Samsung CLP 300 Mini Personal Color Laser Printer

• Portable and robust color laser printer
• Up to 2400x600 dpi print resolution
• Prints up to 17 ppm black and up to 4 ppm color
• Speedy USB 2.0 connectivity
• Easy toner changes and quiet operation

I''ve been looking pretty hard at the sales flyers over the last few months waiting for a chance to score a color laser printer at a price range that doesn''t make me have to eat bag lunches for a month to catch up. A local office superstore had two models I was eying, an HP 1600 and this one. They seemed pretty similar in most regards until dropped the CLP-300 100 dollars below the HP. It was time to grab the bargain.

This is the second Samsung laser printer I have in my home office now, the first one being the little ML-1740. I''ve had that one for better than a year now and it has been wonderful. So I wasn''t afraid to try the Samsung CLP-300 because its name isn''t as big as HP''s. So I get it home and commence to setting it up. As with the earlier ML-1740, it took about 5 minutes to unpack, route cables, plug in the toner packs, and fire it up. It didn''t skip a beat and had a test page done in a jiffy. Drivers for the computer went just as easily. Overall a very, very simple set up.

Back to the toner "packs" (or cartridges) for a bit... I don''t think I''ve ever seen a more simple toner system. This system is literally easier to deal with than inkjet cartridge replacement. The front cover of the printer opens to reveal 4 "holes" for the toner cartridges. Simply remove the protective covers from the 3 color cartridges and 1 black cartridge and pop them into their respective holes. This has to be a step forward for the laser printer world.

Anyway, I''ve only had this for about a week but have put maybe 200 pages through it already. It works like a champ and I''m really happy I picked it up. I''ll list below some of the pros and cons as I see them (in no particular order):

Pros:

* Low noise when printing... very low noise actually. Its little more than a light whirring sound.

* Fast printing (about 20 to 25 seconds to the first high quality print and very fast once started).

* Great drivers giving you good printing options like double sided printing, booklet printing (on long or short side of page), watermarks, pre-generated letterhead, ability to print multiple pages per sheet, ability to print posters, etc... ...way too much to list here.

* Decent color photo prints. The quality isn''t quite up to the photo quality of the better inkjet photo printers, but its good. And it certainly isn''t poor enough to be a negative. I''d say though that if your primary goal is photo prints you might want to compare some other higher priced models before settling on this one. Otherwise, this should suit you fine.

*Size... it fits perfect on my printer stand. This doesn''t over power the room by being overly bulky. Its not too much bigger than the ML-1740 and way smaller than its older sibling the CLP-510 (I liked the built in duplexing on the 510 but wasn''t too crazy at all about its size).

Cons:

* Power... it seems like it uses quite a bit more than the little ML-1740 (no surprise I''m sure) because my battery backup makes a click every few minutes like a brown out spike happens. The ML-1740 makes the lights flicker on occasion but had no effect on the UPS. On a related note however, this printer has a user adjustable power saver mode that puts it to sleep after a set number of minutes.

* Low paper capacity. Only about 150 sheets in the paper tray. But its easy to remove and fill and I doubt I''ll ever print more than that in a sitting.

* No front auxiliary feed tray (like the ML-1740) for feeding various sized papers into the machine. The CLP-300 does take various sized papers but you have to use the paper tray.

* Power switch in the back. The ML-1740 had this set up too. How hard can it be to put the switch on the front or even the front side to make it more accessible. Better yet, let the unit be powered on and off automatically by software like some other printers can do. The switch all the way in the back, on the bottom, is not a deal breaker but its an aggravation that I wish Samsung would address in their future models.

* Toner amount... Here''s something I''m not sure will be an issue or not in the long run but right now I''m a bit concerned. The toner packs are small. The color ones are a bit smaller than a styrofoam cup while the black one is about as large as a typical ceramic coffee mug but a bit taller perhaps. The technical papers say you''d get about 1000 sheets of color printing per color. I''ll edit this review in a few months with my impression of how true that appears to be. The silver lining to this issue might be that the toner packs are cheaper than the typical toner cartridges for other laser printers. And also, according to the Samsung website, this printer is supposed to be cheaper to operate in the long than other printers. A cent or two here or there adds up I guess.

So my score of 4 out of 5 stars represents the above pros and cons and my experience so far with this printer. Its not a perfect 5 because there is room for improvement but its a very nice printer that is great to have. And for the price, there is no reason why every home can''t have color laser printing now. I can still remember when inkjets were replacing the dot matrix printers... move over inkjets, here we go again.

