Six weeks ago, I found myself standing in the middle of Staples holding YET another $75 worth of ink-jet cartridges in my hand. Several weeks before, I had started a new job which required me to do a modest but significant amount of printing at home--about 200 pages per week with a mix of text and color graphics. Because the job start-up had been all-consuming, I hadn’t had a single moment to think about the astronomical cost of doing this volume of printing on my geriatric ink-jet printer!

As I stood at Staples, my brain finally kicked in. I stepped over to the printer aisle and immediately drew a bead on the Samsung CLP-300. I hadn’t shopped for printers in a few years and couldn’t believe that this ultra-compact laser printer was a COLOR laser. I also couldn’t believe that it was priced at only $250 with a rebate. I put the ink cartridges back on the shelf and rolled out with a new dream machine that seemed to be a perfect fit for my needs.

SIZE & WEIGHT

The big red sticker on the front of the CLP-300 boasts that this printer is the “world’s smallest color laser printer,” and it is. It’s really not a whole lot larger than a typical ink-jet printer although the box-y little body of the CLP-300 is taller than most ink-jet varieties. The printer’s basic dimensions are 15.4” wide, 13.5” high, and 10.4 inches deep…indeed shockingly small for a color laser. I was able to set the CLP-300 right on my desktop without the need for a separate printer stand.

The light 30-lb. weight of this printer is also quite manageable. I could easily un-box and lift the printer onto my desk without having to whine for help.

OPERATING NOISE LEVEL

I don’t think anyone wants a clanging, clunking color laser printer in a home setting. And I was pleased by the CLP-300’s relatively quiet operation. I don’t find it to be too much louder overall than ink-jet printers--even when printing in color (a particularly noisy operation on many color lasers). And when idle, the CLP-300 is virtually silent without the loud hum you might associate with larger office lasers.

PRINT QUALITY

Text Quality

For black text, I’m generally getting good quality from the CLP-300--especially when I use the right paper (real laser paper). I’m surprised, however, that it isn’t even better and hoping that future driver updates from Samsung will enhance text printing. The CLP-300’s resolution, by the way, is 2400 x 600 dpi.

Here are a few of my observations on the CLP-300’s black text quality. When I print text mixed with color graphics--my most common print job--text quality is excellent. However, when I print pages of straight text, my eye can see character voids (teeny specks of missing black)--mostly along the very bottom edges of the characters on a line. I’m printing from a new Windows Vista PC, and I’ve been wondering if Samsung’s brand-spanking-new Vista driver is at the root of this issue.

Very occasionally, I also get some inconsistent, uneven text quality on a single page. But that problem has been easy to correct by “redistributing” the toner…in other words, shaking the toner cartridge just like the ladies in the office.

If you’re still using a Windows 98 PC, I have a special alert for you. I initially installed the CLP-300 on my near-death Windows 98 computer. However, no matter how much driver updating and tweaking of settings I did, I could not get acceptable text quality from the CLP-300 with Windows 98. Two weeks later, I did an assisted suicide with my old Win98 computer and purchased my strong new Vista PC. I was taken aback and thrilled that text quality was suddenly transformed with the Vista driver--although, as noted above, I don’t think it’s completely right quite yet.

Color Quality

I’m very impressed with this budget printer’s color quality for graphics and color text. Because my household acquired a new ink-jet printer just a few days ago, I was able to try some color comparison tests with a current ink-jet model. My test ink-jet printer is the popular Canon PIXMA iP4300 Photo Printer—a $100 freebie that came with an Apple MacBook purchase. With no color tweaking on either printer, the CLP-300 produced a noticeably better quality page (light text with significant color graphics).

Photo Quality

I bought the CLP-300 for printing text with color graphics, not for printing photos. (I’ll use that new Canon ink-jet photo printer for that purpose.) If you need a printer that can produce good quality photos, I should caution you not to buy the CLP-300. Low-end laser printers are just not designed for printing photographs, as are today’s excellent ink-jet photo printers. The sticker on the front of the CLP-300 advertises “photo-like” quality—not photo quality. And that is correct.

