Laser Printers

Samsung has brought out a mono laser printer with a lot of convenient features, the Samsung ML-1665 and here you have a laser printer with an elegant, compact design such that there is space for this little piece of beauty anywhere.  There is much more than design to this printer and here is a summary of the pros and cons of the ML-1665 before we get into the details.

Positives:

• Great value for money
• Fast enough for use at home & first copy is super fast
• Small footprint
• Speedy warm up
• Extremely compact design, small & manually installable drivers, big paper tray
• Crisp black text
• Fast & clean monochrome prints of graphics & text
• Comes with a starter toner cartridge

Negatives:

• Short of some advanced features
• Glossy colour seems to leave some fingerprint marks
• Minor ghosting on draft-quality graphics
• Paper capacity is quite low

Besides, we also found this Samsung laser printer to have a low noise level and simple-to-use power button that ensures maximum convenience. But will the printer prove a reliable resource for both personal and office related printing tasks? Let us find out in this review.

How is the design?

The Samsung ML-1665 Monochrome Laser Printer, a black and white mono laser printer seems like it may well have been built at any point in the past10 years. There is no compromise whatsoever to X-generation tricks. Measuring 341mm (W) x 224mm (D)  x 184mm (H) (13.4″ x 8.8″ x 7.2″), the ML-1665 is a small, black box designed and built to be closed when not in use and to consume very little space on the work desk. This comes as a big sigh of relief for those who are very space conscious. Said this, you need a bit of room to open the printer before you begin printing. On the inside there is a small print engine and it happens to give you pretty neat print works in as little time as possible at lower costs. The printer is available now at a price of around £75, although there are places where you may get the printer for slightly less than £70.

What’s in the box?

• Samsung ML-1665 printer
• Toner cartridge (pre-installed – starter 700 sheet capacity)
• Mains Cable
• Instruction manual
• Driver CD

Paper & Handling:

The front cover of the Samsung ML-1665 Black Colour Printer can fold down and turn out to be a 150-sheet paper feed tray and comes with an adjustable paper stop which can nicely hold the feed stack in place. This seems to be a standard set-up built with a small printer; said this side-mounted paper trays will have enabled the printer to have a slightly smaller footprint. You can feed up each page onto the top of the machine, where you find the top cover folding out to become the output tray. Do not be troubled if you forget to open the printer’s top output though, it will not lead to any sort of crumpled print-outs or paper-jams. You can find a gap at the front that enables printed pages to exit unimpeded. Said this, it does not give you any undesirable pile of printed paper on the floor or the desk. On the right of the output tray there is a control panel which is quite simple having two led indicators, between them displaying power, error conditions & incoming data and two control buttons.

Toner cartridge:

Weighing 4.2kg (9.2lbs), the ML-1665 comes with a single-piece drum and toner cartridge. The cartridge slots in under the surround to the machine’s top cover, after it is folded out of the way. Now this is child’s play and anybody should be able to do it in a couple of minute’s time. You will get the cartridge only in one capacity, 1,500 ISO pages which, however low, is not bad a yield at all for a cartridge in a printer that is intended for the home.  The ISO standard specifies approximately 5% tone cover per page, although, therefore if most of your pages are report-length instead of simple correspondence, you might find you get lesser number of pages than this from each toner cartridge.

Control buttons:

Coming to the control panel, it is designed with no more than a couple of buttons and a single indicator, although one of those control buttons has a novel function. You can find a combo of 2 hard control buttons and 2 LED indicator lights. The LED indicator lights are designed to flash maniacally in case you find any hardware problems. One of the control buttons will turn the machine on, whilst the other one is a ‘print screen’ control button that can automatically print whatever is currently displayed on the monitor of the PC or Mac attached to the printer. So it really does what it says with a single press. The print-screen control button is not the most impressive of things, but the screen print function is something that is still unique to Samsung lasers and no other printer manufacturers has integrated this aspect still and it works a pleasure. This is an easy and quick way of recording web transactions and interesting pages. It may sound more intuitive having a keyboard key dedicated to screen print than a physical control button on the printer.

