Samsung Electronics CLP-680ND Color Printer Save 17% off

• 25/25 ppm with 533 MHz dual cpu, 256 MB standard memory, gigabit Ethernet and duplex for fast, reliable and economical performance
• Brilliant color quality with Polymerized Toner, new and improved rendering engine, and up to 9,600 x 600 dpi print resolution
• High yield all in one toner cartridges for a low CPP and TCO

This printer is clearly designed for the office market or for a user who needs a solid color printer for business. Because of that, it is large, heavy, and the consumables are comparatively expensive when you look at a consumer-level inkjet. It includes postscript printing capability so you can print EPS files cleanly, though I believe it is interpolating and not true postscript since it seems to take longer to print postscript files. For business, especially if you need to do charts and graphs or print razor sharp text, this does a great job. I tested it out on several charts and graphs and they were all exceptionally sharp and showed fine detail in pie charts with textured wedges. The output is beautiful, crisp, bright and detailed. Photos that I printed showed fine detail on small images of faces and good color range. I printed a variety of photographs which included both close-up and distance shots of faces. Even the far away shots showed good detail on small faces. The sort of posterizing or loss of fine detail that you sometimes see in cheaper printers was not an issue. Still, this is not for creating professional prints for sale, but it does very nicely for general business and home use as well as proofing of art.

Prepping the printer is relatively easy. There are numbered picture-based instructions (no manual except one included on the CD) which walk you through how to remove the various tabs and protective bits of tape and how to prepare the toner cartridges. The toner drawer feels a little flimsy, but the printer already weighs 51 lbs. so I''m not sure added weight for a sturdier case would be worthwhile. It''s not as if one needs to be opening and closing it frequently, but caution when handling it may be warranted. If you catch it on something, it will likely chip, crack, or snap.

In regards to installation, I used this printer with two different versions of the Windows OS (XP and 7) and with Mac OS 10.5.8. On Windows XP and 7, it is a dream to install and use. You install the drivers from the included CD and it''s pretty much good to go with wireless printing right away. A print manager is also installed so that you can change preferences or track toner use/replacement. Samsung clearly did a good job prepping this for Windows.

On the Mac side, things did not go so smoothly and that''s why I knocked a star off of the rating. While I could use this with my Mac, I could only do so using a USB cable. I could not get the wireless connection to work no matter what I did. I should note that this may be my version of the Mac OS (10.5.8 is an older version) and that I have the same problem with a Canon inkjet wireless all-in-one that I sometimes use and had a similar problem with an HP all-in-one that I temporarily used. I can print, but only when hard-wired with a USB cable, and it''s also important to note that this Samsung printer does not come with said cable in the box. This is somewhat annoying since, even if you can get the wireless to work on your Mac, you are required as part of the installation to temporarily connect via USB (this is not the case on Windows). If you''ve got a Mac, you might want to make sure you have one on hand or purchase one concurrent with the printer.

The cartridges will print between 1500-2000 pages depending on the amount of color/text used for the pages. While the replacement cartridges from Samsung are expensive, you can get lower priced ones from a third party for as little as $80, though I imagine using them may violate the warranty. While even $80 per toner cartridge seems pricey, you can replace them selectively (there are separate cyan, magenta, yellow, and black cartridges). If you''re considering a laser printer like this which is expensive or an inkjet which is cheap, it''s important to consider how often you print. An inkjet''s cartridges will dry out if not used regularly and will not print nearly as many pages as a toner cartridge. My rough calculation is that this will cost you 5 cents per page and that compares well to color inkjets which will cost between 3 and 9 cents per page depending on your printer (Kodak models are about 3 cents, some Canon and HP models are 9 cents). Of course, this hardware costs 3-4 times that of an inkjet, but the quality is at least that order of magnitude better. It really depends on your priorities and how great your need for a higher quality output.

The paper feed on this is very smooth and I printed only on standard photocopy paper with excellent results. It has an adjustable feed tray, but I only tested it with letter-size prints. The manual does say that it supports a wide variety of paper sizes and weights though.

All in all, this is a very nice printer with lovely output at a price point which is competitive, but not the lowest price. It''s hard to directly compare as there are cheaper, smaller models which are all-in-one but are not designed to be such workhorses. Cheaper color laser printers tend to be slower, for instance. Depending on your needs, this may be a very good option, particularly if you are a Windows user.

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I received a defective printer (print dropouts). Samsung was unable to repair and refused to replace it.

Over the course of a month, I placed numerous calls to Samsung, spoke with over a dozen different people in Customer Support, Technical Support, "Executive" Customer Support (which should be called the "''No'' Department" because all they ever said was "no"), "ServRight" (which should be called "ServNot" because they never did show up to fix the printer), and someone from the "Office of the CEO". All I ever got was runaround, refusals, broken promises, and unreturned calls. Multiple times, I was told that I''d have to go purchase replacement parts myself. I was promised "we''ll call you back within one hour" four times and never received a return call. Three times they assured me that a service tech would call the next day and he never did. When I reached the end of the return period and the printer still had not been repaired, I requested a replacement and was refused. I asked the "executive customer support" representative flat out if Samsung would honor the warranty and he said "no".

So I returned the pinter for a refund. I originally planned to get a replacement, but after the last Samsung service person was downright rude to me, I decided not to do business with Samsung again.

Everybody makes mistakes from time to time the test of a good company is how they deal with them. Samsung failed horribly. Had they fixed the printer, I''d have been happy. Instead, I received worst customer service experience of my life.

I won''t buy any more Samsung products and I strongly urge others to avoid Samsung as well.

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I was very unhappy with this printer for several reasons. First, after printing approximately 300 pages continuously, the printer would stop for about a a minute, then resume printing at incredibly SLOW speeds (maybe 10 ppm). The printer would not return to the advertised speed of 25ppm until the printer had sat unused for at least an hour. Since I bought this printer for high volume jobs, this was a MAJOR inconvenience.

I was also very unhappy with how quickly the cartridges wore out. Before I was even prompted to replace the cartridge, they began leaving streaks along the sides of the pages. I tried cleaning out the cartridge and emptying the excess toner container, but that only helped for 50 or so pages, and then the streaking continued.

Because I have been happy with Samsung printers in the past, I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, and purchased another of these printers, hoping the problems were just an anomaly and that I had bought a faulty printer. No such luck. The second printer did the exact same thing.

I suppose this printer would work if you only need it for occasional printing (and never for more than a couple hundred pages at a time). Otherwise, don''t waste your money.

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Had to replace my 2006 Samsung color laser printer, which still worked perfectly, but had been abandoned by Samsung -who had not written new printer drivers to allow it''s use with my newest computer''s OS. This converted my printer into an expensive door-stop. The new printer is faster and produces better images, but I still feel abandoned that my older, but perfectly functional, printer can''t be utilized because of something as trivial as the company not wanting to expend resources on writing a new and functional printer driver.

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I''ll admit I''m a Samsung fan. Samsung is my first choice when I look for laptops, net-books, tablets or anything electronic. The Samsung CLP-680ND printer didn''t disappoint. This is the easiest printer I have ever set up. The only problem I had was getting my computer to read the enclosed set-up CD. I had just installed a new router and my computer read that CD without problems so I may have received a defective disk. I was able to go to the Samsung website and download the drivers needed and set-up was a breeze. Within a matter of minutes the printer was working perfectly.

The print response time is really fast, the printed documents are high quality and replacement toner is approximately half the cost of the toner cartridges of my previous HP printer. Once again Samsung has manufactured an excellent product.