The Color Laser Printer Guide: Vendor & Product Profiles
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NOIS,”which means, as the name implies, lowered oper-
ating noise. They also offer easy toner installation and
what they call “4-click” installation for software drivers.
Paper supplies start with a 100-sheet bypass and a 250-
sheet paper tray.You can add a 500-sheet tray,for a total
capacity of 850 sheets. All of these models offer automat-
ic duplexing as a standard feature, a nice plus.
The CLP-510 uses different toner cartridges from those
in the CLP-550, but the other supplies are the same. For
both printers, however, the cost per page is quite high. We
calculate it over 17¢ for a color page,over 3.0¢ for black-
and-white.
These machines are fine basic color machines, but
Lexmark and OKI Printing Solutions offer lower-priced
models with significant speed advantages,and in the case
of Lexmark, PostScript printing. A few years ago, these
would have been very competitive models, but they’ve
been overtaken by some key competitors.
These models are, nevertheless, solid performers.
Samsung, with its strong position in black-and-white
lasers in the retail channel, will sell plenty of them.
Chart entries — pages 112–113
Samsung CLP-600N
Samsung CLP-650N
21ppm full color
21ppm black & white
Sum-up: Sharpprint quality and decent speed make this low-
cost family a decent buy.
With the rollout of its new CLP-600N and CLP-650N,
Samsung has become a true player in the increasingly
competitive low-end color laser printer market.Like most
printer vendors, Samsung doesn’t publish list prices, but
with street prices of $499 for the CLP-600N and $699 for
the CLP-650N, these machines are sure to hold appeal
for today’s buyers.
The CLP-600N and CLP-650N represent a vast
improvement over the CLP-510 and CLP-550 models in
terms of color speed, since both of the new machines
print at 21ppm in both color and black-and-white. With
interpolation, they can print at up to 2400dpi resolution.
This combination of decent speed and sharp printing is a
main asset of this family.
These machines have a 600MHz processor,commend-
able for this price range.The CLP-600’s 32MB of built-in
memory is nothing special, especially considering that it’s
not expandable. Memory is far better on the CLP-650N,
which has 256MB of built-in memory, expandable to
512MB.
The printers’ 45,000 monthly duty cycle is decent for
printers in this price range. This rating implies Samsung
believes they’re equipped to handle a heavier load than
some other comparable machines,such as the Konica
Minolta magicolor 2530 DL or Hewlett-Packard Color
LaserJet 2605dn, both of which have a 35,000 page rated
cycle.
Like some other machines in this price range such as
the OKI Printing Solutions C5500n and C5800Ldn, these
units lack a built-in hard drive. That could be a serious
drawback for users who want to archive print jobs.
Samsung CLP-510
Consumables costs at-a-glance
Price
Yield
Full-color cost per page
Black-and-whitecost per page
Black toner $81.99 7,000 $ 0.012 $ 0.012
Cyan toner $66.99 2,000 $ 0.033 N/A
Magenta toner $66.99 2,000 $ 0.033 N/A
Yellow toner $66.99 2,000 $ 0.033 N/A
Drum/black $149.99 12,500 N/A $ 0.012
Drum/4-color $149.99 3,125 $ 0.048 N/A
Image transfer unit/black $149.99 50,000 N/A $ 0.003
Image transfer unit/4-color $149.99 12,500 $ 0.012 N/A
Waste toner bottle/black $19.99 12,000 N/A $ 0.002
Waste toner bottle/4-color $19.99 3,000 $ 0.007 N/A
TOTAL PER-PAGE COSTS $0.1789 $ 0.0284
17.89 2.84
Samsung CLP-550/CLP-600N/CLP-650N
Consumables costs at-a-glance
Price
Yield
Full-color cost per page
Black-and-whitecost per page
Black toner $99.99 7,000 $ 0.014 $ 0.014
Cyan toner $119.99 5,000 $ 0.024 N/A
Magenta toner $119.99 5,000 $ 0.024 N/A
Yellow toner $119.99 5,000 $ 0.024 N/A
Drum/black $149.99 12,500 N/A $ 0.012
Drum/4-color $149.99 3,125 $ 0.048 N/A
Image transfer unit/black $149.99 50,000 N/A $ 0.003
Image transfer unit/4-color $149.99 12,500 $ 0.012 N/A
Waste toner bottle/black $19.99 12,000 N/A $ 0.002
Waste toner bottle/4-color $19.99 3,000 $ 0.007 N/A
TOTAL PER-PAGE COSTS
$0.1529 $ 0.0309
15.29 3.09