Samsung ML-1210 Laser Printer Review

Can You Afford Not To Have One?

Almost every time we test a laser printer, we find ourselves saying, "Gee, this is nice. It's so fast, and the text is so sharp, even on cheap plain paper -- why does anybody ever bother with an ink-jet?" Then, of course, we slap our foreheads and say, "D'oh! Color!" The cheapest color laser we know costs $999, and even avid word processing fans get tired of seeing charts and photos in grayscale all the time.

But with today's low prices, it's increasingly practical for even a small office or home office to produce hard copies on both a monochrome laser and a color ink-jet. And for the former, Samsung Electronics has a deal worth a double-take in a market where the lowest-priced HP LaserJet is $400: not only a $199 laser printer, but a second-generation $199 laser printer.

The first generation, last year's Samsung ML-4500, was rated at 8 pages per minute (ppm) and had only 2MB of onboard memory and a parallel port. Its same-price successor, the ML-1210, delivers 12 ppm, an 8MB buffer, and both parallel and USB ports, so you won't even need a switch box to pair it with an ink-jet.

Okay, both its speed and 600 by 600 dots per inch (dpi) resolution trail the abovementioned (15 ppm, 1,200 by 1,200 dpi) LaserJet 1200se, but both differences are trivial in real-world use. The ML-1210 is a full-fledged laser at a phenomenal price; if you're printing your business letters on an ink-jet, or tired of changing an ink-jet's short-lived, costly cartridges, you need to see your Samsung dealer.

Just like Compaq Presarios, Sony Vaios, and other retail/consumer PCs, the ML-1210 comes out of the box festooned with "Fabulous Features! Push Button for Demo!" decals, though at least it doesn't say "Intel Inside" or "Designed for Microsoft Windows." (It's compatible with not only Windows 95, 98, Me, NT 4, and 2000, but Mac OS 8.0 or higher and Red Hat Linux 6.0 or higher.)

Stickers aside, the Samsung is downright cute -- a chunky little thing that takes only a 14-inch square space on your desk, and makes a typical but not annoyingly loud laser whine while printing (it's almost inaudible at idle). A near-vertical tray at the rear holds up to 150 sheets of paper, which normally make a U-turn through the printer to rest against an artist's-palette plastic stand at the front (with page 1 conveniently on top of the pile when you remove it). Flipping a lever at the front opens a face-up output slot, useful for routing envelopes or other stock from the manual-feed tray just forward of the main paper bin; we experienced only one jam (an envelope) in three days' testing.

Physical setup takes under a minute. The parallel and USB ports and AC plug are at the left rear, the power switch at the right rear. If you've read about low-cost lasers with messy separate drums and toner cartridges, you can relax; the Samsung's one-piece, slide-in cartridge is nearly goof-proof (although you're supposed to install it right after opening its bag, not leave it exposed to light for long).

It's also one of our few gripes about the ML-1210: While a refill toner cartridge (about $70) is rated for 2,500 pages of normal printing, hitting the two-C-note target obliged Samsung to put a cheap starter cartridge, good for only 1,000 pages, in the box. (You don't get a printer cable, either.)

In partial compensation, you can push a button on the front panel to shift the printer into a toner-saving mode, said to stretch the regular cartridge's life from 2,500 to 3,500 pages. We found the slightly fainter output perfectly fine for in-house printing jobs like memos, though a bit too gray for public correspondence or detailed drawings.

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