One of the best PC-related purchases I've ever made
Written: Sep 25 '02
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Pros: Great print quality, great price, toner longevity, small size
Cons: Doesn't like large stock, grinding noise after four months, no bottom catch tray
The Bottom Line: The best bang-for-your-buck printer available. If you're going to pay $100 for an inkjet, save a bit longer and BUY THIS PRINTER.
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| futurestar06's Full Review: Samsung ML 1250 Laser Printer |
Intro
Until this past summer, I lived my PC life in a sea of horrible inkjet printers. You know the ones. The "free with computer purchase" ones. The "$32 per cartridge" ones. The "don't touch it for five minutes or it'll smudge" ones. You've had one. We all have.
The Purchase
I finally had it with them, and decided I was going to use a $100 Best Buy credit I'd received from a faulty set of speakers on a new printer. I'd always wanted a laser printer, but knew the HPs were far too expensive for my small printing needs. My eyes scanned the pricetags in the printer aisle until I came to this one. $199, with a $50 Best Buy card as a rebate. My initial impulse was that there was no way it would print well for that price. It seemed to print great, had the few features that I actually demanded, and was priced in my range. After reading a few reviews (I love Epinions), I gave it a go.
Tech Stuff
The printer is smaller than most lasers I've used (HP4, 5, etc), and is actually only slightly larger than those horrible inkjets. We had no problems installing it on a Win98 machine, but I don't recall if it came with any software. If it did, chances are I didn't install any. Its 12ppm, 66mhz processor, and 4mb of RAM are suitable for my needs, although sometimes it'll pause due to the small memory. It's upgradable to 68mb if you need it.
The Wedding Story
Its first few tasks were simple, as most of my projects are either printed websites, or small Word documents. But after about a month, we were forced to make decisions about our wedding stationary. As we ached over the high price of invitations, we decided to try making our own using the ML-1250. Friends of my family had recently been married, and their invitation was beautiful - thick card stock had the details, and a thin sheet of vellum covered it, with their names on it. We purchased some card stock and some vellum, and gave it a try. We created an invite with the same names as the (expensive) original, and dared people to guess which one we made. Most couldn't, so we purchased all the materials and made them ourselves. After sending them out, all we heard was compliments on the invites, and surprised tones when we told them we made them ourselves. After hearing that, we decided to make our own church programs. These, too, came our perfect. A couple of the guests even asked me to do their weddings. Needless to say we saved hundreds over the course of the wedding.
The Problems
That was about two months ago. Since then, the printer has seen limited action, but has developed a slight grinding noise. It doesn't seem to affect the quality, but I'm sure it's not supposed to sound like that. Opening it up doesn't show anything odd, so I guess I'll just live with it.
I also had some trouble printing envelopes from the manual feed tray. Didn't seem to want to take them in. Also, when printing the invites, we had trouble *sometimes* with the thick card stock. Not every time, however.
Also, when printing the invites, instead of bending the paper through the printer into the top output tray, I decided to open up the lower tray. This kept the invites flat, but due to the lack of a catch tray, you have to pull each one out by hand (catch it, pretty much) as it comes out. Onerous after a while.
The Conclusion
Keep in mind the printer is still on its original toner. We had about 200 guests at the wedding, so you can imagine how many invites and programs we printed out. Not to mention all sorts of other stuff in between. I even purchased a new cartridge, but haven't had to use it yet. I bought it on eBay for a VERY reasonable $10. The toner save mode is completely the same as the normal mode, except that apparently it saves toner. There is no way to tell the difference between the two, but there's also no real way to tell if it's saving toner.
So all in all, I love this printer. I basically paid $50 for something that saved me hundreds in a few short month. I fully endorse this printer, and look forward to years of church program-creating :)
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 199
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
futurestar06
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Member: Joey Proulx
Location: Manchester, NH, USA
Reviews written: 29
Trusted by: 9 members
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