Printing speed:

The print speed is not amazingly quick, but 15.2ppm for mono text is somewhat fast enough for personal use. The Samsung ML-1665 Laser Printer can print at a print resolution of 1200 x 600 dpi and the manufacturer claims it could give out 16 pages per minute in A4 (17ppm in Letter), with the very first page popping out in just 8.5 sec. Most brands seem to make vague, imprecise speed proclamations, though the manufacturer has not in this case. On testing the machine, the Samsung ML-1665 was able to manage a print speed of 15.2ppm for printing a single-page text document at decent draft quality. That perhaps is the quickest possible print job that we can throw at the ML-1665. The printer still managed to print a 10-page document containing mixed graphics and text at good draft quality at a speed of 11.5ppm. It took 30 seconds for the machine to print a 5-page text document and that gives a speed of precisely 10ppm, however on the longer, a 20-page document managed a speed of 14.82ppm. This is just a page per minute slower compared to the Samsung ML-2525 and the ML-1665 surpasses the ML-2525 on printing 5-page text and graphics, which it completes in 33 seconds achieving a speed of 9.09ppm. In spite of all our attempts to slow the system down, the Samsung ML-1665 laser printer managed quick first-page print outputs, courtesy its fast 150MHz processor in addition to memory/storage of 8MB. The decent processing power obviously helps the printer maintain high print speeds for more serious jobs at greater resolutions. A screen print took approximately 12 seconds and to print 15 x 10cm photo on an A4 sheet, it took about 10 seconds, regardless of the print mode.

Print quality:

Talking about the print quality, the print quality of the Samsung ML-1665 is superb, as we have come to expect from their mono lasers. Mono text is sharp, clean and perfect. We found the Greyscale shading pretty good in the illustrations from our test set of business documents, though there is a bit of variation through some areas of greyscale fill, whilst not quite enough to be termed banding, it is simply not visible. And printing at a respectable draft quality was more than enough for graphics and text.  There is no noticeable ghosting observed on graphics that is of draft-quality, though this is fully removed when you are printing at 1200 x 600dpi, which is its maximum resolution. Try printing text at full resolution and the ML-1665 will produce rich and sharp blacks with no real signs of any splatter and high contrast. The only minor flaw in the quality obtained of our prints was there is a bit of graininess and perceptible half-toning in photos. We also noted a couple of little jagged imperfections in the smooth, fine curves in few of our line graphs. In terms of quality, there is not much to pick between the ML-1665 and ML-2525 as both showed decent levels of detail and capable of reproducing some of the shadow detail too. There is a visible dot mask to the image, but for regular work, the 600 x 1,200dpi images look absolutely fine.

Easy set-up:

Setting up the system was a breeze. Thanks to the CD-ROM which comes alongside the printer with a Windows 7 driver. This means you will not have to search for the latest versions online to get up and running. We had no trouble with changing settings as well. Samsung ML-1665 is compatible with both Windows 7 as well as Mac OSX and had no problems with drivers or sort of anything like that. We had it running in just 10 minutes under Windows 7. So, how do you go about the set-up? Just pop in the desk and stick to the on-screen prompts (Windows 7). So a big thumbs-up there.  However installing the printer driver on the XP Vista can be a tricky job.

Data connection:

The only data connection that you find is USB and installation is a doddle. But one little note on the printer’s set up front. Ensure you have a USB cable lying around so that it can be connected to your PC or Mac. It is a bit unfortunate that the ML-1665 does not have a USB cable and not to mention that it is not at all expensive. Said this, we do not find the same in most leading makes.  It took us very little time to get it up and running smoothly and we suppose the same must be true for you. Therefore, as long as you have a USB cable on hand, you should have no problem at all.

Running cost:

Considering just one consumable, it is easy to calculate the running costs. The 1,500-page cartridge could cost well over £45. We did a lot of search online only to find out that even the cheapest source gives only a cost of 3.9p per page and that includes 0.7p for the paper. This costs just a penny more page than the ML-2525, which is the main difference between the two machines. Just compare the ML-1665 with other entry-level mono laser printers; nevertheless, the operating cost is by no means unique. Being a relatively new printer, it might well be that both its price and running cost of its main consumable will come down in the coming months and this means you have a more economical machine to run.

