» Samsung ML-1710 Laser Printer

Samsung ML-1710 Laser Printer Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Good for an inexpensive laser
Comment: I still use this printer at home. The toner cartridges run about $60, but last quite a while. Holds maybe 200 - 300 sheets of paper in the tray. It's quite light and has a USB port. I hooked up a wireless NIC via the USB and print wirelessly with this printer.

Installation a breeze, no driver conflicts. Very good for the price. I gave it 4 stars because it just doesn't hold enough paper as I print large manuals sometimes and have to keep feeding this thing. But like I said... for the price; it's great.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Best monochrome laser printer for the price
Comment: The ML-1710 is a solid, reliable printer that works well in your home or small office. I've owned mine for almost 3 years now and it's as good as new!

For the record, I disagree with others who have said the printer is excessively noisy. This is a blatant exaggeration. While the unit does produce some sound while warming up and during printing, it is not in the least bit disruptive. In all honesty, my Samsung 1710 runs quietly in my home.

Having been using this printer regularly for several years, here's my take on what I believe are its accurate strengths and limitations:

STRENGTHS (in no specific order):

1. Outstanding print quality; text output is clear and sharp.
2. Detachable internal paper tray: makes it easy to load paper (up to 250 sheets), and having an internal tray protects the paper from exposure to dust!
3. Fast print speeds.
4. Elegant, compact, lightweight and small footprint.
5. Convenient "Toner Save" mode (when printing in this mode, Samsung claims you can save up to 40% ink consumption.)
6. Excellent driver support for different operating systems.
7. Drum and toner are a single unit, and very easy to replace.
8. Very affordable printer.
9. Samsung quality and reliability.

LIMITATIONS:

1. Starter toner only produces approx. 1000 printed pages (instead of the 3000-page standard toner).
2. Output paper tray might be considered a bit small in terms of # of sheets it can hold (about 30 or so printed pages).
3. Poor graphics quality: while this monochrome laser printer produces outstanding text printouts, graphics printouts are not all that great. So if your focus is on printing graphics, this is not the best printer for that purpose.

Overall, this is a superb, compact black-and-white laser printer whose significant strengths far outweigh its minor limitations. This unit is especially perfect for home use. My pages print quickly, and they come out looking crisp and professional every time. Without a doubt, for printing text, this Samsung printer is among the best in its class...if not the best. Happy printing!

NOTE: I purchased my ML-1710 back in late 2003. Since then, Samsung has released the ML-2010, a newer model, which offers some additional features over the ML-1710 (such as a faster print speed). Shop around and take a close look at the Samsung ML-2010 -- you can probably buy it for around the same price as the older ML-1710, which anyway has become harder to buy in stores these days, since the newer Samsung models have already replaced it.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Best Printer I've ever had
Comment: I've owned this printer for over a year now and I LOVE it. I print a lot of text and it has never given me a problem. I highly reccomend this printer if you are using it for text. Not reccomended for pictures.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Fades quickly
Comment: Mine faded even on the first few pages. This could be an individual case, but I was very disappointed at this problem. Now I have printed about 300 pages? in total, and none of them was dark enough to read in dim light.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Awful support for Mac OS X
Comment: I've had this printer for over a year. Under OS 9 it was indeed fast, but with different versions of OS X the Samsung's performance is disappointing at best.
In terms of speed, I have not experienced 17 ppm. Often I get a performance of about 2 ppm. They had an older driver that worked better, but I have not been able to find it anymore. A visit to Samsung's website reveals they have no Mac drivers listed at all. Based on my experience with this product, my next printer will not be a Samsung. As a matter of fact, I'm not likely to purchase anything with Samsung's name now.
I'm giving it 2 stars because it was very cheap, and even though it's painfully slow it does work 90% of the time, so it is not a total waste.

UPDATE (03/25/2008):
First, it's interesting that people have not find this useful. The fact remains that support for OS X is awful.
After doing a clean installation of Leopard I did not like the printer's performance once again.
As mentioned, Samsung does not have the OS X drivers in their US website. Fortunately they do have them in their Australian site. I found their old driver there, and I'm currently using version 1.1 instead of 1.5. They are also identified as "ML-1710" and "Samsung SPL 2.5" respectively, under the Print & Fax System Preferences.

So far the older driver has improved printing speed significantly. Hopefully this will be useful to one or two more people :-)

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