Customer Reviews

Samsung CLX-3175FN Color Laser Multi-function Printer

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I rarely write reviews, but I have always used Amazon's site to preview products and read others' reviews that I decided it was time I gave back.
So I purchased the Samsung Printer from another seller at $299.00, the price alone is worth 2 stars.
Just a little about my purchase decisions....I've owned 20 printers since 1994; the first Canon color inkjet, BJC-600, and then the Epson Stylus, and now 20models later, the Samsung Color Laser CLX-3175 ... I never really thought I would buy a Samsung for a printer, usually I buy Epson or HP. Epson is better with inkjet and HP I feel is the King with laser technology. So...Why a Samsung....For 2 years I've been searching for a color all in one, it had to be laser, I was sick of the drying inks, I did not print much in full color but when I did, the tanks were empty or clogged.
Until I saw the Samsung I decided on either the HP all in one, like the Color LaserJet CM1312mfp or the Color LaserJet 2820mfp. The size of those machines delayed the purchase, I didn't have the room for it so I figured I would wait until my older HP LaserJet 6p died and my Epson 980 needed a new cartridge. I was looking for a Plasma screen on Samsung's website and that's where my love affair began. Within 20 minutes I ordered it! It's probably the fastest purchase decision on an electronic device ever for me. I usually wait until I read a dozen reviews etc. . But the price had me thinking even if it's not what I expected, I would just sell it when it needs toner or, I could always give it to my mother as she needs an all in one as is not as picky as I am.
Anyway back to the review, I ordered my printer on Thursday and received it on Monday. I unboxed the printer and it was already assembled with the cartridges preinstalled. The unit was nicely taped in all the spots that would come affixed during shipping. You only must install the arm for the ADF. Earlier that day, before I received the printer I went to Samsung's website and downloaded the drivers and software. Samsung did an extraordinary job with the software and drivers. The Printing software, The Scanner software, and the Printer Console software were all separate packages. So you did not have to install all three packages on all computers. Also, you have the option of installing a Mono printing software package, this is extremely valuable! This mean if you have children or co-workers who may waste your toner printing color documents, you can restrict them by only allowing them to print in black and white, and they wouldn't even know HAHA.
The software is NOT bloated like HP software, the color drivers are less then 10mb and so are the Scanner drivers. The printer console software is about 80mb; this package is basically like a printer monitor and extended menus. Personally I did not find needing to install it since the entire Printer setup could be viewed by entering its IP number, web setup.
I have to give this printer another star just because the drivers are simple, to the point and consists of less than 100mb and 20mb if that.
System setup was simple! All I had to do was plug it in and connect the network cable as I use it over the network. I have setup my router set to use DHCP, so the TCP/IP settings are all done automatically. Assuming all your computers are configured properly. When you run the drivers the setup asks you if it's a local setup meaning USB or Networked, after that it automatically finds your printer by IP number.
I choose to print a test page and 20 seconds later... a nicely printed demo printout. I was amazed. To test the copy quality I decided to copy it and compare. WOW that's all I can say, it took me 15 seconds to figure out which was the original, I purposely mixed them up. If it passed that test, then I knew it was a keeper!
The next thing I did was setup the Scanning feature. I ran the second drivers package for the scanner and just like the print driver interface, so was the same, chose network setup etc. The next thing I did was go to the scanner's pc interface and selected where I wanted the scanned documents to be stored. I then went to the printer, placed 10 sheets in the ADF, pressed the scan button, and then selected "scan to pc," my laptop's pc name was shown, and selected it by pressing "ok" then chose the resolution etc followed lastly by file type, which I chose for my test PDF. About a minute later, in my documents folder on my wireless notebook, there was a 10 page PDF! Now that's what I love!
For around $300.00 this was an excellent purchase. I can now digitize all my documents in PDF, organize them so with a search and a few seconds, any document could be found. Printing is excellent too, I will not complain if this printer shoots out a color page in 20 seconds, because it really doesn't bother me, because inkjet takes longer. The print quality from 1-10 I would have to say about 8.5. After all the resolution is 600 x 600 and that's a given. I printed a picture and it looked amazing, why not a ten then? Well only because some color laser jets have 1200 dpi, and that means double the dots and precision so my rating is ONLY an 8.5 because higher resolution printers exist. If they didn't exist I would rate the quality a 10.
I haven't faxed yet, I usually receive faxes via email through a subscription based service. I mainly need to print and scan.
This printer is feature packed! Another two features I will write about are the Scan and Print via USB and the web based console. If you do not have your home or office networked it's easy for others to print or scan, honestly all you do is plug in your USB flash drive and select the file, that's it! Or choose Save to USB for scanned documents. Great for when you want to shut down your pc and others have to print and are not networked.
The web based console is awesome; you can setup the time, fax stamp, and ringer setup all over HTML vs. pressing the printer's menu button a dozen times and key all the factors one by one. Also if there is a problem, tech support can look at the printer the same way you do.
The reason I am not giving this printer 5 stars is sadly because it does not have a manual feed slot and I really used it on other printers as I hate writing addresses on envelopes. The solution I have is to use labels. The added plus by not feeding envelopes is no jams or wear and tear on the rollers. I guess that helps with the disappointment. If you print Letterhead then either use the watermark and or Letterhead feature or you will have to slide the trey out when needed.
I hope this review helps!

