Samsung CLP-300 - Color Laser For Everyone

Article Index
Samsung CLP-300 - Color Laser For Everyone
Closer Look Inside and Outside
Software Installation and Setup
Testing and Conclusion

Product: Samsung CLP-300 Color Laser Printer
Provided By: Samsung Canada
Price: $249.95CDN @ MemoryExpress

 

Introduction:

CLP-300 Box In this day and age having a good printer is a must.  Ink Jet printers are often very affordable to purchase, but consumables will break the bank.  Laser printers on the other hand often cost a bit more money, but have are more attractive when it comes to cost per page.  I know many people who use both ink-jet printers as well as laser printers at work and at home in order to get great quality photo prints on the ink-jet printer, and save money on documents using the laser printer.   Monochrome laser printers (Black & White) are now very affordable, but many people want the ability to printer color documents as well.  Today we are looking at Samsung's latest entry-level color laser printer - the CLP-300 to see how well this $250CDN printer holds up.  We will probably run it out of toner in this review and work it harder than most people.  This should be a good test to see if it's worthy, or if you're better off dropping another $100 on last year's CLP-510.

 

About Samsung Canada:

Established in 1987, Samsung Electronics Canada Inc. has been selling products especially selected for the needs of the Canadian consumer.

Samsung Electronics Canada Inc. is divided into four divisions:

    * Consumer Electronics, which sells products ranging from High Definition Televisions to Camcorders and Digital Audio Products
    * Home Appliances our newest division selling stat-of-the-art kitchen and laundry appliances
    * Information Technology division, which specializes in computer peripherals such as monitors, laser printers and storage products and
    * Wireless Terminals, which researches, markets and develops wireless handsets and telecommunications devices throughout Canada.

Samsung Electronics Canada Inc. is the Canadian-based subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Company Ltd. of Korea, a global leader in semiconductors, telecommunication, and digital convergence technology. Samsung Electronics employs approximately 75,000 people in 89 offices in 47 countries, with fully-integrated sales, service and marketing activities in 46 countries and R&D activities in 15 research centres around the world.

Samsung Electronics Canada has been a proud sponsor of the World Cyber Games, Samsung Nations' Cup Equestrian Series, Canadian National Hockey Teams and more recently the Olympics in Turino.

Founded in 1938 in Seoul, Korea, Samsung Electronics Ltd. is the world's largest producer of memory chips, TFT-LCDs, CDMA mobile phones, monitors and VCRs. Samsung Electronics consists of four main business units: Digital Media Network, Device Solution Network, Telecommunication Network and Digital Appliance Network Businesses. 


CLP-300 First Look:

Samsung markets this printer as the "World's Smallest Color Laser Printer".  I will admit it is very stubby but still has a sizable footprint that will take some desktop real estate.  It is almost half the size of the CLP-550 though, and operates very quietly.

 CLP-300 Front Profile
CLP-300 Front Profile
 CLP-300 Bundle
CLP-300 Bundle

 

In the box, you get the nice and small CLP-300 printer and some toner drums to get you going.  These toner drums are not full, and operate about half-capacity of regular drums and should print 700 pages per color and 1000 pages on the black toner before needing to be replaced.  Of course this depends on what you're printing.  Samsung rates a page at 5% page coverage. 

 

Specs & Features: 

Before we get any farther into this review, let's take a look at the specs and from Samsung.

 

Engine Speed (PPM) Black and White: Up to 17ppm; Colour: up to 4ppm;
 
Weight 13.6 kg
 
Resolution Up to 2,400 x 600 dpi effective output
 
Warm Up Time (FPOT) 14 seconds (black) 26 seconds (color)
 
Max.Paper Size 216 x 356 mm (8.5" x 14")
 
Noise(db) Less than 48 dBA (Color printing), Less than 49 dBA (B/W printing), Less than 35 dBA (Standby)
 
Controller Processor Samsung 300 MHz
 
Ram (Std/Max) 32 MB (Max. 32 MB)
 
Emulation SPL-C (host based printing)
 
Interface High-speed USB 2.0
 
Optional Interface N/A
 
OS Compatibility Windows 98SE/Me/2000/XP/2003, Various Linux OS including Red Hat 8.0~9.0, Fedora Core 1~3, Mandrake 9.2~10.1, SuSE 8.2~9.2 and Mac OS 10.3~10.4
 
Paper Handling Paper Input (Capa./Type) 150-sheet semi-cassette Tray
 
Paper Output 100-sheets Face Down
 
Options (Input/Output) N/A
 
Sheet Sizes 76 x 127 (3'' x 5") ~ 216 x 356 mm (8.4" x 14")
 
Duplex Manual
 
Special Media Plain paper, Envelopes, Transparencies, Labels, Card stock
 
General Colour Gray
 
Max Monthly Duty 24,200 pages
 
Weight 13.6 kg
 
Dimension (WxDxH) 390 x 344 x 265 mm
 
Consumable Type Drum and Cartridge Separate
 
Consumable Yield 2000/1000 Letter Pages(Black/Colour), Ships with Standard Yield Black/Colour Toner Cartridges with 1500/700 Letter Pages at 5% Coverage
 
Power Consumption Less than 350 watts (printing), less than 17 watts (Power Save)