Customer Reviews

Samsung SCX-4100 Laser Multifunction

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I was in the market for a personal copier to support my real estate business. The requirements? Have to be small enough for me to carry around, inexpensive cost-per-page and affordable. This product fits the bill and it even adds printing and scanning capability as a bonus!

The print quality is surprisingly crisp for both text and image, off-the-glass copy is excellent and the scanner performs very well.
The scan function didn't work when I connect this printer through parallel port (bi-directional issue?), but all taken care off when I switch to USB. Also notice the paper tray door is kind of hard to open. I suggest using their provided software to get the most out of this printer!

Overall I highly recommend this for people whom looking to have a multifunction printer with small space and budget that print a lot of text or B/W document and doesn't need color capability.

I've had this printer for a couple of months. For the most part it has been a positive experience. Print quality is very good. Speed is excellent. The copier function works very well. (I have a different scanner so I don't use that function by itself.)

The major problem I've had (and it may be a fatal flaw) is that when paper gets jammed in the fuser area it can be very difficult to remove. Expect to burn your fingers, and perhaps need a screw driver or some other implement to pry out the stuck page which has been folded up like an accordian inside the fuser. A simple release mechanism could have avoided this problem, but if there is one I can't find it (and it's not in the documentation).

In two months of relatively light use I've had two instances where I thought I might have to send the machine in for service due to this problem. Each time I managed to clear it with a little persistence.

In addition, the single sheet paper loader on the front does not always grab the paper cleanly. This can lead to off-kilter printing, and is especially a problem with mailing and other types of labels which end up mis-aligned. More than once a whole page of labels has been ruined by this.

The software was easy to install, but the directions in the manual (available in PDF form only) for deleting a print job in the printer memory do not work. There appears to be no way to delete a job (short of turning the printer off) once it is in the printer's memory.

+

Samsung SCX-4100 is a low end multifuntion laser printer. I'll go through the pros and cons first.

Pros:
- Price of SCX-4100 is quite attractive.
- Small and compact for a multifunction laser printer.
- Supports PC, UNIX and Mac* (Samsung removed the Mac driver from the web site, but you can still find it on the Internet).

Cons:
- Default print setting tends to produce a print out that's too light. Setting the printer's advanced printing option to print darker helps.
- The photocopy option has the same issue (Dark option is actually more like a Normal).
- You need to choose the photocopy mode properly to get a reasonable photocopy (Text, Text/Photo, Photo).
- Scanning in color is quite slow (2X slower) compared to other multifunction laser printers.
- The toner comes with the package is an introductory toner (basically 1/3 of the standard toner) --> cost cutting
- USB 1.0 only (although given the slowness of the scanning speed, USB 2.0 won't help)
- No fax (but at this price, you really cannot expect to have fax).
- No document feeder (again, at this price, it is unrealistic to expect a document feeder).
- Manual feeder is not great (it does work and takes time to get used to).
- No expansion options (cannot add RAM, duplexing or network support).

This laser multifunction printer is suitable for people looking for a cheap laser printer and won't be doing a lot of scanning or photocopying. A laser printer (even a low end one) will generally print text quicker and better than an ink jet (ink jet's ppm is normally quoted base on draft mode).

However, for people who demand fast speed and quality scanning and/or quality photocopying, stay away from this device. Also, this device is for home or small office. It is not a heavy duty laser printer.

Like all low-end laser multifunction devices, SCX-4100 has some issues (basically a result of the manufacturer trying to reduce cost). Nevertheless, it is a laser printer, color scanner and a photocopier all-in-one. Overall, for most home users and small offices, it is certainly worth considering.

Summary: If you're considering a low-cost laser printer for light to medium work, then look no further. A great alternative to troublesome inkjets.

I have owned many inkjet printers over the years, having moved up from dot matrix in the mid 90's. The problem that I've always had with them is the cost per page, and the mechanical problems that most seem to suffer from after a year or two of use. The cost per page on inkjets can run upwards of $0.25, so I was always acting like Scrooge whenever someone in my family wanted to print anything. Meanwhile, my H.P. Laserjet at work just kept plugging along at a 1/10th the cost ($0.02).

After my latest ink jam in my Epson all-in-one, and a wasted cartridge (and $28 worth of ink) trying to fix it, I decided to see if I could afford a Laserjet. Much to my suprise, there were several lasers in the sub-$200 range. After much investigation here and elsewhere, I decided to go with this Samsung, which was basically the same price of a color inkjet with similar specs. Much cheaper than any H.P. printers with similar specs, and I'm no longer scared of the Samsung name, as the quality of their products is no on par with any other consumer-grade electronics company.

