Zen question..
If a man speaks in a forest but no woman hears him..........
Is he still wron...
Zen question..
If a man speaks in a forest but no woman hears him..........
Is he still wrong?
Member since:26.07.2000
Reviews:32
Members who trust:50
A laser printer for £70? No way... Yep there it is look, £69.99. It must be crap…you only get what you pay for right? What’s the catch then? No cable, HA! told you so! A short filled starter toner that only prints 1000 pages…I KNEW there’d be a catch…told ya! You bought it anyway? What’s it like then?
Well actually…let’s start at the beginning
First off
I suspect many of you reading this own some sort of printer. Inkjet being the favoured type for home use as lasers are so damned expensive and so big! We started off with an HP printer at home about 10 years ago. It was great but enormous and the ink replacements were around £25, a fortune all that time ago, yes Grandad...yawn. THEN colour came on the scene and I had to have one of those, nice little Lexmark which was great, till I came to replace the ink cartridge, £28…colour and £20… black. Hang on, there’s a new Canon with a £50 refund voucher which makes it…. cheaper than the ink for the Lexmark. Into the loft with you my old son! Make way for the new bubblejet! Now this one stayed on the shelf for quite some time and the ink, at £5 for a piddling little cartridge
didn’t seem too bad. Didn’t really print too many pages though and anything with an image on was a bit soggy...and it took an age...and was noisy...and I got sick of it anyway... I rarely printed in colour and hadn’t even used the original photo cartridge.
Secondly
We were in Staples for some unfathomable reason, (something to do with the kids wanting to buy even more coloured pens…again, I think their aim is world domination of the coloured pen market) there are a pile of smallish boxes in the aisle that I can see from the comfortable leather faced executive chair that I’ve almost fallen out of by reclining it too quickly. It says (squint) ‘Inkjet printers for £28’…surely a mistake, the ink costs more than that doesn’t it? Then another pile of slightly larger boxes of laser printers at (squinting even more, further away you see) £79.99. Never?
Thirdly
A quick blast round the web price comparison sites later and Comet come up trumps (a first there then.) with the Samsung ML1210 at a measly £69.99, no cable (not a problem, have a boxful) and only 1000 pages from the first toner cartridge, replacements £45 bog standard price, £25 Ebay, £12 toner refill, 0.34p per page. I want one.
Fourthly
Two hours later it’s sitting next to the computer, plugged in, software installed and working beautifully and the space in the loft has been reduced by the footprint size of a Canon bubblejet.
Finally!
This little beauty has to be seen to be believed. It has actually been around for a couple of years so the technology is well proven and the price has kept on coming down although it’s hard to conceive of it dropping a lot further (here’s hoping!).
What’s in the box and what’s not?
You GET a printer, CD with driver software and manuals for you to print, and a short filled toner cartridge. You DON’T GET the cable so buy one if you need one. The ports are parallel and USB so take your pick. I had a few USB cables lying around and chose to use one over the bulky parallel cable I used to use. Much neater.
First impression
It’s a well-made bit of kit. The case is strong, no flimsy flexible floppy doors here, as you find out when inserting your toner, which, incidentally is a piece of cake. Just slot it in there, close the front and you’re ready to print. After you’ve removed the thirty or so bits of sticky tape that Samsung have plastered everywhere…maybe a tenner cheaper but for all that tape! Not too big, at 329mm wide and 355mm deep it doesn’t hog the desk and it’s beige… beige again…well it matches the rest doesn’t it? Colourful stickers though.
Driver software installation
Simple. CD in CD drive, click a few buttons and it’s all over. Store safely till it’s time to put this printer in the loft with the others...UNLESS you need the128 page manual. I must confess to not reading manuals until such time as a.) I have exhausted all possible means of solving the problem OR b.) broken something. Either print it out or save it somewhere on the hard drive for future reference. You never know when you’re gong to have to admit defeat! I had to look up printing an envelope…you have to press the demo button to get the manual feed to work, illogical captain but work it does! The driver interface is pretty basic but it does everything you'd expect, paper size, type, layout etc with no fuss or bother.
Features
Demo button Press for 2 seconds to get a demo page, even if you’re not connected to a PC, which verifies the printer is working OK. (Also press to get manual feed to operate, doh!)
Toner Save Get 3500 pages at 5% coverage over the bog standard 2500 in return for slightly less density of image, I can’t tell the difference so I get 3500 pages, whoo hoo!
Cancel/Reprint button One press cancels the job in case you’ve sent the wrong thing by mistake; quicker and easier than trying to get Windows to stop the job. After you’ve got the one you want you can hit the button again to get another copy, in case you want to keep one yourself, even if the PC is turned off.
Formats Prints any type of paper, card or envelopes up to A4. USE LASER LABELS and envelopes though, it fuses the toner at 200 degrees C and will melt normal adhesive all over the giblets of your new toy. Normal paper returns to an upright storage bin on the front but there is a neat little ‘mouth’ along the front edge, which you open to let envelopes/card out of. Too stiff to go round the corner see.
Warranty. 1 year. BUT 1 year on site warranty! Can you believe that one then? I can’t get to grips with it yet. On site warranty, laser, £69.99. What is going on? I’m gonna wake up any minute aren’t I…
Specification and Size
Speediness? 12 ppm Quality? Resolution 600x600 dpi How Big? W 329mm x D 355mm x H 231mm How Fat? 6.5kg How Brainy? RAM 8mb Racket? 35dB standby, 47dB printing. (Pretty quiet, dB means bugger all to me as well…) Life Expectancy? Toner life 2500 pages standard, 3500 pages toner save Paper Store 150 pages
Well then, can I recommend this machine?
It’s obviously the absolute budget end of laser printing but that doesn’t mean the quality isn’t there. Features like the toner save button aren’t just gimmicks either, I can’t tell the difference between high and low resolution so the TS button remains pressed. Even tiny 6pt fonts are clear and sharp, no fuzziness at all. So YES. It’s a belter. The output from my office HP lasers are no better and the old 4 series are worse!
Inkjet costs
Given the ludicrous situation we all face when replacing ink cartridges which cost more than new printers this has to be the way to go. My printer graveyard is too full already to contemplate buying any more inkjet machinery. I can’t throw them away because they work, it wouldn’t be right. I can’t give them away, new ones cost less than the ink, and so they gather dust…madness! AT LAST I am free from this cycle of expensive waste, well at least until the price of the colour lasers drop below £200…not as daft as it sounds!
TFR
Chris
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Advantages: compact, fast, quiet, high quality prints, Price, reliability, toner save feature Disadvantages: can take a few seconds to warm up, Integrated toner and drum cartridge
mysteryshopper2 26.06.2004 (26.06.2004)
·
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Samsung ML 1210
Advantages: - cheap price; economical; good, clear print in text mode; fast; reliable Disadvantages: - no printer cable; no printed manual; print quality for photos & graphics not good
salsablue64 02.10.2003 ·
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Samsung ML 1210
Advantages: compact, fast, quiet, high quality prints, Price, reliability, toner save feature Disadvantages: can take a few seconds to warm up, Integrated toner and drum cartridge
mysteryshopper2 26.06.2004 (26.06.2004)
·
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Samsung ML 1210
Feb 23rd, 2004
exceptional by (28%):
very helpful by (72%):
