Laser Printers

Samsung SCX-4300 is an all in one mono laser printer with copier and scanning functions. This mono laser printer has functional design with sleek plastic body that has a practical approach to enhance usability of the printer. It is specially made for home as well as office use and this printer looks smaller than other laser printer from competitor brands. When compared to rich featured model Samsung SCX-4500, this low cost laser printer has some changes but features same design as earlier version SCX-4200. The additional functions such as copying and scanning are an important selling point for this mono laser printer. Samsung SCX is considered to be a successful series in A4 monochrome laser printer category. Samsung SCX-4300 Multi-function laser printer is built with innovative features that accentuate the point of high printing speed and good aesthetics of the printer.

Design:

This SCX-4300 laser printer is fully made with durable black plastic body along with sleek finish and matte coating, which considerably avoids any fingerprint smudges. It is built with 406mm width, which is little wider than the other home laser printer but has the same height and depth when compared to rival brands. The extra width is made in order to include the scanning engine under its chassis. The A4 scanner bed is nicely sits at top of the machine and spreads from left to right side.

This SCX-4300 Compact Laser printer has wider area at the top and has different shape when compared to Samsung SCX-4500 laser printer. The control panel is at the front end, which feature 16 character LCD display without backlight but you can easily see the details under normal lighting condition. There are totally eight control buttons that gives easy navigational path for any print, copy or scan settings. The menu system can be easily accessed along with the display using controls.

Beneath the control panel there is a dedicated paper emerging slot, which comes with pull out to stop emerging paper falling on the desk. Even if you do not pull out the slot the paper would not fall on the desk. The output tray has capacity of 50 sheets. This mono laser printer has large paper feed tray that has the capacity of 250 sheets and it is double the capacity when compared with previous version of laser printer from Samsung. In this paper feed slot you can also find single sheet multi slot for any special printing purpose.

Connectivity:

The entire range of connection ports are placed at the back section of the printer, which includes power cable connection and USB port connection. It is the only connection facility for sharing data.

Printer Maintenance:

You can easily access drum cartridge and integrated toner, which can be revealed by opening front panel that hinges down firmly. This all in one laser printer comes with half capacity starter cartridge and you can expect nearly 1000 pages from this cartridge. You can extend the life of this cartridge until you buy new cartridge by simply activating lesser toner consumption option in the printer. When compared with higher range of laser printers, this Samsung SCX-4300 mono laser printer does not feature additional large paper input tray and optional duplex printing.

Inbuilt Software:

All the printing, scanning and copying operation can be controlled using in built SmarThru 4 software. A separate utility is provided to diagnose the printer problem such as Dr.Printer. The print quality setting is well supported by driver and you can easily handle this driver using simple navigational panel

Performance:

The print quality of this Samsung SCX-4300 Printer, Scanner and copier perform at fair level and not been accentuated with the point of excellence but considerably delivers 15ppm of print speed. Samsung claims the print speed to 18ppm in A4 and 19ppm for letter. The maximum resolution that this laser printer can achieve is 600 dpi with 256 shades of grey and well supported by 8MB of internal device memory.
The darker shade text prints are not up to the mark and it shows some curves and jagged lines that are visible on the text. Business graphs, when printed in greyscale, loses much of its details and looks with stripes on the printed sheet. The quality is not up to the expectation for graph prints with grey shades. The same results apply for photographic prints and it looks like a dot matrix print without details in shadow and darker areas.

Low Running Cost:

The important aspect of this business laser printer is its printing cartridge that cost around £40 and it well supports 2000 ISO pages. The cost per page including paper cost is more economic and comes around 2.7p. This mono laser printer uses normal toner and drum cartridge that keeps the running cost minimal. This cost is normal and applicable for mono laser printer and you are not charged with extra running cost when you use Samsung SCX-4300 multifunction laser printer.

This home laser printer gives balanced performance with scanning, print and copying function, which is suitable for moderate office use and home use. You cannot expect this printer to perform more printing volume of about 10,000 pages per month that is 300 – 400 pages continuously. Even if it does this job then the running cost is expensive. If you are looking for high volume printing capacity machine then you need to look for some high level laser printer that well suite your daily printing needs.

