Samsung ML-1740 Review

How Low Can a Laser Go?

Two-tone color schemes must be out of fashion; last year's Samsung ML-1710 personal laser printer had a white case with beige faceplate, but this year's ML-1740 is all ivory.

But saving money is always in style: While its predecessor stuck to the longtime entry-level laser price of $199, the ML-1740 costs a thrifty $150, while adding a parallel as well as the older model's USB interface. That means Samsung has undercut Konica Minolta's $180 PagePro 1350W (reviewed in February) as, to our knowledge, the least expensive laser you can buy. If you're still using a slower, costly-consumables inkjet printer for big, black-and-white text jobs, you have only yourself to blame.

For the record, Samsung doesn't just skip lunches and go without HBO in order to come in $30 under its rival's price; the PagePro offers higher resolution -- 1,200 by 600 dpi -- than the Samsung's 600 by 600 dpi engine. On the other hand, the ML-1740's single-sheet or -envelope feeding slot and flip-down rear panel give it a straight-through path for special media which the 1350W lacks.

And while Konica Minolta's printer advertises a speed of 22 pages per minute, the Samsung -- rated at a more modest 17 ppm -- equaled or narrowly beat it in our stopwatch tests, printing the same files from the same Windows 2000 desktop. A 20-page Microsoft Word document, for example, took 1 minute and 22 seconds, two seconds quicker than the PagePro.

Just Like a Real Printer

Like its ML-1710 and higher-resolution ML-1750 predecessors, the Windows- and Linux- (not Mac-) compatible ML-1740 takes little more desk space than a few reams of the copier paper you use with it -- the printer is 8 inches tall, with a footprint roughly 15 inches square.

It shares those printers' best feature: a big-printer- or copier-style, pull-out paper drawer at the bottom, for easy loading and smooth feeding. The drawer holds 250 sheets of letter- or legal-sized paper (for the latter, you must push a latch and pull out a plastic guide that leaves the extra three inches actually sticking out of the back of the printer).

In a nice detail, a plastic pin at lower right sinks in its slot to indicate at a glance when the drawer is getting empty. Like the printer's 8MB of memory, however, its paper capacity can't be expanded -- no second drawer is available.

Unless you're using the special-feed slot, paper travels upward and over to arrive face down on top of the printer -- where, despite a folding plastic prop, sheets start sliding off the stack a little before you get to the advertised output capacity of 50 pages.

Aside from the power switch at the right rear, the only user control is one button on top which serves to cancel a print job, continue a manual-feed job, or toggle the toner-saver mode that promises to stretch cartridge life by up to 40 percent by printing in gray instead of black. The USB and parallel ports are at the left rear, though no USB or parallel cable is included; no network model is available, although the Samsung's rated monthly duty cycle of 15,000 pages is enough for sharing if you buy an external print server.

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