Color Laser Printer Review: Samsung CLP-670ND

If you're looking for a network color laser printer with good performance and an attractive total cost of ownership, Samsung has a honey for you.

The CLP-670ND is targeted at small and midsized businesses and workgroups seeking fast color network printing with double-sided printing support. Although the 670 costs more than some of its competitors -- $599, compared to $499 for the HP CP2025dn and Lexmark C544DN or $399 for the Brother HL-4040CDN -- it has higher-quality output, a higher duty cycle, a faster processor, and more memory upgrade headroom.

Bigger Than a Breadbox

As you might expect for a business unit, the 670 is large -- roughly a 17-inch cube, a bit smaller than a hotel refrigerator -- and heavy -- 60 pounds. Its Quick Start Guide shows two hefty guys taking the unit out of its box, but one skinny geek can lift it with some effort. Care should be taken, though, to lift with your legs lest you risk back injury.

On a bevel at the front of the unit are a small, two-line LCD, a large navigation dial, a stop button and a large power-save button. The last allows you to enter or exit the Samsung's 9-watt sleep mode instantly with a simple poke.

Below the LCD are low-toner indicators for each of the unit's toner cartridges. The LCD isn't backlit. That makes it difficult to read in low-light conditions, but that's not an issue in its native environment -- a well-lit office. Ports for connecting the printer to a computer via a USB 2.0 or 10/100Mbps Ethernet connection, as well as a power switch, are easily accessible on the right side of the unit.

The front panel of the 670 swings down for loading its four toner cartridges. Sliding the cartridges into their slots is a smooth and effortless operation. Cartridges sell individually in the range of $85 to $135. Samsung says you can expect to produce 5,000 pages with a high-yield black cartridge and 4,000 with high-yield color ones before having to replace them. Standard-yield cartridges produce fewer pages -- 2,500 for a black cartridge, 2,000 for color ones.

We found an e-tailer selling the 5,000-page black cartridge for $110 and the 4,000-page color cartridges for $125 each, which divides out to 2.2 cents per black-and-white and 11.6 cents per color page. That's competitive for the class.

Of course, that can vary depending on the nature of your documents. The more color used on a page, the fewer pages you'll get from the cartridge before it will need to be replaced.

Out of the box, the printer will handle up to 350 sheets of paper. The slide-out main tray, located at the bottom of the front of the unit, has a capacity of 250 sheets; a swing-down supplemental tray, located on the main front panel, has a 100-sheet capacity. It also accepts envelopes. The Samsung's capacity can be increased to 850 sheets with the addition of an optional tray.

The monthly duty cycle for the printer, according to Samsung, is 80,000 impressions, which is significantly more than its leading competitors.

Faster Firsts and Customizable Color

The 670 uses a Samsung processor, the SPGPv4 running at 700MHz. It also has 256MB of memory, which can be upgraded to 768MB. The combination pumps out documents relatively quickly. Samsung rates the box at 25 pages per minute; in our real-world tests, a 41-page document which included both text and color graphics took about two minutes to print, or 20 ppm. Printing the same document in duplex mode took slightly more than four minutes.

The first page in a document prints in 13 to 15 seconds. Samsung says the 670 is quicker off the mark than competitors because of its "instant fusing" technology, which uses a thin flexible sleeve to apply toner to a page rather than a thick roller. In addition, the heat source for fusing toner to the page is a lamp rather than a heating element. Not only does that speed up the process, but it reduces energy consumption. too.

If you want to produce four-color documents with photographic images, you'll be very happy with the 670's output. In high-quality printing mode -- an impressive 9,600 by 600 dpi -- images are very nicely rendered. Subtle tone shifts, as found in flesh tones, are accurately transferred from digital media to paper. Coated paper stock really makes the printer's color output pop, but plain paper reproduction is very good, too.

A problem with color printers of any type is getting what you see on your computer screen to look like what appears on the printed page. Samsung includes color management software to permit you to adjust color balance, brightness, contrast and saturation on any image viewed on a computer. What's more, you can create color profiles that allow you to produce a number of color results from the same computer.

The 670 supports both PostScript (PS3) and HP (PCL6) printer languages and includes 93 PCL fonts. It also supports all versions of Windows, Mac OS X 10.3 to 10.5 and Linux.

Worth the Price

Several software programs are included with the printer, as well as an online manual. There's Samsung Any Website. It lets you collect information from websites and paste them into customized layouts for easy printing. There's also a program for troubleshooting printer problems and a Smart Panel for performing a number of tasks. Those tasks include replacing printer supplies, setting paper orientation, choosing a paper tray, toggling two-sided printing and tinkering with the printer's network settings.

Network management can also be done with a Web browser. With Samsung's SyncThru Web service, you can change network and printer settings over the LAN, as well as see the printer's network status. A bonus networking feature of the 670 is support of the IPv6 protocol, technology that will be used in more and more IT networks in the future.

For its class, the Samsung CLP-670ND is a good buy. While you will spend more initially on the printer, you'll reap more benefits down the road both in terms of total cost of ownership and satisfaction with performance.