Photocopying:

All the photocopy functions are controlled using command buttons on the control panel. The same document can be taken with 99 copies using the option available in the control panel itself. You can easily perform resizing of documents that range from 50% to 200% from the original document. This mono laser printer has impressive photocopy print speed and shows up single page photocopy approximately in 11 seconds. It would take some extra time when you take photocopy of full sized colour photo. But for such low price laser printer this photocopy speed performance is considerable.
When you take a photocopy of a greyscale print in Samsung SCX-4300, the surface of the image and the text seems to be scrubbed off and not clear. Especially when the greyscale print is printed from the same printer the result looks very bad. The same result could also been seen with other branded all in one laser printers and from other models of Samsung. This effect is due to clash between dot print with scanning technology that comes inbuilt.

Scanning:

The closing door of scanner section that flips opens up to a moderate level and it is fully supported by internal spring mechanism. In case of any paper jam it opens up and gives enough space for easy adjustment. Normally in all laser printer the scanner section will opens up fully and stands in a vertical position but Samsung SCX-4300 does not feature such provision. It has optical resolution of 600 x 2400 dpi and comes with enhanced resolution of 4800 x 4800 dpi.

Verdict:

Samsung SCX-4300 is an honest laser printer with cost effective printing solution. This laser printer performs well in text prints, business graphics and chart prints. Only the photocopies of greyscale shades shows unclear and little scrubbed off. It has reasonable print cost and definitely fit in your budget. If you look for low priced mono laser printer with multifunction facility that gives reasonable running cost then this is your choice for both home as well as office use.

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Samsung SCX-4300 - Technical Specification Table

HP, the well known brand name for documentation service has simply designed LaserJet CP2025n keeping in mind small business work groups. HP has given importance to the network connection while designing this laser printer, so that the user can have reliable response from the multiple host computers. You can also expect some competitive print speed and print quality at the cost of accepting this printer as a space consuming unit that weighs around 50 pound.

When compared to its close contenders, this printer does have slow black print speed but produces high quality colour prints. HP has made this printer more user friendly by providing easy to understand instructions with comprehensive settings and features for user, which put together in an accessible tool box software. It is an efficient colour laser printer specially made for office usage.

Sluggish Design:

Being a 50 pound weighed laser printer, it does not have attractive design but holds the credit for well managed control panel and tucked in drawers. It has a standard colour combination with grey and black mix. With large working space on the printer, it is easy for paper handling on both feed tray and output tray and the space are well distributed between the panels. This laser printer has wide dimension and requires pair of hands to move around in your office desk. If you are looking for smaller sized colour laser printer then you need to sacrifice the quality of print. At the bottom of this printer you can find 250 sheet main paper output tray with fold down mechanism and has the capacity to hold 20 pound paper.

Additionally 50 sheet manual input tray is found at the bottom, which is equipped with adjustable paper guides suitable for various media. With added cost you can opt for additional 250 sheet tray to accommodate extra volume of papers and can be regularly used for particular paper media like letterhead. The control button is placed at the corner in front of the printer. All the connective ports are located at the back of the printer and this includes a USB port, power plug and an Ethernet jack for establishing simple network connection with the router.

Features:

Front Control Panel:
This CP2025n network laser printer has simple and useful control panel that is placed at the corner and it is difficult to have better visibility of the display. It would have been better if the panel is placed at the top for easy viewing like in Canon colour laser printers. This control panel has totally five buttons that helps you to locate the menu system and make quick changes to the printing process. These includes cancel button & directional pads and all the information would be seen on two line backlit LCD display, which also gives you alerts and details on toner level graphics. Additionally two alert LEDs indicates print error and low toner details.

Driver Software:
This HP CP2025n (CB494A) Colour Laser Printer comes with driver software and has comprehensive set of features that enables the user to know the status of the printing process. You can control the feeds in the input tray manually and ToolboxFX software gives you details on present toner level, shows no of pages remaining and usage trends. When the printer faces any malfunction you can also opt for email alert message. HP offers step by step video instructions through installation CD that instruct you on driver settings and tells how to optimise the print quality. This driver software is compatible with all Windows from 2000 that includes Vista and 64-bit XP, it also works well with Mac OSX 10.2.8 and newer version.