Manufacturer warranty:

The Samsung ML-1665 Laser Printer comes with an on-site warranty service of 12 months from the original date of purchase.

Conclusion:

If you are a light user, then you will be pretty happy with the ML-1665 as it comes with a very low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) owing to its cheap purchase price. At simply over £70, there are some cheaper printers that can produce a TCO of £152 over 3 years of light use (i.e., 100 pages per month). Unfortunately, the ML-1665 is not your cup of tea if your printing need is higher. A medium print load of about 750 pages/month over a period of 3 years could provide you a staggering £842 TCO. A lot quieter than regular inkjet printers, we actually liked the one touch screen dump as it obviously saves you time going to menus. It is excellent for low-usage where you do not require the ink to dry out way before it is time. Therefore, if all you want is a simple printer that would come in handy for screen prints and correspondence, the Samsung ML-1665 fits the bill brilliantly. Perhaps with the experience of having reviewed several mono laser printers in the past, this one seems to show a decent turn of speed, with not very little time taken for processing before your start the printer. But nonetheless, you require clearing the paper away between print sessions.

Samsung ML-1665 Mono Laser Printer – Technical Specification Table

Manufacturer	Samsung
Model Name	Samsung ML-1665 Mono Laser Printer
Product Code	ML-1665/ MLT-D1042S
Printer type/Technology	Personal printer – laser – monochrome
Dimensions	341mm (W) x 224mm (D)  x 184mm (H) (13.4″ x 8.8″ x 7.2″)
Weight	4.2kg (9.2lbs)
Standard Memory	8MB
Max Printing Resolution/Native print resolution	1,200x600dpi / 600x600dpi
Printer Drivers /Emulations	Any web print, driver
Max Printing Speed	Up to 17 ppm – B/W – ANSI A (Letter) (216 x 279 mm); Up to 16 ppm – B/W – A4 (210 x 297 mm)
First Print/Copy Out Time B/W	< 8.5 seconds (from Ready Mode)
Maximum paper input/ Output tray capacity	150/ 100 sheets
Supported Media Type	Plain, Cotton, Thin, Archive, Recycled, Pre-Printed, Coloured, Bond, Label, Envelopes, Thick, Transparency, Cardstock
PC Connection	USB 2.0
OS Support	Windows 2000/Vista/XP/7/ 2003 Server, several Linux OS, Mac OS X 10.3 ~ 10.6, 2008 Server
Power Consumption	350W
Processor	150MHz
Noise Level	< 49dBA (Printing), < 25dBA (Standby)
Language Simulation	SPL (Samsung Printer Language)
Package contents	Samsung ML-1665 printer Toner cartridge (pre-installed – starter 700 sheet capacity) Mains Cable Instruction manual Driver CD
Additional features	Print screen/Web area button
Monthly Duty Cycle	Up to 5000 pages
Warranty type	On-site
Manufacturer warranty	1 year

The Brother DCP-7030 Compact Mono Laser Multifunction Printer gives you some of the fastest mono print speeds in its class and provides real time-saving that will make a world of difference to your business. Count on its flatbed mono copying that will deliver an equivalent performance of a standalone copier and if you are looking for full colour scanning capabilities, this compact laser printer will never let you down. Here is a quick rundown of the pros and cons of the product.

Pros:

• OCR scanning (word recolonization, converts scanned words into text documents)
• Quick & high quality scanning
• Lots of software options
• Easy driver installation
• Custom Copy buttons & scan buttons
• Fast printing
• Fairly cheep toner & lasting

Cons:

• No LCD display
• Not as good looking

You will be pretty amazed at some of the capabilities of this all-in-one printer as we did a search on other machines and nothing came close to it.  So, let us take a look at the possibilities in the following review on the Brother DCP-7030 laser printer.

