Samsung ML 1640 > Reviews (2)

As a student, I rely on having a good printer as I often need to print out my essays, notes, lecture slides, articles etc. I have been staying at my parents' house this academic year, so I have had a lot of chance to put their printer to the test. My parents also use the printer very heavily as they are self-employed and working from home, having to print a large amount of customer order details per day.

The ML 1640 is a laser printer which Samsung say is "sleek, yet manages big jobs".

Appearance

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The appearance of the printer is not particularly sleek in my opinion, as it is actually quite large and bulky. It is roughly cube shaped, with the paper tray sticking out a bit further at the front, and takes up a larger surface area than many other home printers, so it is not ideal for someone who is very short on space. It has a matte black finish with Samsung on the front and there is nothing flashy at all about how it looks. Personally I am not particularly bothered about the appearance of the printer and neither were my parents when they bought it. They have a shelf above the computer where it fits, so the size issue is not a real negative in our house.

Use

The printer is very easy to use. It can be attached to the computer by USB cable and is recognised automatically, so there is no need to mess about installing anything.The power button is at the back in a position which is not immediately obvious if you are using the printer for the first time as it is quite hidden, but it is accessible and easy to reach once you know where it is. The printer shows a steady light when it is on and ready for printing. A red light alerts you to problems such as lack of paper or any paper jams. You can clearly see how much paper is left, as the tray is external and not in a pull out drawer as with some other printers.

Positives

Most of the time this printer is reliable. It prints quite quickly. It prints clearly and to a perfectly decent standard without any streaking or smudging. We use it a lot every day so it does get subjected to a lot more work than the average household printer and although it has occasional problems (see below), most of the time it does the job.

We get through ink cartridges fairly quickly but you can get a lot of pages from each one. If you shake the cartridge when pages start coming out a bit faded, you can usually get a lot more from it. I can't really comment on the price of cartridge replacements as my dad pays for them in bulk and I don't know the details but he did take into account ink costs when buying the printer and says the ink for this is reasonable.

Negatives

I have noticed a few negatives with this printer. Firstly, it is very loud. This is not a huge problem, but it is much louder than you would expect for a household printer!

Secondly, and much more annoyingly, sometimes the printer has difficulties when picking up the paper. Quite a few times recently I have had problems with the printer trying to take too many sheets of paper at once, which results in jams and crumpled paper being stuck inside the printer, which can obviously get very frustrating. My dad keeps telling me that I have to send my documents to print one page at a time and feed each piece of paper individually into the printer to prevent this problem, but as you can imagine that gets very tedious and it shouldn't be necessary!

On the whole I am fairly satisfied with the printer as it is usually up to the task, but I wouldn't particularly recommend it ahead of any other printer because I have had a few problems. I would say it is okay but nothing special.