Customer Reviews

Samsung CLP-510N Network-Ready Color Laser

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

Thrilled with the results on 20-24lb paper

I found the Samsung CLP-510N to be a great bargain, but only for 20-24lb paper. This is what I bought it for. What can you expect for $300? (from other site) This is fantastic for $300. I see crystal clear, colorful, well-defined print. I even printed an 8X10 photo of an electronics printed circuit board with components on it and found the quality excelent at default normal resolution setting. But I would not expect true old-fashioned optical printed photo quality from like a portrait photo, from a $300 laser printer, on any paper. I would be proud of the print quality to all my customers, but I do not print photos for them. Among other things like letters and agreements, and service reports; I print controller programming "ladder-diagrams" in color, all are crisp, clean, and impressive.

I noticed that a couple of CNET revewiers knocked it down because "The photo quality is awful, extremely grainy and jagged on one, a second printed photo had obvious blotches, "lines" and grain." Well, do your homework and download the printer manual before buying it. The manual clearly states on page E-5 ("Supported Sizes of Paper"):
"* 60 to 90g/m2 bond (16 to 24lb) for single-sided printing
* 75 to 90 g/m2 bond (20 to 24lb) for duplex printing"

And for the manual feeder ("Multi-purpose tray"):
"60 to 163g/m2 bond (16 to 43lb)"

Paper type is very important in a printer. I'd wager a weeks pay that said reveiwers were using paper heavier than 24lb. However, I will knock Samsung down half a point for failing to note this on their datasheet pdf, but only half a point because of the cheap price. Have you seen any photo paper 20-24lb? No. This printer is not for photos. I tried 58lb HP glossy laser photo paper in it, it did not work, the toner was not fused to the paper. This may cause a mess in there, and perhaps the other reveiwers tried this too much causing errant ink on subsequent 20-24lb paper as well!

I could not regester to log on to CNET to submit my review, they said it was my cookie settings, but even when I turned my security settings to "low" I could not. Their loss not mine.

One more thing to note, though, if you turn on duplexing, in the printer menu or in the software, the printer will run two passes whether or not you are printing a single page. This slows down the print rate considerably. What's more, I found that when you open an application, select print, and change the "print preferences" duplexing option, most apps will print with the original options instead, ignoring the duplex on-or-off change you just made. So set your options before opening the app, and close the app to change them again. This was true with both Win98 SP2 and WinXP SP2. So I knock another half point off for this, only half because of the cheap price.

You will not get $3,000 printer results from this printer, if you need to print on a variety of paper types like glossy photo paper and card stock, then you must expect to pay a premium price for your laser printer (of another more-expensive brand). Again, this printer prints much better than I expected for $300, and has a built-in duplexer to boot. Don't buy a Kia and expect performance like a Caddilac.

The printer has mediocre graphics output, so if you need high-grade graphics output, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a decent, mid-grade quality color laser, you won't get more features and better performance for the money. Duplex and network support come standard. Power consumption isn't bad either; note the reviews of many other color lasers that people put in there homes only to blow circuits. Network configuration is a little clumsy, but even a novice should be able to get through it.

Purchased this for a networked small office environment (three users). When we had print quality issues a few months after installation our young secretary called support and was told to clean the drum with a paper towel. That's it! She took it out and damaged it in the light. Why would tech support tell you to take the drum out to clean it and not warn you about exposure to light? More calls and more of the same poor help. At their suggestion, she spent $400 on new cartridges, to no avail. Now they want us to ship it back to CA from New England.

All we have done is sink money into this thing! Do I now want to invest in a new drum? I used a B&W HP Laserjet for many years, with low maintenance and few problems. If you don't know how to properly maintain it, you are doomed!

A follow-up: I replaced the drum and cleaned everything thoroughly. The printer then performed satisfactorily. Don't depend on tech support to give you good advice and don't get a laserjet if you can't or won't do the maintenance.

Good quality print (not photographic but for colour/monochrome documents, it's so much better and less hassle than stinkjets. However it's a lot cheaper elsewhere than amazon.

Built in 10/100 base T interface is easy to configure (hint use the JetDirect port for simplicity).

The bad:
- Accessories are exorbitant - replacement toner is more than the cost of the printer ($80+ x4). An additional paper cassette (perhaps $10 worth of plastic) retails at >$250. etc etc.