Design features:

Brother had no second thoughts in integrating its latest mono laser print engine into a number of different models and multifunction machines in a wide range of product suite. The DCP-7030 laser printer is at the lower rung of its triple-function range, which gives you mono copying and colour scanning as well as mono laser print. Though the flatbed scanner on top of the print engine is slightly wider than the printer itself, the manufacturer has made a decent expansion in its line, so the unit has a neat, integrated look. It would sit pretty squat on your desktop, as well, so is unobtrusive in a small business or home office environment. Though the model lacks an automatic document feeder, there is a separate glass trip at the end of the flatbed, usually used when you feed paper for scanning. This makes the scanner section pretty wider than it otherwise need to be.

Weighing 9.9kg, the DCP-7030 Laser Printer machine has a pale grey and cream finish and appears to be a bit less severe than several of the black and silver units on offer. Not to mention that the model’s control panel is appreciably simple. Although the copy function panel has some great options like enlargement and reduction function, colour/ contrast adjustment settings and up to four pages per sheet, you can find a single row of buttons which is quite simple to understand. And there is the large Start and Cancel buttons positioned at the right end of the row that are hard to miss.

Print engine of Brother:

The printer drum and cartridges, though in separate cartridges, can slide into place as the tone can be easily replaced about six times, before you require swapping out the printer drum cartridge as well. The print engine of Brother was tested twice before in HL-2140, a standalone printer and a business multifunction, having all the additional features for wireless connection and fax, the MFC-7840W. The machine though simple in design delivers the same level of performance with these other models.

LCD display:

The 2-line by 16-character LCD display is nicely used, but it desperately needs a backlight. We found that the reflections can make it relatively difficult to read even when you are standing right over the machine. And in case you have the printer on the desk at the side of you, you will still find it difficult to make out the characters.

Built with only USB connection:

We were pretty satisfied with the fact that the entire scanner section hinges up to deal with paper jams and we had no problems during testing whatsoever. Also, you need not have to lift to get at the drum and toner cartridges, although, as these slide from the front, once you fold down the front cover. The DCP-7030 Multifunction Laser Printer is built with only a USB connection and this means you will have to configure your PC to share it or purchase a router having printer support, if you need to use it over a network. An issue here is that it is not clearly stated before purchase and you need to purchase it separately. There are only two sockets at the back of the machine; one is for the main power and the other for the USB2.

Easy set-up:

Setting up is a breeze and we ran Windows XP and had it running very quickly.  The printer showed up immediately in the system preference. Mac and Linux users have nothing to fear for a change.

Software & Drivers:

Coming to the installation part, the software bundle can be installed in one simple, easy operation from the CD you are supplied with. The software suite comprises OmniPage optical character recognition and Nuance’s PaperPort document management applications, but if you want to go for a different package or you do not need a document management, the installation disc comes with a version of the suite without Paperport. Brother also gives you a quick and simple Control Centre application as well.

Low Running costs:

There are only two costs to operating the DCP-7030; one is the toner (which comes at a reasonable price) and the other, the drum unit. The high-capacity toner cartridge should give you 2,600 ISO pages and the 12,000 page drum costs around 2.83p per page, which sits in the mid-range for mono laser print. The only time you need to replace the toner is when it runs out; keeping your running cost under control. At the same time though, it cannot be more expensive than the inkjet printer.

Printing Speed:

The manufacturer claims print speeds of up to 22ppm for the DCP-7030 printer, but did we mention that the test machine took 22 sec on each of 5-page test documents namely text with business graphics and straight text. This is equivalent to 13.6ppm, some way off the quoted number. We usually assume Brother’s quoted speeds are calculated from print tests in draft mode, but Brother does not comprise a draft mode as such in the print driver. We experimented bringing the resolution down to 300dpi, turning on the toner mode and opting for Office Document (i.e., no graphics) as the printer type, although this made no significant difference to the speed we had seen. Printing a single page, A4 copy takes just 12 seconds, which provides the machine a copy speed of 55ppm, a tad faster on larger copy jobs. Now, that is great going for a digital, laser printer based machine, especially for one that costs well under £120. The time consumption for a 15 x 10cm photo is roughly 14 seconds which is fairly good for a machine in this price range.