*** Follow Up Edit: 24oct06 (original post 9oct06)***

I''m coming up on a month now of useage and haven''t had a problem yet. I would like to add to my comment made above though regarding the quality of the photo prints ... I''ve done a bunch of pictures so far and I would again encourage people who are looking predominantly for a picture printer to look at a level a bit higher than this one. For what I do, this is fine, but folks looking for photo quality printing would likely find this a bit lacking.

Also, along with the photos and numerous web pages, I''ve printed several good sized PDF documents with a lot of illustrated graphics and the toner indicators in my printer monitor (the software) shows negligible toner use. I can''t confirm this by sight or weight of the toner packs themselves but if the indicators are correct, I''m happy with the mileage I''m getting so far.

*** Follow up edit: 14oct11

Just wanted to mention that I still have my ol'' trusty 300. Still works as good as it did the day I got it. I would have expected it to be feeding poorly or producing bad quality prints but its working fine. Granted, its only a casually used printer and outside of a few big projects here and there its only used when I need color. I''d upgrade but so long as the toner is cheaper than a new printer I''ll keep it until it croaks.

Buy Samsung CLP 300 Mini Personal Color Laser Printer Now

After much soul searching (and many futile review searches), I decided to take the plunge and purchase a CLP-300. I''ve been wanting a color laser for a few years, mainly because of frustration with the slowness of color inkjets and the fragility of the prints, especially when they get wet. Even though this printer is at the bottom end of the laser speed range when it comes to color prints, it still outpaces my inkjet by a large margin.

Hardware setup was painless, both mentally and physically. It''s not a light printer by any means, but I had little difficulty moving it, unlike most color laser printers that practically need a forklift. After removing four pieces of strapping tape and a piece of cardboard, it was ready to put in place, connect up, and load toner cartridges and paper. One little detail that impressed me about toner cartridge loading is that the cartridges are keyed, with each cartridge having a ridge in a different location along its circumference fitting into a slot along the edge of the corresponding cartridge hole on the printer, which means that you cannot easily insert a cartridge in the wrong hole. The paper tray uses a sliding length adjustment mechanism to accept just about any paper size up to legal size. There is no manual feed slot, so the paper tray has to be used for that purpose, which means that a lot of paper shuffling has to be done to print on cardstock, envelopes, etc.

Software setup was almost as painless. I had previously downloaded the Mac OS X driver from Samsung''s web site to make sure that it is CUPS-compliant like Samsung''s other recent drivers, thereby allowing me to connect the printer to my Belkin print server and saving me the expense of buying the ''N'' version. I added the printer as an IP Printer, specifying "Line Printer Daemon LPD" as the protocol and specifying the IP address, queue, printer name, and selecting the driver from the "Print Using" popup. The driver provides options for Paper Type, Quality (Draft [600x600 dpi], Normal [1200x600 dpi], Best [1200x1200 dpi]; the dpi numbers were gleaned from the driver''s PPD file) and Color Mode (Color, Grayscale), as well as supporting manual feed printing. Even though the Mac driver doesn''t directly support manual duplexing, it can be accomplished by printing even pages back-to-front, reloading the pages, and printing odd pages front-to-back (I have defined two presets in the Print dialog for this purpose). For duplexing jobs of only a few pages, I set paper handling to print the first page automatically and subsequent pages manually and then I stand at the printer, reloading pages as necessary and pressing the feed button for each page after the first.

In the context of the intended audience (personal and home office users), the print quality is quite good. Solid-colored areas are continuous with no apparent banding and the blacks are sufficiently dark. Colors are fairly accurate, but the range of available shades is somewhat lacking, which means that color gradients appear with obvious lines where the colors change rather than being smooth. On the other hand, sharp detail prints very well. Dithering is also evident, although it''s not nearly as bad as I expected and is really quite acceptable for my purposes.

The only real complaints I have about the printer are the lack of an automatic duplexer option, the lack of a manual feed slot, and the fact that the driver is a PowerPC-only application, which means it renders more slowly on my Intel-based MacBook Pro than it conceivably could if it were a Universal application. I can understand the first two shortcomings from the standpoint of keeping the size and cost down, but not supplying a Universal driver at this point in time is inexcusable.

All in all, I am very pleased with this printer in the week or so that I''ve owned it and would highly recommend it to home users wanting the advantages of a color laser printer in a compact package. Serious business users should look elsewhere. Note: My rating is based on the rank of this printer compared to others in its class and doesn''t necessarily mean that it will fare as well vs. high-end business printers.