Lack of Important Features:
This HP laser printer does not have mechanical duplexer and automatic double sided printing facility is missing. Generally at this price range the duplex printing facility is an extra cost and normally available at higher end laser printer models. You cannot directly connect digital camera or other portable digital device like pen drive with this printer for taking instant prints due to the absence of PictBridge facility. All these drawbacks can be well compromised by its ability to connect with multiple computers using quick wired networking system without complex connection. The connection junction is strategically placed at the back of the printer, so you can easily access CP2025n from several PC without any hassle.

Installation of Toner Cartridge in CP2025n:
The toner cartridges can be easily replaced by opening the top front door of the printer, which show horizontally stacked four toner cartridges on the rack. It is easy to install the cartridge using single push to release mechanism for hassle free installation. This installation method is better than bucket style toner cartridge installation found in OKI laser printers. The cost per page for standard black prints comes in an average and for colour print not expensive. HP has given details on life cycle and cost of both colour and black cartridges but not mentioned about availability of high capacity cartridge. This laser printer has monthly duty cycle of about 40,000 pages, which is much suitable for large work groups and small office.

Printing Speed:
HP Colour LaserJet CP2025n Printer is good in output speed for colour prints and churns out 20 ppm but 20 ppm cannot be achieved when you run the print for 5 or 20 prints. The print speed does not even come close for shorter prints but when you print for long document CP2025n come close to 20 ppm. Similar case is applies to black text prints and it gives less than 10 ppm for five page colour graphics documents and black text prints. The print speed would be normally achieves for long print run. The black text print speed is not up to the mark and comparatively lesser then its rival products. HP CP2025n is mainly applied for business printing purpose where it requires to perform for longer print run, so obviously the quoted printing speed is automatically been achieved without any doubt.

Printing performance:
Black print produce more appealing look with sharp and crisp text edges. It has solid look and performs well for both colour prints as well as black prints. HP mainly speaks about the quality of the output rather then printing speed of the device. The black cartridge delivers clean and sharp edge for smaller fonts and produce better visibility even in graphical representations along with text. With total 600 dpi of resolution the quality is well maintained through out the printing cycle when compared to its close rival OKI C3600n.

Warranty:

This HP Colour laser printer comes with 1 year warranty with comprehensive online support.

Verdict:

Though this HP Colour LaserJet CP2025n priced at a little higher end it is well built for small work groups and business owners. You cannot expect double sided printing, since this printer does not have the facility for auto-duplexer. If you are more keen for mechanical duplexer and want a favourable environment for double sided printing to favour quick printing process then you can try for the another version HP Colour LaserJet CP2025dn with extra £40 cost. If you feel the cost of duplex version is higher then you can try Canon i-SENSYS LBP7200C that cost less than £40 in its duplex version. The lower black print speed is only minimal and it is not a major concern for small business printing purpose.

HP Colour LaserJet CP2025n Printer (CB494A) - Specification Details

Ricoh is a Japanese company that manufactures primarily cameras and office equipment such as printers, photocopiers, fax machine, etc. In the following review, we will be seeing in detail about Ricoh’s brand new printer, the Aficio SP C221N. This is a printer that is mainly aimed at the offices, as it is a workhorse that can keep up with your business printing needs. It has come into the market with some very hard to ignore features like multiple print capability, faster processor, more memory, print engines with great print speed and a lot of work group features like network printing, high capacity toner cartridges and larger paper input and output trays.

Designed professionally:

As in the case of most of the other office printers, the Ricoh Aficio SP C221N A4 Colour Laser Printer too looks very professional. It has the standard white and grey finishing, and it is actually quite sleek for an office printer with its dimensions being (H x W x D) 12.8″ x 16″ x 18″ and weighs 50.7lbs. You will find the big control panel with all the necessary buttons in the facia of the printer and along with it, there is also a small LED display, it is really disappointing that there is no LCD colour display to preview the print content. The menu is easy to access with the navigation controls and intuitive design.