Print quality:

The most impressive feature is perhaps the print quality, as from other printer devices, using this engine is pretty amazing with clean black text displaying no signs of spatter or other print anomalies visible at close distances. You may even find that small point sizes appear clean, neat and uniformly printed with the machine’s native resolution of 600x600dpi. Said that the machine is capable of delivering a much higher resolution of 1200x600dpi with software enhancement. This proved particularly useful on test photos which had smoother shading, sharper lines and lesser visible dithering in HQ 1200 mode. Moving onto greyscale graphics still shows the printer device to be really capable of smooth, clean output with clear definition in each character produced and good registration of black over grey colour. Our test photo print underpins the opinion as there is little sign of banding in areas of grey. We found some loss of detail in shadow areas, but that is appreciably low, but overall you will find the photos good enough for regular use in office documents. There was a slight drop-off in the print quality when copying docs with some areas of greyscale fill. But then the greys start to appear quite patchy and nowhere as regular as the originals from which they were taken.

Paper & Handling:

Another plus point is the slide-in paper which will keep the paper and the innards of the device well protected from dust. The DCP-7030 All-in-one Laser Printer features a capacity paper tray of 250-sheets adjustable for legal or letter size paper in addition to single-sheet manual bypass for labels, envelopes or other media types. There is a fold-out rear output tray that provides a straight-through paper path and is perfect when you are using the single-sheet bypass slot to print envelopes or thicker media.

Professional copying:

We liked the Flatbed mono copying feature available on this machine and the good news is that it can produce the same, high standard output of a standalone copier.  The printer has an automatic document feeder that will let you copy multiple pages automatically so that you can go about doing your routine work. It is not work shy because its stack and sort feature would automatically collate the pages. In addition to these time-saving attributes, you can also save the cost of paper by minimising 2, 4, 9, 16 or 25 page docs very easily on the copier onto one single sheet. The following are some of its features worth mentioning.

• Up to 99 multi-copies
• Enlarge and reduce copies from 25% – 400% in 1% increments
• Stack and sort functions

Hi-resolution colour scanning:

The DCP-7030 Mono Laser Printer can help scan documents directly to a preferred file on your PC in a format of your choice with a single button press. Not surprisingly, it can scan documents and send them right to your e-mail as an attachment or to a single PDF file. The direct editing feature is pretty useful as it could scan an image right away to an image editing application and here you are, it is ready for printing or editing – great for the lazy!. With the Scan to OCR feature, you can have your pre-printed documents edited in a jiffy. Check out some of its scanning features that make it one of the most competitive options on the market.

• Enhanced High resolution colour scanning up to 9600 dpi
• 48 bit input / 24 bit output colour depth
• 256 shades of grey

Though the scan quality is restricted by the 600 x 2400 dpi maximum optical resolution, the scans are accurately coloured and noticeably sharp.

Warranty information:

The DCP-7030 is covered under a manufacturer warranty of 12 months from the original purchase date. The manufacturer also provides 1 year limited warranty for service & support.

Bottom-line:

There is something that we like the least about the machine and that is when inputting the enlargement/reduction manually; we found no keyboard to enter the percentage. For example, if you need 137%, you cannot just enter ‘137’, but press down the ‘+’ button 37 times, which is really annoying. The DCP-7030 does not boast hell lot of features, but it is a very serviceable all-in-one printer that is built around a good print engine that should deliver optimum print performance and service without burning a hole in your pocket. More importantly, it does what it is supposed to.  With out-of-the-ordinary quality and commendably simple maintenance, it is a great piece of personal printer for a light to medium workload at just over £100. Said that, heavy handed users might find it a bit on the flimsy side. All said and done, we reckon it is a good buy and the DCP-7030 matches up to several, pricier machines. If customer reviews are any sort of indication, the service offered by the seller is top class.

