Samsung SCX-4100 review

Samung's new SCX-4100 would be small even if it were just a printer. But that isn't the end of its talents: the Samsung manages to cram a flatbed scanner onboard, allowing you to scan photos and use the device as a standalone copier.

With a claimed print speed of 15 pages per minute (ppm), the Samsung should be more than fast enough for most. The claims didn't quite stand up in our tests, our 50-page text-only document taking a fraction under 4 minutes to print - just over 14ppm. Even so, it's a good performance - and consistent, too. Even the complicated graphs and images of our business report didn't slow the Samsung down.

Laser printers are renowned for producing crisp and dark text, and the SCX-4100 is no exception. Graphics are more hit and miss, but given the price we were impressed. Being a mono printer, graphics print only in black-and-white, but colour originals were converted accurately into shades of grey. Contrast, in particular, was excellent: close shades remained clearly defined even when converted to black and white. Our only criticism of the Samsung's image quality was with its half-toning - the use of different sizes and densities of black dots to represent different shades of grey. This works well on photographic images but leaves solid areas of grey looking a touch speckly.

The scanner is less impressive. It's slow, taking 30 seconds to complete a standard 150dpi (dots per inch) text scan, and a minute-and-a-half for a standard 300dpi photographic job. At 150dpi, the Samsung couldn't pick out enough detail to capture accurately text under 8pt in size. Colour accuracy in photographs will leave photographers disappointed, too. That said, it's still handy for archiving documents, or converting them to editable text documents using optical character recognition (OCR), but the quality isn't up to producing reprints you'll want to show your friends. The photocopy function uses the same scanning engine, so quality is identical.

The SCX-4100 is well designed, with a paper output tray that holds up to 60 pages on the top of the unit. There's even a straight paper path for thicker paper or card. The menu system is also immaculately laid out, making adjustments easy. The same goes for Samsung's driver software.

The SCX-4100 is easy to use and produces good-quality text prints. Its scans, while not up to artistic standards, are fine for archiving documents. At this incredible price it's a real bargain.