Pros:
-Easy setup
-Nice, simple software
-Low, low cost per page
-Good copies
-Sleep mode after 5 minutes
-Small footprint

Cons:
-A bit noisy, even though it doesn't have a fan
-Print quality not quite as good as my $600 work printer :)
-Black and white only (but 95% of my printouts are B&W, so this isn't a big deal)

Don't let the fact that this is a black-and-white printer stop you from considering it. What I've done is to purchase a low-end inkjet for my second computer (printer was basically free after rebate) that I'll use on those rare occasions that I need to print something out in color. After the ink runs out / clogs up, I'll just toss it out and go get another freebie. This is a huge waste of resources, but the printer companies are doing the razor/blade trick where they give the printers away and gouge you for the price of ink. Grrrr....

One last thing, I got a $50 rebate on this printer, bringing the total cost down to $130. Very competitive for an all-in-one.

Easy installation - three PCs each with Windows XP, I just finished the installation and printed test-print from all three computers and a couple pages of return address labels. Easy and smooth install except toner install was a little bit tricky. Printer was saying "[JAM] or [No Cartridge]" I succeeded after a couple more tries. I had to push down the handle of the cartridge a litle bit firmly after it was all the way in.

Good quality copy & print - I printed the rebate form for the machine and copied what I'm going to mail in. It's faster than I expected and the print looks just like ones from my workplace (state of art laser printers $$$$)...of course I'm comparing texts not graphics. Also to be fair with other printers, this is my first laser printer.

Scan is to be tested more - I just don't have much experiences in scanning...other than text scan. Just for fun, I scanned a color picture (600dpi and 24bit true color) and saved in two different ways - jpg(150K) and tiff(17M took a long-long time for my computer to open). I'm happy with both formats. I did a OCR scan(my first OCR scan unless it's same as import using Adobe Acrobat) of one of the rebate forms and saved in MS doc format which I opened with OpenOffice. Two colums (different sizes, fonts, etc.) on original became one column plain text...works for me. After you have scanned you can choose to save in many different formats without re-scan. I saved the same scanned rebate form as a pdf and it's a perfect pdf document...great! There are about 15 languages to choose from when saving.

PROS: good looking, good size, great value, good quality
CONS: no printer cable, short-life of included toner(1,000pages)

Today my printer showed "Low toner" I printed about 300 pages and is asking me for toner? that should not happened, I think, so today I ordered a $60 toner for my printer before ti runs out of ink, sorry toner.

So what is the deal of saying that it will last 3200 pages? don't lie....

This printer is an excellent value. I bought it for about $130 (after rebate) and have been using it trouble-free in my home office for about 3 months. The print quality is surprisingly good for a low-end printer. Printing speed doesn't seem to reach the claimed 15ppm but is fast enough for home use.

Beware of a few catches though. The default copy setting produces rather inferior copies. Setting the source to photo/text and increase the darkness makes better (but slower) copies. The LCD screen is very hard to read. It can be noisy at times, and occasionally give out a burning odor when running continuously.

This is a great little printer. The scanner and copier are a nice bonus. Unfortunately, Samsung doesn't provide OSX-compatible scanner software, so I can't use that function. However, it makes excellent print-outs and copies. It is compact and reasonably speedy. I was going to buy an HP Laserjet 1012, but the Samsung was priced lower, had an additional mail-in rebate, and had the extra features. The HP is smaller in volume, but its footprint with the paper tray is about the same as the Samsung. Also, the toner cartridge for the Samsung prints 25% more pages and costs only $10-20 more than the HP cartridge. I picked this printer b/c it has the most bang-for-your-buck. And even though the scanner doesn't work for me, I am happy with my purchase.

Pro:
- Reasonable quality
- Reasonable price
- Easy to set up

Cons:
- Constant hum after warming up, though not terrible. If it is set on your desk, it can be irritating
- It takes about 10 - 15 sec for the first page to come out
- Most of all, beware of Samsung's rebate. I sent in mine for about 10 weeks, but heard nothing back from them. Do not expect to get your rebate!!

The printer works very well and without trouble. The scanner has good quality too, especially for an inexpensive laser printer. It is a bit large so allow for extra room on your desk. Overall, a good, trouble-free printer.