Samsung ML-2010R review

Samsung's ML-2010R is the cheapest laser printer we've ever reviewed.

It's smaller and less expensive than most inkjets. It was easy to set up and install, and even came with a USB cable to connect it to our PC, which is unusual for any printer, let alone one at this price.

Print speeds were fairly quick, with our mono text document printing at 17.2ppm, although we had to wait 13 seconds for the first page to emerge.

Samsung lists the printer's resolution as 1,200x600dpi effective output, which generally means the actual resolution is lower, but is enhanced through software. At 600dpi, which is probably its native resolution, we found that five- and six-point letters in our small-font size test were broken and difficult to read. The 1,200dpi enhanced mode didn't do much to improve this, with very small fonts still jagged and spidery. Still, larger, more commonly used font sizes looked fine, with clear, solid lettering on everything above eight-point text.

Our mixed text and graphics prints looked good, with clear, sharp reproduction of images and diagrams. Photo-quality images suffered from slight horizontal stripes and some detail was lost on low-contrast images, but quality was good enough for most purposes.

The paper tray can hold up to 150 pages of standard 80gsm A4, while a sheet-feed slot allows you to print envelopes and thicker paper types. Pages were slightly curled as they emerged, but soon flattened out. Envelopes printed without jamming or creasing. The printer is noisy, though, and clicked and whirred its way through our print tests, with a strong smell of melted toner from the hot pages.

The ML-2010R is very cheap to buy, and its print costs of 1.82p per page are about average for the group. It's incredibly economical for light printing, but you'll want a more durable device for heavy use. Its poor handling of small font sizes could be a problem if you want to print presentation-quality documents. Brother's HL-2140 is faster and Canon's LBP2900B has better print quality, but this is a good buy if you want fairly fast prints on a budget.

Author: Kat Orphanides