ONE LAST TIP!!! USE COLOR LASER PAPER, SERIOUSLY YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPOINTED YOU DO NOT NEED TO PAY A TON FOR COLOR LASER PAPER EITHER, I PURCHASED A 500 PAGE REAM FOR $7.99 113 BRIGHTNESS!!!! 24LB. OFFICEDEPOT BRAND
UPC/BAR CODE 032476549257 I TRIED 3 PREMIUM TYPES AND THIS WAS THE BEST! FEELS EXPENSIVE!!! NICE AND SMOOTH AND OFCOURSE BRILLIANT!!

I purchased a 3175FN just about a year ago. The first one arrived DOA and Samsung service said to return to vendor. Vendor replaced immediately.

STRIKE 1

Second printer arrived OK, but was a b***h to get connected to my Mac. Finally got networked through my Airport router without any useful help from Samsung service.

STRIKE 2

Printer worked very well for about 6 months (no complaints at all) and then died. Samsung service "diagnosed" the problem as being a bad motherboard Said they would set up in home service per warranty. Turns out that the closest warranty location is over 60 miles from me and it is outside their required service area. After a half dozen calls to Samsung service they finally OK the repair.

STRIKE 3

I called the repair provider and they tell me that parts have to ordered from Samsung. You would think that a service center would carry parts. After about a week a part arrives at MY house. I call service provider and they inform me that that is a fuser and the machine needs a motherboard. I call Samsung service again and they inform me that motherboards are on back order. I wait another 3 weeks (with calls weekly to Samsung service) and the motherboard finally arrives.

STRIKE 4

Service provider sets up appointment to repair. Arrives to do repair and after about half an hour states that he does not have the proper tools to take the machine apart and he would have to take it back to his shop. Promises to return it by the end of the day (remember it's 60 miles to his shop). Well no return that day or the next but he finally returns it on the third day. I plug it in before I let him leave (had a bad feeling) and the printer is totally dead. Not even a single light would come on. Repair person states "well it worked at the shop". After some additional questioning, I learn that this is the first Samsung that he has ever worked on (remember, this IS the Samsung repair station).

STRIKE 5

I call Samsung again and they tell me to deal with the repair center as their report states that the printer functions normally. I call them several times and they will not return my calls.

STRIKE 6

Call Samsung service again and after they call the service center they tell me that the unit is "not economically repairable" and agree to send me a replacement. They tell me that I will receive a FedEx notice regarding shipping. I wait about a week and no notice. Call Samsung again and they tell me that it has been delivered to my house. I check with FedEx and based upon the information the driver entered it appears that it was delivered about a half a mile south of me.

STRIKE 6 1/2 (Not totally Samsung's fault)

FedEx tells me that Samsung must file the claim and that it will take about 2 to 3 days to resolve. I call Samsung and ask them to file the claim. They state OK and will let me know. After about a week I call Samsung again to determine status of the claim. Well they happened to be moving locations and didn't bother to file the claim. Said they would and to call back in a week.

STRIKE 8 (I gave them extra credit for stupidity)

After a week, another call to Samsung. They state that they have not heard from FedEx. Another week, another week, another week. I finally call FedEx directly and they inform me that they have paid the full value of the claim to Samsung a week earlier. Call Samsung again and while I wait on line the agent calls FedEx and confirms that they have been paid but release of another unit must come from Corporate.

STRIKE 9

After three more weeks of calling at least twice a week I'm told that Corporate has released shipment of another printer. After each call with the tier 1 service person (and I have to say that they were the best) I would ask to speak to a supervisor as tier 1 service personnel cannot contact Corporate. Strangely, after I spoke with the supervisor (Shaun) the first time and expressed my dissatisfaction with Samsung, every call after that went to voice mail on each and every call and never once did I receive a call back.

STRIKE 10

OK, I'm finally going to get a new printer - WRONG! Now they decide after trying to ship me one printer and agreeing to ship me another that their new policy is that it must have 3 repair attempts before replacement. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!

