Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsExcellent for the price range its in.
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 20, 2014
The good:
This printer has many many features that I've been looking for, One its LED not laser based so that is cool. Second, it has auto duplexing (does both sides) on both printing and scanning. This feature is a must have for mulitple documents. Its handled many document types and is pretty easy. I really appreciate the fact that you can unfold what you need when you need it. For example if you don't want something bent, you can open the back tray and it will unload there. The manual feed is a door on the front, and the ADF of the scanner is opened from the top. Its like a transformer printer. Most of the time it sits in the corner all closed up, and when you need it its there.
The other REALLY big bonus that I love is you can communicate from several different ways, USB, wifi, or ethernet. I really dislike wifi for a printer and refused to buy another one. Wifi can be tweaky from time to time and I didn't want to have to deal with resetting it. If wifi was your only option, setting the security and putting in the wifi password with this touchscreen makes it a breeze. You don't need to install software.
I run Linux (Ubuntu 13.10) and the install was a breeze, pretty easy to follow instructions on their website.
The Bad:
I've uploaded two pictures, one shows what a photo looks like when copied the other shows a diagnostic test page I printed while on with tech support. Now I didn't expect the photo to look as good as it does, and that is pretty good for a laser printer I believe. Many people were asking so I uploaded a before and after. If I need a quick photo I can use this, if I want a photo quality I'll take it somewhere. I don't print enough pictures to use the ink in an inkjet, and it gets expensive to have to buy new cartridges every time you want to print. That is why I went with toner based printers and I'll never look back. (I've had my last printer almost a year, and never used its starter toner)
The page that shows the colors, you can see several streaks in it, this I was told is normal, and there is nothing they will do about it. I find this a bit unsettling, and as a result it leads me into...
The Ugly:
Tech support. I do tech support for a living, and I know it isn't the agents its the policies the company has in place. I've had horrible experience with both this company and Samsung. I'll give Samsung credit though, they were better then these guys. If you chat your going to be in for a bad experience. They will give you a link and try to rush you off, even if you have followed the instructions. They will send you multiple links that are very close to the step by step of each other with one or two differences, and won't explain it after you inform them of what you have done. If you use Linux its worse, they will use that as an excuse to not troubleshoot your machine, and will quickly dismiss you or blame your OS even when its clearly the printer, such is the case with the bleeding lines.
Overall:
Tech support with Linux is always a nightmare, but this company does have great instructions and documentation online. They will however use it as an excuse to dismiss you as fast as possible. The lines bother me, but they refuse to do anything and there isn't anything within $200 more that will satisfy all my requirements such as this one does. Automatic duplexing is such a desired feature for me I won't go without it now. The color isn't, and never will be photo realistic, but for a quick image of something, or for printing a webpage it works just fine. Overall I took one star away for the inconsistent toner in printing, and one for horrible customer service/tech support. I didn't have these lines with my last Samsung laser printer, and tech support reports it is normal. I don't believe them but I've been told that by a few agents so at this point I give up. If I had another option I would take it, but I don't that has the features I want in this (or even $200 more) price range.