Brother DCP-7030 Laser Printer – Technical Specification Table

Manufacturer	Brother
Model Name	Brother DCP-7030 Mono Laser Multifunction Printer
Model number	DCP-7030
Printer type/Technology	Laser-Monochrome/ Electrophotographic Monochrome
Best use	Text printing
Dimensions	16.9” (W) x 15.6” (D) x 10.1” (H)
Weight	21.8 lbs
Standard Memory	16MB
Max Printing Resolution	up to 2400 x 600 dpi
Printer Drivers /Emulations	Windows GDI driver
Max Printing Speed	up to 22 pages/min
First Print/Copy Out Time B/W	10 sec/15 sec
Original Type	Sheets
Min Copy Size/ Max Copy Weight	3” x 4.57”/ 163 g/m2
Std Media Capacity	250 sheets
Supported Media Type	Labels, Transparencies, Envelopes, Recycled paper, Plain paper
Output Trays/Bypass Feeder Capacity	100 sheets/ 1 sheets
Document/ Media Handling Details	Input tray – 250 sheets size: A4 (8.25 in x 11.7 in), A6 (4.13 in x 5.83 in), Bypass tray – 1 sheets size: 3 in x 4.57 in – 8.66 in x 16 in), Output tray – 100 sheets
Speed Details	Printing: up to 22 pages/min (A4) ; Copying: up to 22 pages/min (A4); Printing: up to 23 pages/min (Letter A)
PC Connection	Full speed USB 2
Software (included)	Presto! PageManager 7, ScanSoft PaperPort SE 11.0
OS Support	Linux, MS Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Apple Mac OS X 10.2.4 or later, MS Windows 2000 Professional, MS Windows Vista, MS Windows XP Home Edition, MS Windows XP Professional
Power Consumption	Operational:320W, Standby: 75W, Sleep: 8W
Copying details	up to 22 pages/min (Max Speed); up to 600 x 600 dpi (Max Resolution); 256 (Gray Scale Half-Tones); 400% / 25% (Max Document Enlargement/Reduction), 99 (Max Copies)
Copying features	16 on 1, 4 on 1, Poster-25, 25 on 1, 9 on 1, 2 on 1, Repeat-16, Poster-9, Poster-4
Scanning details	600 x 2400 dpi/ 19200 x 19200 dpi (Optical/ Interpolated Resolution); 24 bit (Colour Depth); 48 bit (Colour Depth- Internal)
Fax	No
Consumables (included)	1 x cartridge – up to 1000 pages
Microsoft Certifications	Windows Vista Certified
ENERGY STAR Qualified	Yes
Humidity Range Operating	20 – 80%
Sound Emission	32 dB (idle); 63 dB (operating)
Manufacturer warranty	12 months
Service & Support warranty	Limited warranty – 12 months

HP has introduced its new model colour laser printer based on colour laser mechanisms which has multifunction options. This sleek new multifunction from HP is aimed at the SOHO market and is little bigger than a typical single-function laser printer.

Features:

HP LaserJet CM1312 Multifunction Colour Laser Printer is an awesome product from HP which decked out in cream and has stylish polished looks with elegant curving. A simple, A4 flatbed scanner is present under the cream lid. The control panel is backed up by a two-line by 16-character LCD display. This has no backlight and thus it angles forward and contrast is high enough to be read in normal overhead light. Controls are fairly good for a laser-based multifunction printer, but the large, raised button which cycles right and left through menu options when we press either end of it, has an OK button set within it, which makes it fiddly to use.

Unfortunately, the scanner section of this device does not hinge up, but there is sufficient space between it and the printer section to rescue any paper that might get jammed. The HP LaserJet CM1312 printer section has a very rounded front, which is a hinged cover giving direct access to the cartridges and below this we have a 150-sheet paper tray. Just above the tray is a hinged cover, which is labelled as ‘Front door for jam access’. During paper jams we would have to lift this cover and remove the paper tray below to be able to get a hand in.

When you fold down the printer’s front cover there’s an inset handle, which pulls out a tray holding four and near-identical drum and toner cartridges. This makes it a particularly easy colour laser to maintain which is remarkable in a device at this price. The software CD comprises of custom-made HP software for scanning, copying and printing and a copy of ReadIris OCR software. To make the entire installation process very easy, animated instructions is present for setup.

