Filter
Top Products
The Color Laser Printer Guide: Vendor & Product Profiles
Entire Contents © 2006 Prog
ressiv
e Business Publications. Copying of Pages Prohibited.To Order: 800 247 2185 or www.betterbuys.com 43
NOIS,” which means, as the name implies, lowered oper-
ating noise. They also offer easy toner installation and
what they call “4-click” installation for software drivers.
Paper supplies start with a 100-sheet bypass and a 250-
sheet paper tray. You can add a 500-sheet tray, for a total
capacity of 850 sheets. All of these models offer automat-
ic duple
xing as a standard feature, a nice plus.
The CLP-510 uses different toner cartridges from those
in the CLP-550, but the other supplies are the same. For
both printers, however, the cost per page is quite high. We
calculate it o
ver 17¢ for a color pa
ge, over 3.0¢ for black-
and-white.
These machines are fine basic color machines, but
Le
xmark and OKI Printing Solutions offer lower-priced
models with significant speed advantages, and in the case
of Lexmark, PostScript printing. A few years ago, these
would have been very competitive models, but they’ve
been o
v
ertaken by some key competitors.
These models are, nevertheless, solid performers.
Samsung, with its strong position in black-and-white
lasers in the retail channel, will sell plenty of them.
Chart entries — pages 112–113
Samsung CLP-600N
Samsung CLP-650N
21ppm full color
21ppm black & whi
te
Sum-up:
Shar
p print quality and decent speed make this low-
cost family a decent buy.
W
ith the rollout of its new CLP-600N and CLP-650N,
Samsung has become a true player in the increasingly
c
ompetitive low-end color laser printer market. Like most
printer vendors, Samsung doesn’t publish list prices, but
with street prices of $499 for the CLP-600N and $699 for
the CLP-650N, these machines are sure to hold appeal
for today’s buyers.
The CLP-600N and CLP-650N represent a vast
improvement over the CLP-510 and CLP-550 models in
terms of color speed, since both of the new machines
print at 21ppm in both color and black-and-white. With
interpolation, they can print at up to 2400dpi resolution.
This combination of decent speed and sharp printing is a
main asset of this family.
These machines have a 600MHz processor, commend-
able for this price range. The CLP-600’s 32MB of built-in
memory is nothing special, especially considering that it’s
not expandable. Memory is far better on the CLP-650N,
which has 256MB of built-in memory, expandable to
512MB.
The printers’ 45,000 monthly duty cycle is decent for
printers in this price range. This rating implies Samsung
believes they’re equipped to handle a heavier load than
some other comparable machines
, such as the Konica
Minolta magicolor 2530 DL or Hewlett-Packard Color
LaserJet 2605dn, both of which have a 35,000 page rated
cycle.
Like some other machines in this price range such as
the OKI Printing Solutions C5500n and C5800Ldn, these
units lack a built-in hard drive. That could be a serious
drawback for users who want to archive print jobs.
Samsung CLP-510
Consumables costs at-a-glance
Price
Yield
Full-color cost per page
Black-and-white cost per page
Black toner $81.99 7,000 $ 0.012 $ 0.012
Cyan toner $66.99 2,000 $ 0.033 N/A
Magenta toner $66.99 2,000 $ 0.033 N/A
Yellow toner $66.99 2,000 $ 0.033 N/A
Drum/black $149.99 12,500 N/A $ 0.012
Drum/4-color $149.99 3,125 $ 0.048 N/A
Image transfer unit/black
$149.99 50,000 N/A $ 0.003
I
mage transfer unit/4-color
$149.99 12,500 $ 0.012 N/A
Waste toner bottle/black $19.99 12,000 N/A $ 0.002
Waste toner bottle/4-color
$19.99 3,000 $ 0.007 N/A
TOTAL PER-PAGE COSTS
$ 0.1789 $ 0.0284
17.89 2.84
Samsung CLP-550/CLP-600N/CLP-650N
Consumables costs at-a-glance
Price
Yield
Full-color cost per page
Black-and-white cost per page
Black toner $99.99 7,000 $ 0.014 $ 0.014
Cy
an toner
$119.99 5,000 $ 0.024 N/A
Ma
g
enta toner
$119.99 5,000 $ 0.024 N/A
Yellow toner $119.99 5,000 $ 0.024 N/A
Drum/black $149.99 12,500 N/A $ 0.012
Drum/4-color $149.99 3,125 $ 0.048 N/A
Image transfer unit/black
$149.99 50,000 N/A $ 0.003
Image transfer unit/4-color
$149.99 12,500 $ 0.012 N/A
Waste toner bottle/black $19.99 12,000 N/A $ 0.002
W
aste toner bottle/4-color
$19.99 3,000 $ 0.007 N/A
T
O
T
AL PER-PAGE COSTS
$ 0.1529 $ 0.0309
15.29 3.09