Ports, trays and connectivity in SP C221N:

In the rear side of the unit you will find the cable cover, power socket, Ethernet port and an USB port. In the bottom of the printer, there is a bypass tray that will allow you to load paper sheet by sheet; this is a very useful inclusion for printing on letter covers, etc. When that is pulled out, you will find an input tray that has a capacity of about 250 sheets. On the top of the device is a standard tray extension that supports the sheets that come out curled after being printed. The stop fences behind the output tray ensure that the legal sized or A4 sized prints do not fall behind the machine; for the legal sized prints, the rear fence has to be raised and for the A4 sized prints, raise the forward fence. The top cover has to be opened to replace the print cartridge and the front cover to replace the waste toner bottle or to remove jammed paper.

The control panel:

The control panel of SPC221N Duplex Laserjet Printer is very intuitive and the buttons and indicators are placed very logically. In the left most corner is the alert indicator that lights up whenever a printer error occurs and when this happens, the Smart Organising Monitor has to be used to check for the error. The ready indicator lights up when the printer is ready to receive data from a system and flashes when the printer is warming up or receiving data. You will also find the load paper indicator that lights up when the paper tray is empty or unattached and the replace print cartridge indicator is available under each toner icon that flashes when there is very little toner remaining and remains lit when there is no toner left.  The keys include the stop/start key and job reset key.

Installation of Aficio SP C221N:

The installation of the printer takes a while. The first step in the installation process is that, the printer has to be configured as a Windows network printer. Once that is done, the printer has to be added in the printers and other hardware section in the control panel. And then keep pressing next in the upcoming dialog boxes and finally click on the finish button on the final dialog box. Once the installation process is done, the printer will be ready for the printing process. The specific installation instructions are given step by step description in the printer manual.a

Compatibility:

The SP C221N is compatible with Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003/Vista; Mac OS X v.10.2 – 10.4 Novell Netware v. 4.x or later and Citrix Server Operating Systems.

Network support:

Being an office printer, it is essential that Aficio SP C221N A4 supports networking and Ricoh has made no mistake by supporting network and local connection. It can be used as either Window printing port or even a network printer and the network connectivity can be established via the Ethernet interface offered. The local connections can be established via USB connections. There are just four steps to be followed to use the printer in a network environment: Print the test page, Install Smart Organising Monitor, Specify the IP address of the printer and Install the printer driver. The documentation offered with the printer gives you neat and clear explanation on how to do so.

Features:

Ricoh Aficio SP C221N A4 Network Laser Printer is equipped with a 300MHz processor and has about 128 MB of RAM as standard. A lot of the latest technologies like laser beam scanning, elecrtophotographic printing with mono component toner development and four drum tandem method have been employed. The printer has a duty cycle of 30000 prints per month.

Performance:

Having all these latest technologies employed we would expect spectacular print speeds. Unfortunately, even the 21ppm speed mentioned by the manufacturer in the specifications can be achieved only in the speed print mode. When tested the print speed is a mere 16ppm, which is very average for an office printer. The resolution of the prints in the draft mode is 600 x 600dpi, in standard mode the resolution is 1200 x 600dpi and in fine mode it is 2400 x 600dpi. As you can see, the resolutions are great. It takes about 14 seconds to give the first print, which is comparatively quite a long time. The printer also takes about a minute to warm-up.

Warranty:

The Ricoh Aficio SP C221N A4 Colour Laser Printer comes with one year standard manufacturer’s warranty.

Verdict:

The Ricoh Aficio SP C221N A4 Colour Laser Printer is best suited for people who require high volume colour printing. The printer is very inexpensive when compared to the other office printers in the market. Though the print speeds are average, it is really great value when considering the fact that it has a very powerful processor, lot of latest technologies and a very good set of resolutions. We would recommend the Aficio SP C221N for those who want networking, latest features and good resolution at a budget price tag.

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Ricoh Aficio SP C221N Network Printer - Technical Specification Table

The IBM Infoprint Colour 1824 Laser Printer is the latest addition to the infoprint series with all the up to date features and facilities included. It is designed to be hone for producing colour prints that should make a confident belief or get a very deep care. Simply locate this colour duplex printer on your busy desk or in a small office business and develop superior quality master output on a varied range of media. You can produce colour and black and white prints with the comfort of usage and excellent operation.

