Design
If you think of design award winners, one immediately pictures elegant Maseratis and minimalist iPods. However, at first glance, the purplish-grey box that is the Samsung CLP-300 seems to do nothing to justify the Red Dot Design Award 2006 sticker it proudly wears.
With the CLP-300 Samsung are aiming to make colour laser printing a viable option for home users and small offices, although they're not the first to give it a shot. HP already has its colour LaserJet 1600 on the market for AU$499. Like they did with mobile phones, Samsung are hoping to muscle into the market with a mix of competitive pricing -- the CLP-300 also retails for AU$499 -- and innovation.
The CLP-300's first hook is that Samsung have squished a colour laser printer into the space normally occupied by a run-of-the-mill mono laser printer. It is, they claim, "the world's smallest colour laser printer". To further help it appeal to mums and dads, as well as small business operators, Samsung have replaced the usual bulky, cumbersome and dusty toner cartridges with a set of colour-coded cylinders. Replacing toner is simply a matter of flipping down the front panel, pulling out the old cylinder and slotting in the new.
Running costs should be competitive, as the larger black cartridge (AU$99) should be sufficient for about 2,000 pages and the smaller colour cartridges (AU$89) about 1,000 pages each.
In order to bring in the printer at this price point, and fit it into a smaller footprint, a number of compromises and design quirks have snuck in. For example, the adjustable paper input tray can fit up to 150 sheets of A4 but the output tray can only hold 100 sheets; so, vigilance is required when printing lengthy documents. There's no LCD status display -- its control panel consists of a simple status light (green for okay, red otherwise) and an orange button to cancel any current jobs. Most disappointing though is that printing colour requires four passes, cutting output speed from 16 pages-per-minute (ppm) in monochrome to just four ppm in colour.
Features
The CLP-300 is built purely for printing from your computer; there's no memory card reader, PictBridge support, scanner or fax to add cost or bulkiness. It connects to either your PC or Mac via USB 2.0; however, as is the custom, the cable has to be purchased separately. Office users who don't want to have an always-on computer acting as a printer server should consider the AU$100 more expensive CLP-300N which has a built-in 10/100 Ethernet card.
Powered by a none-too-muscular 300MHz processor and with only 32MB of on-board memory, the CLP-300's output speed is dependent on your computer. Additionally, its lack of a LCD status window means that all warning and error messages are delivered to your desktop via the installed drivers.
Performance and Image Quality
During our testing the CLP-300 regularly spat out monochrome text documents at 14 ppm, just a bit shy of Samsung's claimed 16 ppm. Some found its text reproduction acceptable; others found the output to be tiring on the eyes as it was soft and indistinct.
Like most colour laser printers, the CLP-300 doesn't excel at reproducing photographs. As expected, dithering is quite obvious, while highlights had much of their detail bleached out. In fairness the CLP-300 isn't meant to produce studio quality prints, but provide a splash of colour to documents, reports, presentations or school projects. Its raison d'être is hurt, though, by its four-pass design. As noted earlier, the merest hint of colour drops output to four ppm.
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:)
30/08/2008, 06:32 PM
rating
1/10
I never even used this MOTHER F**KING printer, as it was never able to connect to my computer even when i used a connection cable from another computer...spent ages trying to get it to work...I WANT MY MONEY BACK!
Pros: the price ISNT even a pro
Cons: EVERY-F**KING-THING...i wish i could give a ZERO out of ten
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vk6dp
29/08/2008, 09:00 PM
rating
3/10
No usb cable it sucks, where can I buy this cable from and at what cost cost .
Pros: nothing
Cons: useless peice of junk
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I.T. Professional
07/08/2008, 02:59 PM
rating
2/10
Constant paper jams, chews through Toner yet seldom manages to print (work that one out).
Print quality is often streaky.
Extremely unimpressed.
Pros: Cheap
Cons: Constant jams, chews through the toner, poor print quality (streaky),
gets very hot
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Archie
23/07/2008, 01:19 PM
rating
2/10
I am so upset at this printer why did I buy it why
Pros: cheap
Cons: cheaper
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mikes
18/07/2008, 07:26 AM
rating
2/10
think more than twice before purchasing this machine....uugh!
Cons: paper jams every page and this machine is less than a year old
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uguessedit
15/07/2008, 04:15 PM
rating
3/10
I've had this printer less than a year and already I want to replace it.
Pros: Cost (I thought I was getting a deal)
Cons: Poor print quality from the beginning and it just gets worse. I currently have streaks and can't figure out how to clean the print heads to fix it; and, heaven forbid, you get a paper jam and have to take the whole unit apart.
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lazy printer
09/07/2008, 10:15 PM
rating
9/10
Good printer for home or small business use. Save money by using compatible toner and when toner waste collector is full, just remove it and empty it out and place it back. Works fine and you also save the environment by not buying another toner waste collector.
Pros: Cheap, small, great printouts for that price.
Cons: Switch at the back.
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Jen S
01/07/2008, 07:33 PM
rating
3/10
In the beginning the printer worked fine, a reasonable quality laser.
However after 5 months of light use the printer has become progressively awful. Every time I try printing the printer assumes there has been a jam and stops working, requiring it to be re-booted every time. After about 20 times the odd page will print out.
I have suffered with this for 13 months, now it doesn't print at all and I am forced to buy another printer.
Pros: reasonable quality while working
Cons: paper jams constantly
becomes very hot
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new user
26/06/2008, 10:42 AM
rating
3/10
it is hard to get it work using manual feed. green light flashes for long time then it prints out an error message - time out or corrupt data. toner life is much lower than stated
Pros: price
Cons: software
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uzi
13/05/2008, 10:26 PM
rating
2/10
nothing is good other than price. Rarely used, paper jam every run. Stay away...
Pros: price
Cons: Paper Jam
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