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(More customer reviews)I've been looking pretty hard at the sales flyers over the last few months waiting for a chance to score a color laser printer at a price range that doesn't make me have to eat bag lunches for a month to catch up. A local office superstore had two models I was eying, an HP 1600 and this one. They seemed pretty similar in most regards until [...] dropped the CLP-300 100 dollars below the HP. It was time to grab the bargain.
This is the second Samsung laser printer I have in my home office now, the first one being the little ML-1740. I've had that one for better than a year now and it has been wonderful. So I wasn't afraid to try the Samsung CLP-300 because its name isn't as big as HP's. So I get it home and commence to setting it up. As with the earlier ML-1740, it took about 5 minutes to unpack, route cables, plug in the toner packs, and fire it up. It didn't skip a beat and had a test page done in a jiffy. Drivers for the computer went just as easily. Overall a very, very simple set up.
Back to the toner "packs" (or cartridges) for a bit... I don't think I've ever seen a more simple toner system. This system is literally easier to deal with than inkjet cartridge replacement. The front cover of the printer opens to reveal 4 "holes" for the toner cartridges. Simply remove the protective covers from the 3 color cartridges and 1 black cartridge and pop them into their respective holes. This has to be a step forward for the laser printer world.
Anyway, I've only had this for about a week but have put maybe 200 pages through it already. It works like a champ and I'm really happy I picked it up. I'll list below some of the pros and cons as I see them (in no particular order): Pros:
* Low noise when printing... very low noise actually. Its little more than a light whirring sound.
* Fast printing (about 20 to 25 seconds to the first high quality print and very fast once started).
* Great drivers giving you good printing options like double sided printing, booklet printing (on long or short side of page), watermarks, pre-generated letterhead, ability to print multiple pages per sheet, ability to print posters, etc... ...way too much to list here.
* Decent color photo prints. The quality isn't quite up to the photo quality of the better inkjet photo printers, but its good. And it certainly isn't poor enough to be a negative. I'd say though that if your primary goal is photo prints you might want to compare some other higher priced models before settling on this one. Otherwise, this should suit you fine.
*Size... it fits perfect on my printer stand. This doesn't over power the room by being overly bulky. Its not too much bigger than the ML-1740 and way smaller than its older sibling the CLP-510 (I liked the built in duplexing on the 510 but wasn't too crazy at all about its size).Cons:
* Power... it seems like it uses quite a bit more than the little ML-1740 (no surprise I'm sure) because my battery backup makes a click every few minutes like a brown out spike happens. The ML-1740 makes the lights flicker on occasion but had no effect on the UPS. On a related note however, this printer has a user adjustable power saver mode that puts it to sleep after a set number of minutes.
* Low paper capacity. Only about 150 sheets in the paper tray. But its easy to remove and fill and I doubt I'll ever print more than that in a sitting.
* No front auxiliary feed tray (like the ML-1740) for feeding various sized papers into the machine. The CLP-300 does take various sized papers but you have to use the paper tray.
* Power switch in the back. The ML-1740 had this set up too. How hard can it be to put the switch on the front or even the front side to make it more accessible. Better yet, let the unit be powered on and off automatically by software like some other printers can do. The switch all the way in the back, on the bottom, is not a deal breaker but its an aggravation that I wish Samsung would address in their future models.
* Toner amount... Here's something I'm not sure will be an issue or not in the long run but right now I'm a bit concerned. The toner packs are small. The color ones are a bit smaller than a styrofoam cup while the black one is about as large as a typical ceramic coffee mug but a bit taller perhaps. The technical papers say you'd get about 1000 sheets of color printing per color. I'll edit this review in a few months with my impression of how true that appears to be. The silver lining to this issue might be that the toner packs are cheaper than the typical toner cartridges for other laser printers. And also, according to the Samsung website, this printer is supposed to be cheaper to operate in the long than other printers. A cent or two here or there adds up I guess.So my score of 4 out of 5 stars represents the above pros and cons and my experience so far with this printer. Its not a perfect 5 because there is room for improvement but its a very nice printer that is great to have. And for the price, there is no reason why every home can't have color laser printing now. I can still remember when inkjets were replacing the dot matrix printers... move over inkjets, here we go again.*** Follow Up Edit: 24oct06 (original post 9oct06)***
I'm coming up on a month now of useage and haven't had a problem yet. I would like to add to my comment made above though regarding the quality of the photo prints ... I've done a bunch of pictures so far and I would again encourage people who are looking predominantly for a picture printer to look at a level a bit higher than this one. For what I do, this is fine, but folks looking for photo quality printing would likely find this a bit lacking.
Also, along with the photos and numerous web pages, I've printed several good sized PDF documents with a lot of illustrated graphics and the toner indicators in my printer monitor (the software) shows negligible toner use. I can't confirm this by sight or weight of the toner packs themselves but if the indicators are correct, I'm happy with the mileage I'm getting so far.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Samsung CLP 300 Mini Personal Color Laser Printer
The space-saving CLP 300 is a mobile printer that delivers beautiful color prints at 4 ppm and sharp laser text at 17 ppm. The same exclusive NO NOIS print engine you find in Samsung's professional series color printers gives you quiet operation and simple toner changes. Getting up and running is easy, too, with as few as four clicks of the mouse. Ideal for crowded offices or anywhere noise is a concern, the printer offers a whisper-quiet 49 dBA level of operation. Another benefit of its NO NOIS design is easy access to the small toner bottles for fast, simple toner changes. The CLP 300 features a 150-sheet multipurpose tray and a 100-sheet output capacity. The printer is compatible with the following operating systems: Microsoft Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003, and Mac OS 10.3 and later. With speedy USB 2.0 connectivity, the printer measures 15.4 by 13.5 by 10.4 inches and weighs a portable 30 pounds.
Click here for more information about Samsung CLP 300 Mini Personal Color Laser Printer
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