pages. NEC's low-end laser gives our recommended product, the Brother HL-720 Laser Printer, a good run for the money. Both are solid performers, but the Brother comes with twice as much standard memory. Although it's a worthy rival, the SuperScript 660plus won't knock the Brother HL-720 off our WinList-but it's a capable printer at an attractive price.
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