LaserJet CM1312 scanner’s maximum resolution is 1,200 dpi. Scan speeds and quality are really good, with sharp detail and accurate colours. Tiny 5pt fonts were crisp and legible even at 150dpi. Unfortunately, the interface makes it difficult to make multiple scans as there are no auto-cropping features and the interface software closes between scans. The scanner driver of CM1312 has been improved with additional colour and image adjustment options. Even though, the scanner driver has been improved, many annoying aspects of the old driver interface remain, and some vital settings have been buried in obscure locations.

Performance:

The Colour LaserJet CM1312  Printer would find it very difficult to win any printing races. HP claims that this machine can print 12ppm in black and 8ppm in colour, which would be reasonable but, as usual, we couldn’t reach those speeds. Our five-page, black text test document took 48 seconds to complete, resulting in a real-world, black print speed of 6.25ppm. A five-page, colour text and graphics document would take 63 seconds, or an equivalent of 4.76ppm, so both results are little over half the rated figures by HP. A 15 x 10cm photo would take 32 seconds to print and a single page copy would take 38 seconds, which is reasonable given that this model has no Auto Document Feeder (ADF).

The photo print, like all the prints, uses HP’s patented ColourSphere toner. As the name suggests, it is more spherical than most. Even so, the photo prints are rather over-coloured and a little garish. While detail levels are good, and there’s hardly any banding.

The colour and brightness of the photo prints are ideal for business graphics and the colours in the text and graphics page look pretty bright and confident. This is the kind of output which we would love to see and the colour photocopies are very close in colour to the original from which they were copied. The copied documents are free from tonal fading which we notice very often in many copiers. The black text is very smooth, crisp and clean, giving a professional touch even though when it is printed at the machine’s default 600dpi resolution.

The only running costs on HP LaserJet CM1312 all-in-one Printer are the combined drum and toner cartridges, which are rated at 2,200 pages for black and 1,400 pages for each of the colours.

Warranty:

HP LaserJet CM1312 Multifunction Colour Laser Printer comes with the return to dealer warranty of one solid year.

Verdict:

The easy setup and simple design of the colour LaserJet CM1312 make it very endearing, but there are a couple of odd design choices that may let it down. A paper tray holding only 150 sheets on a machine designed for office use is an odd restriction available in LaserJet CM1312. This elegant device would be a fine choice if we are ready to accept certain restrictions like slow speed and pay a bit more for colour page they print or copy.

HP LaserJet CM1312 Printer – Technical Specification Table

Manufacturer	HP
Model Name	Colour LaserJet CM1312
Print Technology	Laser
Dimensions (W x D x H)	437 x 455 x 405 mm
Weight	21.2Kg
Monthly Duty Cycle (max)	30000 pages
Maximum print resolution	600 x 600 dpi
Maximum scan resolution	1200 x 1200 dpi
Scan output bit depth	24-bit
Mono speed	12ppm
Colour speed	8ppm
Maximum number of copies	99
Copier zoom range	25-400%
Max mono copy resolution	600 x 600 dpi
Max colour copy resolution	600 x 600 dpi
Max Supported Memory	128MB
Maximum page size	A4
Sheet feed capacity	150x80g/sm
Maximum paper weight	240g/sm
Standard printer interfaces	USB Hi-Speed
Language	PCL6
Operating System Supported	Windows 2000/Server 2003/XP/XP-64/Vista, Mac OS X 10.3+, Linux, Novell Netware 3.2/4.2/5.x/6, HP-UX10.20/11.x, Solaris 2.5x/2.6/7/8/9/10, AIX 3.2.5, MPE-iX, Ctrix MetaFrame
Software Included	HP toolbox, LaserJet Scan, Readlris Pro, PCL6 and PS 3 (emul) drivers
Sound Emission	61 dBA
Warranty	1Year

Brother has launched its new product Brother DCP-7045N Laser Printer that provides characteristics of a Printer, copier and a scanner. This printer is ideal for businesses and small work groups, because it combines a host of great features, including printing, copying and scanning modes to give us professional results while allowing you to stick to your budget.