STRIKE WHATEVER

OK. I agree to another repair attempt. What else can I do. They assign it to a different service center and tell me that I will be contacted within 24 to 48 hours to arrange an appointment. I fire off another nasty letter to Corporate questioning their parentage. Service NEVER calls. After 4 days I get a call from CORPORATE! They have decided to send me a replacement printer, but it must go through channels again. GREAT!

Well several days later I receive another printer by UPS. It's reconditioned printer and comes bare (no toner cartridges or drum). I remove the toner and drum from my old printer install and guess what? THE UNIT IS DEAD JUST LIKE THE LAST ONE! I've come to realize that the problem with my initial printer is a bad toner or drum that is not reporting an error of any kind, it just won't print.

Now what do I do? Buy a HP, Lexmark, Canon, Brother or some other REPUTIBLE printer and use Samsung as a boat anchor.

It's a good printer as long as it works, but should it ever fail GOOD LUCK!

I purchased this item from another retailer at $299.99, the price is great for a color laser multi function printer with a very different and unique design.

The size of this machine is amazingly small and the design, as I have previously mentioned is fantastic, very appealing and the quality of its construction is very solid.

What I do not like about this multifunction is the following:

1. It lacks wireless connectivity.
2. It lacks bluetooth connectivity.
3. It lacks an independent tray for envelopes.
4. It lacks auto duplex printing and scanning.
5. It lacks a better scanner, scanner drivers and software.

The most annoying feature, is the lack of an independent envelope feeder or tray, because you literally have to remove the entire stack of paper, in order to be able to adjust the tray to be able to insert an envelope.

This is extremely frustrating for me, because for every letter that I print, I must also print and envelope, which translates to the following scenario:

Get up, remove the tray, remove the paper, adjust the tray, insert the envelope (which often gets stuck), then adjust the tray, put the paper back in, insert the tray and repeat the entire process all over again for each letter and envelope that I have to print.

I am very surprised that Samsumg came out with such a high quality product, with an amazing design, but did not add wireless and bluetooth capabilities. Most of the HP's have either one of these features built in and a lot of them actually have both.

Despite having an Auto Document Feeder (ADF), it lacks duplex printing and duplex scanning, and I would have been happy if it at least it had duplex printing. If you need one with both of these features, get the Canon MP830, which has superior scanning capabilities than even the newer Canon MP850, which uses ICS, as oppossed to the MP830's CCD.

Copying was accurate and fast, both in black and white and color, as well as fast faxing capabilities.

Scanning, on the other hand was poor, very poor. Scans were pale, and I could never get 100% sized scans from the originals, no matter how many adjustments I made. They always seem to be smaller, especially when compared to other scans of the same documents made by a Canon MP830.

The low quality of the scan, is because, Samsung, and other manufacturers, including Canon, are now using cheap ICS (Image Contact Sensor) technology, which is much more cost efficient, as opposed to the Charge Coupled Device (CCD), technology, which produces extremely high quality, very accurate, crisp and detailed scans.

The difference between these two technologies is such, that a scan made by the Canon MP830 saved at a low PDF quality resolution, is better than one made by the Samsung saved at a Maximum Quality PDF resolution, yes it is that bad, but acceptable to most people.

Printing, on the other hand was extremely good, very crisp and sharp text, with extremely good color prints. This is an extremely affordable and very good color printer.

All in all, it is a good machine if you are not too demanding or simply do not know enough about this product and the lack of some very important features that are missing, like the ability to be able to print an envelope without having to waste so much time, by simply having added an independent tray for it.

I unfortunately had to return mine, primarily because I need one that can at least provide me with an envelope tray without having to remove the paper, duplex copying, printing and scanning, with good high quality scans.

So, I ended up with my old Canon MP830 again, wich is also missing wireless and bluetooth capabilities and is not as small, light and nice looking as the Samsung, but far faster, more functional, with amazing quality scans.

It is less than a week that I started to use with this printer at home. It is one of my best printers ever. The color print quality is not as good as our Xerox DC-242 workstation in the office, but if you compare this $300 printer to that $10,000 huge printer, you can see that this little printer is fantastic. The monochrome output is as excellent as a professional laser printer and fast enough for a home or a small business printer.
The network port is very helpful to print and scan wirelessly. Also there is a way to scan to emails.
The only thing that I do not like is the second paper tray which is very small and has no slider to fit envelopes, so I have to replace envelopes in the main tray when I need to print on an envelope.

Color printing on dark background has white around text. Called Cus. Service numerous times over the past 4 weeks. Always a different answer, someone will setup an appointment to fix.........still sits on my desk not working. I do not know if I just happened to get one of a few defective units but what I do know is that IF you have a problem, SAMSUNG will most like NOT resolve it.

