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Samsung ML-2955DW review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £132
inc VAT

A competent mono laser with high print quality, but heavy users should seek out a model with lower running costs

Specifications

mono laser, 28ppm print speed, USB, 10/100 Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n wireless, 197x348x338mm

http://www.ebuyer.com

With grey exterior, Samsung’s ML-2955DW couldn’t look more functional, but it’s the features that count. Its 28 pages-per-minute (ppm) top speed is fairly rapid, and it comes with USB, wired Ethernet and 802.11n wireless interfaces. It’s a reasonable specification for the price.

The printer’s squat body has room for a 150-sheet output tray. This is entirely covered by a dust stop that must be flipped up to form part of the output tray when you print. It’s a neat bit of design, but we wish Samsung had extended the same attention to the 250-sheet input tray; when loaded with A4 paper, this tray pokes out of the rear of the printer. No cover or flap is supplied, so dust could accumulate on the paper stack if the printer was used only occasionally. The multi-purpose bypass feed slot is covered by a latched flap, but releasing this flap required enough pressure to move the printer backwards across the desk.

Samsung ML-2955DW

The ML-2955DW’s control panel comprises four buttons, including the ‘Eco’ button we’ve seen on other recent Samsung printers. When activated this causes client computers to print with paper- and toner-saving defaults, although this can be overridden by users if they wish. There’s also a ‘soft’ power button that doesn’t physically disconnect the printer from mains power (see FAQ opposite); the printer used 0.1W when off.

A painless setup process installs Samsung’s print driver, which is one of the best we’ve seen. We particularly like how easy it makes it to select the correct paper or envelope settings, but when printing envelopes it seemed to conflict with Adobe Reader’s orientation options, resulting in text rotated through 90 degrees in our first envelope tests. We solved the problem after a couple of attempts, resulting in perfect, uncrumpled envelope prints.

Print quality elsewhere was uniformly very good. Black text was free of jaggedness and extremely crisp, while graphics and photographs displayed smooth shade progressions without obvious dither patterns. Photos were better than average for a mono laser printer, although they were a little lighter than ideal and betrayed a small amount of horizontal banding.

Samsung ML-2955DW

The printer came acceptably close to Samsung’s claimed speeds in our tests, which include the time taken to prepare and spool a job. When connected via Ethernet the printer delivered 25 copies of a text-only letter in just over a minute, with 24 graphics-rich pages taking just two seconds longer. As we’d expect, printing automatically to both sides of each sheet was slower, with 10 sides of graphics taking exactly a minute to print onto five sheets.

When using Samsung’s 2,500-page consumable, running costs aren’t the cheapest we’ve seen, but they aren’t unreasonable for a mono laser at this price. This is a decent choice for a home or small office, but for heavy users we’d recommend the Samsung ML-3710ND.

Basic Specifications

Rating ****
Maximum native print resolution 1,200dpi
Maximum enhanced print resolution 1,200dpi

Quoted Speeds

Quoted speed, mono A4 28ppm
Quoted time to first page, mono 9s

Tested Speeds

Mono page from sleep time 1.0 21s
Letter, time to first page 1.0 12s
25-page mono document – total time 0:1:03
Time for 24 pages mixed greyscale 1.0 1m 5s
Time for two greyscale 10x8in photos 1.1 19s
Time for six greyscale 6x4in photos 1.0 21s

Physical and Environmental

Standard printer interfaces USB, 10/100 Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n wireless
Optional printer interfaces none
Size 197x348x338mm
Weight 7.2kg
Noise (in normal use) 50dB(A)
Duty cycle 12,000 pages

Paper Handling

Maximum paper size A4/legal
Maximum paper weight 163gsm
Standard paper inputs 2
Standard paper input capacity 251
Maximum paper inputs 2
Maximum paper input capacity 251
Output tray capacity 150 sheets
Duplex (code, cost if option) Yes

General

Printer technology mono laser
Language(s) PCL5e, PCL6
Supported operating systems Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7, Mac OS X 10.4 or later, various LINUX distributions
Standard printer memory 64MB
Maximum printer memory 64MB
Other laser features and options none

Buying Information

Price £132
Price of 2nd paper cassette N/A
Capacity of supplied black toner 1 pages
Capacity of supplied drum(s) N/A
Estimated mono TCO – three years light £228.34
Estimated mono TCO – three years medium £556.96
Estimated mono TCO – three years heavy £2309.60
Warranty one-year RTB
Supplier http://www.ebuyer.com
Details www.samsung.co.uk

Tested Print Speeds

Time for two greyscale 10x8in photos 1.1 19s
Time for six greyscale 6x4in photos 1.0 21s