The Samsung CLP 610ND

OVERVIEW:  Not too long ago, color laser printers were too expensive for even most companies to be able to justify having one, settling for buying a high-end inkjet printer instead. Now that the technology has matured, prices have dropped to the point where even home markets are looking at the color laser as an affordable investment. For a business that needs a fast color laser printer for network printing, it’s the CLP-610ND.

PROS:
The CLP stands for “Color Laser Printer” and the “ND” is for “Network & Duplex”.  The 56-pound cube has a 17” x 17” square footprint. However you’ll need to allow for four more inches around the printer for cooling ventilation.

The CLP-610ND comes standard with a 250-sheet cassette tray, capable of holding over a ream of letter or legal-size paper. For more capacity, a second 500-sheet cassette is available as an option. The flip-door on the front of the printer reveals a 100-sheet multi-purpose tray that can handle transparencies, labels, post cards, envelopes, and to 8½” x 14” legal paper of various bond weights.

After a 40-second warm-up, the CLP-610ND can print up to 20 pages per minute on single-side paper, 9.9 images per minute in duplex mode. Single-pass color printing allows color print speeds to be as fast as Black and White. At the maximum print resolution of 2400 x 600 dpi, text is reasonably clear, and the printer does a decent job with basic graphics. During printing, at 51 decibels the printer is quieter than low conversations, and virtually silent idling at 29dB.

Having built-in Ethernet network support and a hi-speed USB, this multifunction is right at home either in the middle of an office floor or connected to a secretary’s computer. The built-in 128MB of printer memory can be expanded to 384MB, enabling the CLP-610ND to easily handle workloads as a network printer.
Another nice feature Samsung provides is software support for the “Big 3 OSes” (Windows, Mac OS, and Linux). Now you don’t have to be chained to one operating system just because your printer can only support one.

CONS:
One of the sacrifices of a color printer is print speeds. Even in single-sided printing, the print speed is only 20 pages per minute. Now days there are inkjet printers that are as fast as laser printers.
With all the features offered, it would have been nice to include PostScript emulation. While the HP PCL and Samsung SPL-C will handle most printing needs, imaging problems like “ghosting” can occur if trying to print certain Photoshop or Illustrator effects without using PostScript.

INK / TONER NEEDS:
Just like with color inkjet printers, when it comes to color laser printers, print yield is sacrificed for color printing. The CLP-610ND requires 4 toner cartridges—one for each of the CYMK colors.
Out of the box Samsung includes the standard 2,500-page yield black cartridge, and three 2,000-page yield color cartridges, one for each color (Cyan, Yellow, Magenta).

The cartridges can be purchased separately, especially if the black toner gets depleted at a higher rate than the other colors. High-yield combo-packages are available to save costs at 60% more capacity.
Other consumables you’ll need to consider is replacement of the Paper Transfer Belt every 50,000 pages.

SOFTWARE:
The CD that comes with the CLP-610ND provides software support for Windows, as well as Mac and Linux operating systems. The Samsung web site offers new drivers you can download for the new 10.6 Snow Leopard systems.
To remotely change network printer configurations and notifications, Samsung’s SyncThru Web service allows printer changes to be made using your IE, Safari, or Firefox browser. The software is not part of the CD and has to be downloaded from Samsung’s web site.