But will the CLP-300 print a decent photo? In my opinion, not really. Photos I printed both on semi-glossy 4 x 6 paper and on LASER glossy stock were, in fact, just “photo-like,” but not what most people would define as real photos. The photographic image is there, of course; but it’s not very sharp at all and colors look rather washed out. Finer details that would make for real photo quality just aren’t there.

By the way, you can’t use GLOSSY photo paper for INK-JET printers in the CLP-300. Laser printing uses a heat technology. If you put glossy ink-jet stock through a laser printer, the glossy coating can literally melt and damage the printer. That is why the sticker on the CLP-300 which says “photo-like” quality, also says “semi-glossy.” However, you can find glossy paper designed specifically for laser printers.

You should also be aware that with the CLP-300, you won’t get all those great photo paper choices on the “Paper Type” drop-down menu in the printer properties screen. There are no PHOTO paper choices at all. In fact, I even had to create a custom paper size (4 x 6!) in order to print to my test 4 x 6 photos.

USING THE RIGHT PAPER

To get good print quality from the CLP-300, you need to use real COLOR LASER paper (not cheap stock). For regular non-photo printing, you need a laser paper that is “bright-white” (for example, 97 bright) and has a 24 lb. weight.

According to the user’s manual, paper with a weight greater than 24 lbs. should only be fed manually into this printer. Also, you should not use paper with a weight greater than 43 lbs. I was a bit crabby when I read this spec because I occasionally need to print certificates on 67 lb. cover stock and wanted to do them on my new color laser. Guess I can’t have everything for that budget price.

PRINT SPEED

Monochrome Speed

Print speed is not a big issue for me because I’m not usually working against a pressing deadline. If it’s a concern for you, the CLP-300’s rated speed for black and white text is 17 pages per minute. (That’s at 5% coverage which I’m told is roughly equivalent to a full page of double-spaced text). But for anyone not in the know, I should mention that any manufacturer’s “rated” speed specification for a printer is always the printer’s highest speed at its LOWEST print quality setting--for example, “economy” or “draft” mode for text printing. So don’t expect any 17 ppm speed for more typical printing at a “normal” quality setting. I’m getting a speed of about 6-8 pages per minute when printing full pages of double-spaced text in “Normal” mode.

Color Speed

Rated speed for color printing on the CLP-300 is a rather poopy 4 pages per minute. So for the 250 bucks, you’re not going shoot color pages out of this printer at the speed of light. I did, however, actually get the 4 page-per-minute speed when printing full pages of color photos. For me, the slow-ish color speed of the CLP-300 was an easy trade-off for its small size and overall price/performance value.

First Page Out Speed

As is typical of other laser printers, the CLP-300 will have a time delay before your print job actually begins printing. If your only experience is with ink-jet printing, this delay may surprise you. I’m unscientifically clocking a delay of about 10 seconds when sending the printer a full page of mostly single-spaced, black and white text with scattered bolding. When sending a full page of color photos, I’m observing a 29-second delay.

PAPER TRAYS

Because of the CLP-300’s small size, its paper tray capacity isn’t huge although it should be more than adequate for most home users. The input tray holds 150 pages. The output tray on the top of the printer can hold 100 pages. And the input tray can handle media sizes from 3” x 5” to legal-size paper.

One thing that Samsung sacrificed in getting the CLP-300 into its ultra-compact form was a separate input tray for manual feeding. Paper is fed manually through the regular input tray. So for manual printing, you do have the inconvenience of having to remove the paper already loaded in the tray.

CARTRIDGES

The toner cartridges for the CLP-300 are cute cylindrical canisters--similar in size to a short can of cream-style corn. If you’re used to ink-jet cartridges, the CLP-300’s toner cartridges will seem huge. If you’re used to larger color laser printers, the CLP-300 canisters will seem tiny.

These small, non-traditional cartridges are the biggest part of what enabled Samsung to create the CLP-300’s diminutive form factor. In brief, the color canisters are mounted in a new way that saves greatly on space and also makes changing cartridges a piece of cake.

The CLP-300 uses 4 toner cartridges: cyan, yellow, magenta, and black. Unlike some ink-jet printers which come with only one color cartridge, the CLP-300 allows you to replace a single color when it runs out, without having to replace an entire multi-color cartridge. The black cartridge, by the way, is sensibly larger in size than the color canisters and has a higher yield.