- I bought this for linux/mac support so can't comment on windows side of things but the linux & mac drivers are seriously flawed part of this comes from the proprietry, undocumented printer language (SPL):
Mac: Some documents don't print; the others are seriously bottle-necked by the conversion to SPL. A typical medium sized job will take 1 min to spool, 10-20 MINS to convert, 10-20 secs to transfer to the printer, and another 2-3 mins to print.

Linux:
The install only seems to work on a Redhat system with certain old kernel and glibc libraries... To get it to install on ubuntu, I ended up installing on a RH system and then copying the config over, restarting cups, ... All in all a 3 min procedure took most of a weekend.
- Some graphics come out wrong - the ps->spl converter turns the graphics into black rectangles - hardly what is expected from a $350+ printer (I can print to a $50 inkjet better under such circumstanses).

Oh and the problem may be partially xerox's fault since the drivers (and printer spec) seem to be identical to the Phaser 6100

I have this printer for over 8 months now, and this printer has problems. The sensor that detects waste toner level is weak for many of the CLP-510 printers, causing it to report an error that waste toner bin needs to be replaced before it would print again. Even if the sensor is not weak, the waste toner bin itself is poorly designed where when waste toner goes in it, it gets on the section of the bin where the sensor detects the bin as full. I clean the bin, but it would detect it as full soon again after 50 prints. The waste toner is suppose to lasts for over 1,000 prints.
Search the internet for "CLP-510 Waste Toner Problems" for more info.

Other than that, text prints looks good. Color prints are good enough for non-business use and non-photo prints. I tried to print photos on photo paper, but after the 5th one in a roll, I think the printer got too hot that the toners wouldn't stay on the photo papers. Maybe before it was the thickness and the smoothness of the paper has something to do with it too. Now the rollers in the printer are dirty and leaves a black spot on my prints.

Another problem, it jams more than I would like. About once every 20 prints.

My advice, DO NOT BUY it. It seems like a great printer the first 2 or 3 months, after that, it's problem after problem.

We've been using these printers at work for 2 years now. While the manual does indeed state 24lb paper for duplex printing, we've found that we get excellent print quality in duplex using Office Depot's 28lb 115 bright laser paper. It does the best job we've seen.

This printer is terrible. You cannot print more than 5 pages at a time without the printer rollers heating up and damaging the paper. It is very sensitive to the weight of the paper. Essentially, you cannot you any medium to heavy weight paper with this printer. Worst printer I have ever bought and/or used.

We've had this printer in our office for 12 months and now it is no longer able to be used because the transfer belt and imaging unit have reached their predetermined copy limit. Even though they work just fine, after x amount of prints they stop working. It costs $300-$500 to replace these parts. What a joke. We even bought an extended warranty and we were sent an even more used printer without the parts in question! They're considered consumable and aren't covered by the warranties at all. I would NOT recommend buying this printer.

I have UNsuccessfully attempted to introduce the Samsung CLP-510n into a well-established, smoothly-operating, home-business ethernet/wireless network. While the Samsung CLP-510n produces a fairly good color print page, the problem is getting it to reliably print over a network. The software supplied by Samsung is definitely NOT "plug-and-play!" (My points of reference are several HP and Minolta Color printers I own that ARE "plug & play" and quickly respond both to my Pentium 4 and my iMAC G5 computers.)

Samsung CLP-510n networking capaility appears to be limited to direct-connect USB or ethernet --- not via networked ethernet switchs/routers as most of us use. It will not work over my wireless network at all! The two-sided printing works with some computers (when on a direct ethernet network) and not others!

I've made numerous calls to Samsung Technical Support --- I have found the "support" to be very limited. While several technicians offered suggestions, others had the attitude that " oh-well . . .that's the way it is . . . (when the printer won't respond to any computer on the network)"

Bottom Line: I will NOT again purchase a Samsung printer until I read reviews in the future that: 1) indicate they have fixed their networking problems and 2) rate them as "outstanding" in periodicals such as PC World or Consumer Reports.

Terrible customer service! Printer failed during non-profit's annual appeal mailing job. Samsung refused to send a technician to the office or accept return; instead attempted to diagnose problem by phone to no avail. Sent user-changeable parts that did not solve problem. Customer service manager has not responded to my calls. Printer has been malfunctioning for more than ten days--still no fix in sight.

Toner is way too expensive for me to consider buying another CLP-510N to replace the eighty pound paperweight in my office.