Read Best Reviews of Samsung CLP 300 Mini Personal Color Laser Printer Here

I have owned this printer for 5 months. In that period, it has been operating about half that time. After 3 months of initial use, probably under 500 pages, the "transfer belt" failed. Solid red lights on the status display, nothing more. Samsung customer support is very cumbersome. Even if you registered on their website, you are required to scan & email your proof of purchase, and then you receive an email designating how to contact them. It takes days. When you call, you get a rep who walks you through scripts (at least they sounded like a native English speaker). It took about an hour, and they are only open 9 to 5 weekdays. Some of the troubleshooting requires removing parts from the inside of the printer, and the rep seemed uncertain on the procedure to be followed. It didn''t work, so on to another tech. Tech #2 offered to send a replacement transfer belt, saying it was "a common failure for these printers". He wouldn''t guarantee it would work, but that''s the only option, no return unless I tried this. Fortunately, it worked...but failed again in 2 months. So I am back at the email stage, waiting.

There is a reason that these printers are being discounted everywhere you look. Too bad, the small footprint and decent color output, consumable cost and speed are good features.

Want Samsung CLP 300 Mini Personal Color Laser Printer Discount?

I purchased the Samsung CLP-300 to replace an Epson 740i inkjet that''s been in service for many years. My motivations for getting a color laser printer instead of an inkjet:

* Low cost per page, which is common to every laser printer

* Small size I do not want the printer taking up much physical space

* Quiet it must be silent in standby mode, and when printing its sound must not aggravate people sleeping in a nearby room like the Epson 740i did

* Mac compatibility

The Samsung plays nicely with my Mac Mini running Mac OS X 10.4.8. The drivers install quickly; one quick installer program, open up the Printer Setup Utility, and the printer was recognized as a CLP-300. Printer Features are fairly basic, with Quality choices of Draft, Normal, and Best, and a separate seting for Color or Grayscale. There are also 13 different paper types: Plain Paper, Thick, Thin, Bond, Color Paper, Card Stock, Transparency, Labels, Envelope, Preprinted, Cotton, Recycled, and Archive Paper. I have only used recycled copy paper with it, and it prints just fine on Plain Paper setting. Built-in Mac OS X print sharing works great, and from what I''ve read, this printer is CUPS-friendly and can be shared on a network via an Airport Express.

While I am unsure about the title "World''s Smallest Color Laser Printer," this is surely a small machine, though bigger than color inkjets. The printer is silent when in standby mode, and the little noise it makes when printing is pretty peaceful. I wish my freshman roommate in college had this printer in our dorm room the night he printed 100 pages at 3:00 am; its much quieter and calmer than an inkjet. Since this is my first laser printer in a home environment, I''m not sure how it compares to other printers noise-wise, but it is certainly quiet when printing even in my quiet environment (quiet Mac Mini).

The design truly is nice. Loading toner is totally user friendly. This is the easiest way to replace ink / toner I have seen on any machine, ever. There is no mucking about near the drum or any other sensitive parts, and placing the toner packs into their slots is really foolproof. Note: shake the toner packs when you get them. This is noted in the manual and in the setup guide, but it is a step that could be easily forgotten.

Plugging a laser printer into a battery backup (UPS) system is not recommended, since most laser printers exceed standard load levels of UPS systems. This is because a laser printer''s fuser uses a large, fast pulse of power, and the UPS cannot supply this to many laser printers.

So far, having had this printer for three weeks in light usage, it has done everything I want of it. Recommended!

Many people had problems with paper jam on the CLP 300, so I just want to share a quick fix that helped me and my friend.

Since this IS a review, I''ll quickly mention that I bought this printer a year ago for the occasional printing need and still haven''t gone through the initial toners yet. So far so good, decent quality and speed, quiet and small. I''m happy with it. If not for the paper jam issue, this is a great printer as I''ve seen it on sale for about $150 in many occasions.

Both me and my friend''s CLP 300 had trouble picking up paper from the paper tray, so to fix the problem, you need to first take the paper tray out and empty it. At the front of the paper tray and you''ll find a ramp responsible for lifting your stack of paper onto the feeding mechanism. What you''ll need to do is to remove this ramp by stretching the side of the tray and poping out the plastic ramp. Underneath the ramp you''ll see the two springs responsible for holding the ramp up. Simply stretch the springs until they''re 3/4 inch longer than the original length, and snap the parts back together. Now there should be enough friction for the rubber roller to prevent any more paper jams.