» Samsung CLP-300N Network-ready Color Laser Printer

Samsung CLP-300N Network-ready Color Laser Printer Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: good low cost color laser printer
Comment: Setting it up with my macintosh computers was a more difficult that I have encountered previously for printers. I never did solve the problem of being able to make it work on the network and now have it connected directly to an old imac which shares this printer. If I hadn't had this as an option I would have been VERY disappointed. Speed and color are good. Am glad to have moved away from reliance on ink jet printers. It sometimes make a funny clunking noise when printing. Price was good.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Most bang for your bucks in "laser" color printers!
Comment: Small, but produces stunningly large, vivid prints. You can "lay the pros in the shade" with this nifty laser color printer. Make your own greeting cards, print color reproductions of anything for pennies! You can load the ink in seconds. Nothing comes close to it on the market, quality and price wise.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Perfect starter color laser printer.
Comment: I got this for my small business. Occassionally we need color prints, it's a hassel to go out and print it, and usually the ink jets' ink is always dry when we need to use it. WIth the small amount of prints we do on color, normally it means buy ink, print 1 time, then it's dry. Now that the color laser is more reasonablly priced, we took a chance and got one.

We always use HP printers, but this samsung was really the best deal and sounded like it does exactly what we want. Here's what we though after using it for a while:

The good:
1. easy setup
2. 4 separate color cartridge. no more waste!!
3. The build is very sturdy.
4. Cost is very reasonable.

Minor complaints:
1. heats up a bit slow on start.
2. the black bleeds a bit. making the letters look "fat".
3. Printer is really heavy.

Despite the minor complaints I still give this a 5 star. Gotta understand you get what you pay for. There's better ones out there, but it'll cost you a lot more. For $350 the this samsung printer does an excellent job.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: CLP-300N review
Comment: I've used this printer for about a month. In general, it prints text well, albeit a bit oversaturated. OTOH, the rated speed output for monochrome prints is actually close to accurate.

For color prints, my use has primarily been for color charts, graphs and the like, and for this purpose, it works admirably well (use decent quality laser paper for best results). It is fast, and for both monochrome and color printing, it is very quiet, with rapid startup (no long waiting before the first page is printed).

I would not use this printer for photos, but that's obvious. Inkjet and dye-sub printers do a far better job at printing photos, although the costs of consumables are much higher as well. Comparison with my Konica-Minolta 2450 (which is also network ready shows slight banding and generally less than optimal photo quality. However, for general office use, claimed comsumable cost is considerably lower than for even the most basic inkjets.

The software supplied with the CLP-300N (the N means it has an ethernet network card installed) works as advertised, and installing it on both Windows 2003 and XP is straighforward. The bundled software (30 day trial) is worth what you pay for it, which is to say, very little. However, as noted above, printing photos is not this printer's forte.

All in all, the small size, quiet operation, quick startup and good monochrome printing with the opetion to add a dash of color makes this a good workgroup printer for SOHO use. The reliability of the printer remains unknown, as I've only printed about 5000 pages sso far. Similarly, the quoted capacity of the toner bottles may be overoptimistic, but it's too early to tell.

Compared to the behemoths sold by HP and others, this printer does not overwhem a small sized office or open space, and I recommend it with only a few small reservations. As a value/money proposition, it's a good deal.

Ishan Bhattacharya, MD

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