Design:

Sleek architecture:
The Infoprint 1824’s sleek architecture is proved by its dimensions, which is (H x W x D) 40 x 42.4 x 29.2 cm and light weight of just 21kgs. You might think that that does not sound much like sleek and light, yes you are right, but you must also keep in mind that the Infoprint1824 Colour A4 Laser Printer is an office printer. It has a very official look having a grey and white finishing. It has a very simple monochrome display and minimalistic controls. A compact printer will be a great option for a small office as it would slide in anywhere, giving you a lot of office space. In fact, it even has a small advantage of reducing the shipping and packing costs.

The control panel:
The front control panel offers you an easy way of viewing the status of print. You can cancel the processing jobs just with a single touch of the button and check the status very quickly with two coloured job light provided which shows green when processing and red when it undergoes an error.
A hundred percent front access is provided for the feed of the paper, removal of the paper after print and even to clear errors occurred due to miss-feeds. For printing using difficult media the printer is providing us with a choice of single sheet manual feed.

Input:
A dual drawer is also provided with the IBM Infoprint Colour 1824 LaserJet Printer which got a capacity of holding 650 sheets. By providing this dual drawer the printer is offering the user an input tractability, which is now capable of holding totally 901 sheets (251 in normal tray and 650 in dual drawer).

An USB port is provided on the front panel which is PictBridge certified which allows you to directly connect your USB flash drive to the printer through the USB port provided.

Features:

Networking:
Networking is a very useful business feature incorporated in the IBM 1824 duplex laser printer. It helps to create a network with different number of systems so that it can function on behalf of all the systems.

Back to back printing:
The two sided printing standard is another occupying business feature of the laser printer. Without wasting the papers just by printing one side, this option saves a lot of papers. It is also provided with application tractability with a vast diversity of media.

Huge 500MHz Processor:
The IBM Infoprint Colour 1824 Laser Printer is incorporated with 500MHz Processor, which reduces the time taken for the first print compared to other competitor printers. It just takes 12 seconds for the first print. It also very actively prints high impact, professional quality commercialising stuffs by in taking great deal of power because of the processor.

128 MB Internal Memory:
The printer is also provided with 128 MB of internal memory, which can be expanded upto 640 MB of memory.

Easy access:
The IBM printer provides you with a very easy way to access the modern print quality characteristics such as colour correction which can be done manually, setting colour balance, contrast, brightness, intensity and ICC profile matching.

Print speed:
The IBM Infoprint Colour 1824 printer performs with very high printing speeds. It is capable of printing 25 pages per minute for colour and 25 pages per minute for monochrome. The IBM laser printer takes 11 seconds for first black and white print and 12 second for first colour print. The manufacturer recommends a volume of up to 3000 pages per month to get a good performance and output from the printer.

Print quality:
The print quality of the printer is very professional, very high quality with absolutely precise colours. The print is of crispy detail and polished slopes. This extremely high quality of the print produced by IBM Infoprint Colour 1824 laser printer is making it also incisively suitable for business needs also.

Eco- Friendly:

The Eco mode provided in the IBM laser printer it reduces the power consumption and preserves energy used by the printer just by selecting the options which are most suitable for the environment.

The toner supplied with the IBM 1824 printer is an extra high yield toner. By providing such an extra high yield toner cartridges the IBM is trying to reduce the waste added to the environment. These cartridges are of long life span compared to other toner cartridges. The cartridges provided with this model are not compatible with any other model prior to it. The extra high yield toners offer you a chance to increase the productivity and also reduce the price for print per page. You can return the used cartridges to the IBM, who in return is offering you a good discount on next cartridge.

Warranty:

The IBM Infoprint 1824 Laser Printer is provided with one year manufacturer warranty.

Verdict:

The IBM Infoprint 1824 Network Laser Printer can be said as calm, portable and affordable printer. The print quality is extraordinary for the money paid for it. It will be best suited for home, small office and business purposes. The manufacturer of the printer is not only providing a high quality printer, he is also giving the user a chance to conserve environment along with him just by purchasing the printer. So be quick to be a part of the IBM team by making a wise decision of purchasing the printer. If you are a person waiting to buy an affordable colour printer, with many advance features like USB print, and high quality print then this printer is a best suit for them.

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IBM Infoprint 1824 - Technical Specifications, Features