CLP-500 21PPM 1200DPI 266MHZ16MB Gdi Par/usb

Rating:
Summary: Great printer for the price
Review: After getting ripped off at Kinko's, I needed a low priced color laser to print out brochures, menus and other business related jobs. Duplexing was also very important. Many other units require the additional purchase of an expensive duplexing kit - this one does not.

Speed wasn't a huge issue for me, since I typically run big jobs and walk away. The graphics and print quality are just fine by me. I am not looking for extra crisp magazine quality photos. My customers often wonder who prints my menus, and I just point over to the big beast. For light printing jobs and day to day graphics, I am very pleased with the quality. Yes you can get better quality, but not for this price.

Pros
- Great Value for the money
- Built in duplexing, slows printing down but it's free
- Quality acceptable for day to day printing
- Easily add wireless or network capability via expansion ports

The cons
- Included toner doesn't last very long. Each toner is about $120 - so it's advised you factor in toner very soon after purchase
- Large, heavy and bulky. You need an SUV or wagon to bring it home
- Sometimes jams with thinner paper. Easy to clear up and doesn't happen enough to be worrysome.
- You cannot use any type of glossy paper

All in all - I was looking for a color laser that provided the best bang for the buck and this one fit the bill.

Rating:
Summary: transparencies suck
Review: Do not buy this printer if you plan to print transparencies. I bought it to print a lot of transparencies. In your hand they look good, but when I put them on the projector, the colors all show up as different shades of gray. A big waste of my money.

Rating:
Summary: Please read this before buying -- it's a white elephant!!!
Review: I could not recommend this printer to anyone! Why? Read on...

Firstly I should state I specifically bought this printer to print at least 4 copies of my PhD thesis (315 pages each copy).

I printed about 50 pages in a futile attempt to correct the slight bluriness inherent with all text. The bluriness is especially noticeable with serif fonts, on numbers such as 9 or anywhere there is a sharp point on a character. I tried all sorts of settings, different types of paper, downloaded the latest printer drivers --- still the same result. In comparison, my Canon LBP-810 prints crisper text and it is muuuch older (and cheaper).

The other problem with printing a large colour document with this printer is that if you select "colour printing", it does 4 passes on the black pages as well. So the thing is not smart enough to know that there isn't a speck of colour on B&W pages! This slows printing down to 5ppm. Since that speed is unacceptable, you have to print the whole document in B&W, then print the colour pages separately. This wastes paper, toner, & shortens the life of the transfer belt + rollers. If your document contains colour on every 2nd page, this also wastes vast amounts of time by deteminging the print ranges & inserting them once everything is printed.

Double-sided (duplex) printing slows printing speed considerably - less than half the speed. It would be quicker to do manual duplexing. So it's a white elephant in that department.

Apart from that, the printer is a juggernaut. It needs FURTHER space around it in order for the numerous compartments to open... and you will need to open these compartments frequently if you don't heed my advice. Despite the size, the paper tray can only accomodate 250 pages. There is a side feeder which takes another 100 pages, but that tends to get used for special papers. So if you seek a decent paper capacity you have to pay extra for the optional paper tray.

The printer stats tell me it has printed a total of 1369 mono pages & 191 in colour. Shortly before I reached that number, the squinty little display started complaining about a lack of black toner! Literally *ALL* of those black pages were 1.5 spaced, with huge margins. I.e. they shouldn't have used that much toner. THAT JUST ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH!!! If Samsung can't even afford to completely fill up the toner cartridges with toner, it makes you wonder about the quality of the rest of the unit.

I was satisfied with the colour output, although it couldn't handle a 3D excel graph that had white-grey planes graduated diagonally. It kept printing steps, instead of a steady colour change. Still, although the colour output is satisfactory, what good is a colour laser printer that cannot print crisp text adequately? Another white elephant. You might as well get a top of the shelf inkjet for this price.

One more thing:
The printer jams up at the slightest overfilling of the internal paper tray. In the end, 3 copies of a 315 page thesis printed out without incident, so I won't give it one star (but I am tempted).

_____________________
Customer Service Issues:
After dealing with Samsung Australia customer service I realised that they weren't willing to take back the printer for a refund. They were happy enough to arrange a technician to visit to check the printer was working correctly, but after being on hold several times, I basically informed them that I didn't think anything was wrong with my specific printer, but that the problem was probably endemic to all CLP-500s. THey said I'd have to take it back to the retailer.... yet the retailer insisted that I needed "special permission" from Samsung to accept it's return. I didn't pursue that circular path, saving time by knowing where it would take me - back where I started. I even told the customer service consultant rather bluntly that I couldn't be bothered asking for the manager or writing letters of complaint as that can get too stressful.