The CLP-300 comes with the 4 toner cartridges included, but they are not actually full-capacity canisters. My sales associate at Staples cautioned me about this, and I did buy an additional cartridge set with the printer. But my original set is still going after 6 weeks, despite the fact that I’ve been printing like a thing possessed--churning out an exorbitant number of unnecessary color prints while playing with my new toy.

COST PER PAGE

Per Samsung’s specs, the black cartridge should yield up to 2,000 pages at 5% coverage. The color canisters should yield 1,000 pages each. To determine cost per page, you can use the simple formula of dividing the cost of the cartridge by its yield. I’m getting a cost-per-page of about $.03 for text and $.05 for text combined with significant color graphics. I don’t print much with heavy color output (like photos), but I’ve read that the per-page cost for that type of color printing would be around 10 cents a page on the CLP-300.

The black cartridge for the CLP-300 runs $60, and each color cartridge is $50. So I did slap down $210 for my first extra set of canisters. Ouch. It seemed like a lot of cabbage for someone trying to get rid of cartridge costs. But if you do the math on cost-per-page, these toner costs are FAR below ink-jet costs--8 to 10 times less according to some sources.

OTHER CONSUMABLES DOWN THE ROAD

With the CLP-300, you will incur some additional consumable costs--other than toner cartridges--over the longer term. Not all color lasers require these extra consumables; but with the CLP-300, you'll need to replace the waste toner cartridge (around $10) after about 5,000 black pages or 1,250 color pages. Farther down the road, you’ll also have to replace the imaging kit ($85-$100) after about 20,000 black pages or 12,500 color pages. Ink-jet printers don’t have these operating costs, so you’ll probably want to mull that over.

THE SMART PANEL

For the $250, don’t expect a fancy control panel display on the CLP-300. On the top deck, you get a basic but functional set of controls--a big orange stop-start button, a red-green status light, and 4 status lights for each of the printer’s 4 toner cartridges. (The On/Off switch is at the back of the printer.) However, printer options are easily adjusted on your computer screen via software—Samsung’s Smart Panel program.

MONTHLY DUTY CYCLE

The monthly duty cycle of the CLP-300 is 24,200 pages per month. So that should hold us home users for a while.

PROCESSOR AND MEMORY

The CLP-300 uses a Samsung 300 MHz processor and 32MB of memory (which is not upgradable). Larger, more expensive color lasers will come with more RAM, but I’m having no problems with this printer’s 32MB. And I think I’m probably doing larger print jobs than an average home user. Again, the CLP-300 is a very small personal printer that’s not designed to crank out huge color jobs which might require more printer RAM.

OTHER FUN FACTS

Easy Set-up...Setting up the CLP-300 was easy and fairly quick, although some of the diagrams on the quick set-up sheet were a little squirrely and took a minute to figure out. You also need to avoid letting Windows install the printer driver via the “New Hardware Found” screens. You need to install from the CD provided to get the Smart Panel installation as well.

Ease of Use...The CLP-300 is really quite easy to use. The Smart Panel gives you prompts, status of toner remaining in each cartridge, etc.

Connection...The printer connects to your computer with a high-speed USB 2 connecter. If you have an older computer with only USB 1 connecters, the printer will still work fine; it will just dumb down to USB 1 speed.

Network Printing...If you need a physical Ethernet network connector on the CLP-300 , there is a network version available—the CLP-300N model for about $100 more.

MAC Compatibility...The CLP-300 is Mac-compatible--with Mac OS 10.3-10.4. But it’s my understanding that not all features are supported under the Mac OS. (The CLP-300 is Linux-compatible as well.)

Warranty...1 year, parts & labor (on-site in some cases)

CONCLUSION

All things considered, I’m sold on the Samsung CLP-300. There’s just nothing else like it right now out on the market. And, for my particular printing needs, it’s just about a perfect fit. But, again, if you need quality photo printing, you’d be well-advised to keep that ink-jet printer hanging around.

Because of this printer’s excellent price/performance value, I’d give the Samsung CLP-300 a strong overall rating of 4.3 out of 5.


Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 249.99
Operating System: Windows