Samsung CLX-6220FX review

Although its footprint isn't much larger than that of your average small workgroup laser MFP, Samsung's CLX-6220FX is a lot taller, making it a little awkward to heft into position. As well as being bulky, it’s also noisy, and it rattles and clatters its way through prints. There’s also a distinct smell of melting toner when it's operating, all of which makes the CLX-6220FX better suited to being a workgroup device in an office environment than a personal printer.

The CLX-6220FX was brilliantly simple to set up and install. The installer automatically detected the printer on our network and went through the entire process of installing the drivers and software for all the MFP's features with minimal interaction from us, although it took a while to complete. The MFP’s built-in menus are remarkably easy to navigate using its built-in mono LCD display and directional buttons, although the copier shortcut buttons stop working if you're in, for example, the system settings menu. The control panel also makes it very easy to scan to your network, a PC or a USB stick that’s been inserted in the MFP’s host USB port.

A sleek HTML interface lets you get an at-a-glance view of the printer's status and keep track of consumable levels remotely. If you want greater control over it, you’ll have to log into the SyncThru admin account to view the settings and security menus, which have a wealth of options. These include a range of methods for restricting unauthorised users from printing, and the ability to change everything, from scan defaults to fax and network settings, just as you would using the front panel controls.

The CLX-6220’s print quality is particularly good, even among the high standard of colour laser devices. Our colour document prints were extremely accurate and even tiny font sizes were pin-sharp. Shading was also smooth in both dark and light areas. The printer has a best quality mode that prints at an effective resolution of 9,600x600dpi using interpolated resolution enhancement. This is great for picking out fine detail in line drawings and diagrams, but makes little difference to photo printing. There’s also a glossy colour mode designed to enhance photos. Enabling both resolution enhancement and glossy mode meant that two 10x8in photos took one minute and 24 seconds to print and made little visible difference to their quality, except for slightly warmer skin tones. In contrast, the same task took just 30 seconds at normal quality.

The CLX-6220FX’s print speeds are generally excellent. Mono text printed at 17.2ppm and our colour document printed at 17.1ppm, which is almost as fast. A 5-sided colour duplex document printed in one minute and 49 seconds. Print costs are also low, with a mono page cost of 2.2p and a mixed-colour page cost of 11.5.