Samsung CLP-300 - Color Laser For Everyone - Testing and Conclusion

Testing:

This printer is rated at up to 17PPM when printing black and up to 4PPM when printing color.  We broke out the stopwatch to verify these print speeds and found the printer to be slightly slower on monochrome documents and slightly faster on our color documents.  Regardless, it is plenty fast for many people and won't keep you waiting.  It is able to queue up documents as it has 32MB of built-in memory.  This helps speed up print times when you have multiple people connected to this printer if it is shared on your computer.  It also allows for speedier transmission of large color documents from your computer.

The black quality of this printer is fantastic and black text appears perfectly sharp, crisp and wonderful.  We printed out several test pages with various font sizes from 72 point fonts all the way down to 6 point fonts.  All of these were very clear with no edge bleeding that you can see on ink-jet printers.  Color text was a different story however.  We printed Red, Blue, Green and Yellow text with the same text settings as when we printed black.  The red text was quite pink and didn't reflect a true red color at all.  The blue and green texts were very blurry when the font was small, and when the font size was increased we could see why.  The color blending is done in sort of a grid that looks alright from a distance, but up close and especially on fonts, it appears quite patchy.  Although it printed quickly and quietly, color fonts left me quite disappointed.  I haven't been able to compare color fonts on another laser printer to see how they stack up, but as a stand-alone product, I feel disappointed.

We printed some color graphics and color photos with the CLP-300 as well.  Most laser printers print graphics exceptionally well, and the CLP-300 was no different.  Color graphics were very clean and looked great.  Color photos looked washed out and quite faint.  This is the case with many entry-level and mid-range laser printers however.  Pictures looked good enough for a laser printer, but were not something that you'd frame and put on your wall.

Conclusion:

The CLP-300 is a bit of a mixed bag.  While it is the smallest color laser printer I've seen, it lacks some features that make it a true winner.  Color text is quite blotchy and not very clear due to the poor color blending.  Color graphics and black text look very good however, and this printer is quiet.  It is fairly speedy when it comes to monochrome documents, but quite slow on color pictures.  It is affordably priced though, and with low-cost consumables, it may have a fit in your home or small office.  If you can lay down a little more money, I believe you'd be happier with the CLP-510 or similar printer.  The CLP-300 lacks double-sided printing which is available on other high-end models for about $100 more.

That being said, if you need a color laser printer and you don't have a lot of cash, the CLP-300 is a fair choice that should perform well enough to get the job done.

Pros:

• Affordable color laser
• Easy to replace toner
• Small size
• Very little noise

Cons:

• Imaging unit doubles as toner storage - would be very expensive to replace
• No duplex printing option
• Poor color text quality

I'd like to thank Samsung Canada for sending the CLP-300 our way.  It has been interesting to review, but in the end, I feel that money could be better spent on a more expensive model that has a few more features.  If you have any questions or comments, we'd love to hear them at the Comments link below.