Rating:
Summary: I bought One After Looking many Times
Review: I have been going to my local electroncs store many times and looked at all the laser printers on the display. I had see this model on sale/off sale and with a rebate ect... I almost bought it a few times after demo-ing it at the store.. Finally I just Put It In My Cart and took it home. I Dont think it was a mistake at all... I would recomend it...

Rating:
Summary: Nice printer for a PC user
Review: It is huge it is heavy and you could turn the cardboard box into a new family room if you wanted. It is also quiet, faitly quick and the output looks very good. When printing post-script or word files the output is very crisp and clear, sharp enough to merrit the 1200dpi label, even serif fonts at tiny point sizes are clear. When printing images (black and white and color) of web pages and photos, the output is somewhat fuzzy, with clearly visible halftoning. Still, for spot color or printing color graphs and presentations the quality is quite good. For Mac users, you need to know that the Driver for os X is very basic, it does not support the built in duplexer, or some other features that the pc driver supports. Also as has been reported on some Mac (mac-in touch) news sites, future support for the Mac may be eliminated. Bad decision as far as I am concerned.

Rating:
Summary: Boxy but good
Review: The size and weight of this big-cube-shaped printer are reminiscent of the first generation of black and white laser printers. Print quality is good. Colour pictures won't pass as photographs, but quality is acceptable, and, because the printer is a laser, you can get good results with cheap paper.

I am not normally a big fan of Samsung products, which, in my experience, seem to favor style over support and quality control. In this case, however, the design of the printer is simple and elegant, which - I hope - will translate into improved reliability. The four colour cartridges are arranged horizontally, rather than in a circular carousel. It's hard to pass up a duplexing color printer for less than the cost of some non-duplexing, black and white models. Doors on all sides give good access to the interior of the printer, although opening the door to the toner compartment is a little like opening a Japanese puzzle box. You open the door to get it halfway open, then pull out the top cartridge, which allows you to open the door all the way.

The printer is quiet - for a color laser printer. When it's in "sleep mode", it's silent. When it's printing, it whirs and clunks and sounds like most other laser printers. After printing, its fan runs for some minutes. The other laser printers I've owned made the lights flicker when they printed. So does this one. It takes a couple of minutes for the printer to wake up and print the first page. After that, it prints at close to the advertised speeds.

One of the most valuable features of this printer, and the one that sold me on it, is the duplexing (double-sided printing). It slows down the printing a little, but it saves paper, and also toner, if you print using booklet mode (see below). The duplexing works in an unusual way - each page is pushed out of the printer, but just before it completely emerges, the printer pulls it back in again and flips it around internally. If, like me, you have the bad habit of pulling sheets out of the printer as they are emerging, you may find yourself getting into a tug of war with a piece of paper the printer wants back.

Duplexing is well supported by the Windows based printer driver. "Booklet mode" is ideal for printing out long user manuals. It will print pages out in half-size, arranged two to a side, and double sided. It automatically puts the pages in the right order to make a booklet. So, if you are printing 64 pages, the first page to emerge will have pages 1 and 64 on one side, and 2 and 63 on the other. Once all the pages have emerged, just staple the center (you'll need a long-arm stapler) and fold it in half and you have a very nice looking booklet. In this mode, a 64 page document can be printed using 16 sheets of paper, and 32 pages of toner.

Consumables for the Samsung seem to be slightly higher in price than those for other laser printers, but obviously far cheaper than inkjets. Like most color lasers, it comes with "fun sized" cartridges, each good for 1500 pages or so. If you print a lot of full colour pages, you can use these up pretty quickly. Replacement cartridges are supposed to be good for 5000 pages. (7000 for black.)

There's a waste toner cartridge in the front of the printer which is supposed to be replaced every few thousand pages, although if you empty the toner dust out carefully into a plastic baggie you can easily reuse it.

Unlike most color lasers in this price range, this one comes with expandable memory, and a good sized standard paper tray (350 sheets). The auxiliary tray seems to handle light card stock quite well - nice if you want covers for your booklets. Again, this is well supported by the driver, which allows you to specify a different paper source for the first page, allowing you to print booklet covers on card stock automatically.