My experience is very similar to J. Kozero...July 2,2009..I just felt too exhausted to list all the calls/lies and problems w/Samsung. I will NEVER buy a Samsung printer and any other product if possible

Here are some things to keep in mind when you get this printer. This review mostly also applies to the CLP-315 which has the same print engine.

1. Like all laser printer, this one will dim your lights when it is active. But unlike other laser printers which slowly dim and brighten your lights, this one causes your lights to rapidly flicker like a disco strobe. If I didn't have an alternate circuit to plug this printer into, that would have been a dealbreaker for me. The only way around this is to run a separate circuit for the printer. If you get this printer, before you pack or untape anything, plug it into the wall and watch your lights, if this is not acceptable, then you will need to return it. Either that, or you could leave it off when you don't print.

2. Some people have reported a burning smell when you first turn on the printer, others haven't. The unit I got definitely smelled and it is due to teflon burning off of the fuser according to the Samsung web site. This was so bad, I had to open up windows and doors to vent out the smell which was sickening. The smell does go away, and to hurry the process, I set the printer to not go into standby for the maximum 2 hour period and I kept it on about 8 hours for the smell to go away. Hey Samsung, if you're reading my review you should burn these printers in for 24 hours before shipping them!

3. The toner cartriges are small and currently no refill is availiable for them. I have printed out about 100 pages in mixed text and 3 X 5 pictures and I would estimate that a new full cartriged (not the starter carts) should get around 600 pages for color and about 1200 pages for b/w - much less than is stated on the specifications. Based on current toner prices at Staples, that works out to about 29 cents for a full color page and about 4 cents for a b/w page. That cost is similar to other printers, but considering you can get a color print for 15 cents at Wallgreens, you shouldn't be using this to print photos.

4. Out of the box, the color adjustment is way off. Pictures of brightly lit landscape print out great, but if you try to print indoor pictures with people, they look like they have a red rash. I went through most of my 100 pages printing test photos to correct the color. For my unit, I had to turn down the magenta to -5 (maximum setting) in the system tray control, then I also had to turn it down in the windows printing manual color setting to Cyan-red=31, brightness=74, saturation=26. Maybe by reading this review, you can save yourself some paper and toner by starting with these settings. I am surprised that I had to practically turn off magenta to get it to print correctly, but that's what I had to do.

It's a great little printer at a very reasonable cost and compact size.

Pros:
- Color laser printing all-in-one
- Great web interface and driver support (others complained about Mac, but I've been able to use my macbook without any issues)
- Actually prints great color
- Price and size - uses little space
- Easy to configure for network printing

Cons:
- Tray needs a lot of work to print other formats other than letter. It's a pain to re-configure the tray to fit other sizes. it needs a separate feeder for other smaller formats.
- Smell - as indicated by others - does have a burning smell
- Toner usage shorter than indicated - especially black - doesnt seem to last as long as a full toner from my previous HP.

Nice to have:
- Larger scan area

Overall, I like the printer, if Samsung gets to fixing some of my complaints, they'd have a awesome product.

I purchased this scanner printer based on reading the customer reviews, unfortunately most of the reviews were written after only a few days of service. After a couple of weeks the machine started to malfunction and would not link back to my computer. When I wanted to scan to the printer it keept telling me that the computer was "Not available". I contacted Samsung customer service and they told me that they were aware of the problem and all they had to offer was a "work-around" solution using the Smar 4 icon option which effectively turns this machine into a simple flatbed scanner. I did not purchase a flatbed scanner but that is what I ended up with. I am extremely disappointed in this product and if I could afford to purchase another machine at this time I would. Samsung will not replace the machine.

Terrible product support from Samsung for Macintoshes. Won't do network scanning on the Mac. Support spokesmodel tried to blame the Mac and punt within the first 3 minutes. Won't print when directly connected to a Mac. This printer is a nightmare.

The Samsung CLC-3175 is the worst printer I have ever owned.
The scanning and copying are not straight forward. I used to sell copiers and couldn't figure this out without reading the manual. Not user friendly at all.
the copies come out so hot they can almost burn your hands. I have never had a printer like that. It builds up so much static that it is impossible to turn over a stack of 20 pages to print on the other side, without getting a few paper jams.
The output tray is a joke, the smallest ever seen and not good for 50 copies.
The worst thing is that this eats toner, worse than an inkjet printer. The black cartridge says it yields about 1500 copies, but I have;t gotten more than 500 copies from each of 4 cartridges. Withe the HP$ I used and the Dell Laser, I always got more copies than they said. The HP said 2500, I got an average of 3500. This is totally unacceptable.
I can honestly say I hate this printer.