Samsung CLP-315W Color Laser Printer Review

Business printing has come a long way since the time, 20 years ago, when I shelled out more than $2,000 for a slow black-and-white laser printer. Today, you can find Samsung's CLP-315W color laser for as little as $200 at retailers such as Amazon.com (it's $250 at non-discount vendors).

To be sure, the compact Samsung is not an all-in-one office hub that can fax, photocopy, or scan. All it does is print in color or black and white on letter- or legal-size paper, envelopes, and labels. But it's a workhorse that can print on a either a wired or wireless network.

Performance Profile

Like all color laser printers, the CLP-315W doesn't do quite as good a job on photos as similarly priced inkjet printers using special photo papers. The illusion of continuous color tones is not as, well, photo-like. And the software provides virtually no control of color.

On the other hand, it does a better job of photos on plain paper than inkjets. And colors in general are brighter and more saturated, especially on plain paper. All of which makes it excellent for printing marketing documents with a mix of text, graphics, and photos.

And black text from a laser printer is still noticeably sharper than inkjet output. With effective resolution up to 600 by 2,400 dots per inch (dpi), text looks razor-sharp.

The Samsung isn't as fast as inkjets -- up to 17 letter-size pages per minute in black, up to a sluggish 4 ppm in color, which is less than half the speed of some similarly priced ink sprayers. But it does spit out the first page of a job very quickly -- in as little as 14 seconds for black-only documents.

The CLP-315W offers a very modest footprint: 15.3 x 12.3 x 9.6 inches. In fact, Samsung claims it's the smallest and lightest color laser available. It's also very elegant in shiny black with molded corners. It won't look out of place in even the most stylish offices.

The printer is also, unlike most inkjets, quiet as a whisper -- less than 45 dBA (decibels). OK, a whisper is actually only about 20 dBA, but the point is that, in a tightly packed office, noise can be a problem. This printer doesn't contribute to it.

Finally, the CLP-315W, like other laser printers, crushes inkjets in one important area: its duty cycle or the workload it can handle, usually stated as the number of pages per month. Samsung lists a duty cycle for the CLP-315W as up to 20,000 pages. By way of comparison, HP rates one of its similarly priced business inkjets, the Officejet Pro K8600, for 6,250 pages per month.

Cost Comparison

Cost per page is another area in which lasers usually best inkjet printers, partly due to toner cartridges that last longer than ink cartridges and partly due to their ability to do good work on plain paper instead of specially coated stock.

Samsung gives the average yield for the CLP-315W's black toner cartridge as 1,500 pages -- though, as do most other manufacturers, the company cheats by shipping the product with a lower-capacity "starter" cartridge rated at 1,000 pages.

Similarly, the printer's cyan, magenta, and yellow toner cartridges are rated for 1,000 pages, though the ones in the box are good for only 700. Cost for the black cartridge: $50. Cost for each color cartridge: $45.

Other maintenance costs include the laser drum or imaging unit, which will set you back about $140 after up to 24,000 black or 6,000 color pages. A $20 waste toner container must be replaced every 5,000 black or 1,250 color pages.

Simplifying the math by counting only the toner cartridges, the CLP-315W's consumable costs come to about 3.3 cents per black-and-white and 16.8 cents per color page. That's not sky-high, but it's closer to inkjet territory than many laser printers' costs.

Relatively Easy Setup

As far as control buttons and dials go, the Samsung has a stop button on top and a power switch on the rear. Period. The former serves various functions in addition to canceling a print job, such as printing a network configuration report with an alarming amount of information when pressed and held down.

The CLP-315W offers a generally excellent out-of-the-box experience. Ethernet or USB 2.0 users can simply plug the printer into an office network or a PC, respectively, and even the setup procedure to use the Samsung on an 802.11b/g wireless network is clearly documented and not terribly difficult.

WiFi users start by connecting the printer to a router or network access point via Ethernet cable and checking the IP address revealed in the network configuration report. Using a PC on the network, entering the IP address into a Web browser summons the Samsung's configuration interface, where you enter the WiFi network's name or SSID and WPA key (if using WPA encryption security).

All that remains is to launch the configuration wizard, choose one from the list of WiFi networks the printer finds, and key in the WPA key if needed. Now you can unplug the Ethernet cable and the printer will work wirelessly.

Overall, if you need a brochure- or presentation-quality workhorse for your workgroup or small office -- and if printing photos isn't a critical requirement -- the CLP-315W deserves a close look.

Adapted from SmallBusinessComputing.com.