Features:

The Brother DCP-7045 is a compact 3 in 1 network laser printer which is perfect for professionals and small work groups as it offers high quality printing, scanning and copying. Brother DCP-7045N Laser Printer employs laser print technology which provides high quality printing with maximum printing resolution of 2400 x 600 dpi. This elegant device weighs 11.1 Kg and the dimensions are 42.8 x 39.6 x 30.4 cm. The maximum supported letter size by this product is 216 x 279 mm. Brother DCP-7045N. The Brother DCP-7045N supports PCL6 and offers a solid memory of 32 MB. This printer has a document feeder which can store up to 35 sheets. Transparencies, envelopes, plain paper and labels are the media formats supported in the laser printer. The output tray of this laser printer can hold 100 sheets and the maximum media capacity supported is 250 sheets.

This DCP-7045N Multifunction Laser Printer provides connectivity through Hi-Speed USB and Ethernet 10 Base-T/100 Base-TX. This device has a highly fast and reliable USB port which makes it PC connectable. TCP/IP and IPP are network protocols that are supported by this product. This new product of Brother is compatible with various operating systems including Linux, MS Windows Server 2003, Apple Mac OS X 10.2.4 or later, MS Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, MS Windows Vista, MS Windows 2000 Professional, MS Windows XP Home Edition and MS Windows XP Professional. Softwares included with Brother DCP-7045N are Presto PageManager and ScanSoft PaperPort SE 11.0. The cartridge provided with this printer can print up to 1500 pages.

Brother DCP-7045N A4 Laser Printer is available in relatively modest price tag which doesn’t prevent Brother from providing some very decent management software so that network administrators can keep an eye on what the printer’s up to. The DCP-7045N produces all our documents quickly and efficiently. Its Scan-to-e-mail key and OCR function make life even easier.

Performance:

Brother DCP-7045N can print up to a maximum number of 22 pages per minute. Printing speed and maximum copying speed is almost the same. The maximum printing resolution of this laser printer is 2400 x 600 dpi. This laser printer takes less that 10 seconds for the first print out. The scanning facility of the Brother DCP-7045N provides an optical resolution up to 600 x 2400 dpi. The text quality is actually cleaner and sharper than that of some of its competitors. This printer is not up to the mark on graphics, and while it’s fine for presentations, photos lack detail.
Plenty of facilities are available besides the printing capabilities. Even though fax facilities aren’t included, we do get a copier and a scanner built into the Brother DCP-7045N. The scanner is particularly notable, and the scan reproductions are reasonably faithful.

Warranty:

Standard warranty of one year is available for BROTHER DCP-7045N Multifunction Laser Printer.

Verdict:

The Brother DCP-7045N is a compact network ready multifunction mono laser printer, copier and colour scanner. It is an effective multifunction device whose performance is not very appealing when compared to other laser printers of this category. It offers networking and additional multifunction capabilities and it is a perfectly serviceable printer. It can perform a very solid job with a minimum of fuss. It has nothing very excessive or exceptional.

Brother DCP-7045N Laser Printer – Technical Specification Table

Manufacturer	Brother
Model Name	DCP-7045N Laser Printer
Functionality	Multifunction
Print Technology	Laser
Output Type	Monochrome
Dimensions (W x D x H)	428 x 396 x 304 mm
Weight	11.1 Kg
Speed	22 ppm
Resolution	2400 x 600 dpi
Scanner Resolution	600 x 2400 dpi
Input Tray Capacity	250 sheets
Output Tray Capacity	100 sheets
Media type	Transparencies, envelopes, plain paper, labels.
Media sizes	76.2 x 116 mm – 220 x 406.4 mm Output tray – 100 sheets ADF – 35 s heets size: 76.2 x 116 mm – Letter A (216 x 279 mm)
Ink Cartridge Type	Black
Capacity	up to 1500 pages
Memory	32MB
Interface	Hi-Speed USB, Ethernet 10 Base-T/100 Base-TX
OS required	Linux, MS Windows Server 2003, Apple MacOS X 10.2.4 or later, MS Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, MS Windows Vista, MS Windows 2000 Professional, MS Windows XP Home Edition, MS Windows XP Professional
Noise Level	32 dBA
Software Included	Presto PageManager and ScanSoft PaperPort SE 11.0
Warranty	1 Year