Samsung ML-1670
The unique selling point of this printer is its one-touch, print screen button. This is surprisingly useful, as it scales the print automatically, but it might be more conveniently run as a Ctrl sequence from your keyboard. Otherwise, this is a fairly mainstream, low-cost personal laser, with fold-down trays and 150-sheet capacity. It connects using USB and is rated at 16ppm. I saw 15ppm, so this is another quick machine for its size. It prints text well, though greyscale fills undulate a little, without being banded. Running costs, at 3.2p per ISO page, are above average, but only by a few tenths of a penny.
Reg Rating 80%
Price £70
More info Samsung
Samsung ML-2165W
Just released, this new personal laser has been updated with some more contemporary features. Leading amongst these is its direct wireless connection to Apple and Android devices, though when I tested the link, a page took over a minute to print. It also offers a USB port, though there is no Ethernet. The printer is rated at 20ppm and managed 15ppm under test, so is competitive in its price range. Print quality is excellent, with sharp black text and greyscales which are both smooth and easily distinguished, one from another. The cost per ISO page is at 2.9p, well below average. ®
Reg Rating 90%
Price £100
More info Samsung
Ten... sub-£100 mono laser printers
COMMENTS
sub-£250 shirley?
Seems to me that half these printers cost more than £100 - judging by the price noted in the review and presented by Amazon on clicking the Amazon button.
Re: Electricity Consumption - a Real Cost
I'm a bit dubious about those quoted costs. As an example, the Brother HL-2130 is estimated at 215kWh per year. Averaged out, that's over 24watts 365 days per year, 24 hours per day. It's equivalent to the printer being in full ready mode (i.e. hot and ready to go) for 7 hours every day and printing for 1 hour. That's well over 1,000 pages per day, vastly more than the usage this sort of printer is designed for, an wholly atypical of a home office or domestic situation. Also, the printer defaults to entering deep sleep mode (0.8W) after 5 minutes. In a domestic situation this is how it can be expected to remain for the vast majority of the time (or switched off).
In fact Brother's estimate is 0.913kWh per week or 47kWh per year which is about £5 and an average of about 5W. I think that's much more realistic for typical home use - indeed it would be at the high end in my view.
I suspect that's typical of most modern printers. Until somebody puts an energy usage monitor on one of these for a few months in a typical environment, we won't know for sure, but for now I think the estimates are simply wrong for any environment where this class of printer will be used.
Re: sub-£250 shirley?
You can get a colour laser printer for less than some of these, without shopping around. Given the amount I was spending on ink* £150 was a pretty good investment for a Samsung
*Every single time I wanted to print something, the ink cartridge had dried up, clogged and needed to be replaced. For this reason I find a laser printer much better for my low printing volumes, despite them normally being associated with high volume.
Postscript?
For me, the ability to toss the shitty CUPS crap and just run lprng is important, so I want a printer that does Postscript. This also gets around "does my driver/setup know how to handle duplex" too, as PS deals with this natively.
My old Brother HL-5240 does PS just fine and cost <US$120, so it's not a high-end feature.
Re: Re: sub-£250 shirley?
It's out of stock at the supplier where it's selling for £107 and also at the supplier selling it at £118. It seems to be retailing around £170 at Ebuyer, Dabs etc.
It's very common in a Google shopping search to get the odd supplier offering the product at a price much lower than everybody else. Usually, they are out of stock or don't even have a page for the item.
