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(More customer reviews)I bought this mail order from New Egg, not Amazon, but I wanted to review it here among other review sites in order to help others.
First, this printer is my third laser printer over the last 12 years. The first laser I owned was for college. It was a nice, small Okidata. It performed very well.
My second laser was a Samsung 1430, which I still have today and it still prints excellently.
My third laser was the 610ND. Everything this printer says it does, it does, such as printing 21+ pages per minute in both mono and color. The color is unbelievable right out of the box. I used Adobe 1998 for a profile and sent the image at 600DPI (which is the 610's native format) to the printer. The colors were near exact matches to the screen, and as a professional photographer, I have my 23 LCD hardware calibrated. Of course the colors aren't as vibrant as an inkjet or as smooth, but for plain paper 20lb, they are very excellent. The contrast between colors and shades is smooth and I see no banding or streaking. ON top of that, you can also adjust each color's saturation and contrast, among other settings that allow you to dial in the color matching for your screen.
Text is very sharp down to 3 points. The printer is easily set up in less than 10 minutes, including software installation. There are two pieces of software: (1) The driver and (2) The interface software. The interface software allows you to set the printer settings from your computer. Alternately, you can set the same settings on the printers front LCD panel.
I bought this printer exclusively to print tear sheet on plain paper, quickly and anytime I need them, to show models and clients possible poses and to give them ideas about the shoot. Sure, I could have used an inkjet, but inkjets don't shine on plain paper--nor do they duplex and that saves paper. This laser printer does both duplex and prints nicely on plain paper. I was thinking about fast printing and doing it cheaply. It also does card stock up to 48 lbs, cards, envelops, etc, all in color, (plus you get laser sharp text). You also get built in DUPLEX printing, which means you can print on the front and back of the paper automatically.
This brings me to my only problem, and why I will need to return the unit to New Egg. When duplex printing, one of the sides of the paper will have incorrect margins. So one page will print with say 1/2" margins all around, whereas the other side will be offset left and top.
Samsung tech support was pretty fast, about a 2-4 minute wait. A tier two tech asked me a few questions and said it was a hardware problem. They wanted to send a repair tech to my house, which is included in the warranty (14 months if you return the warranty card)--which was good. However, it's only 3 days old! So I told them to hold on to my ticket and let me see how much of a hassle it would be to get New Egg to send me a new one.
New Egg said it was no problem, but I'd need all of the original items plus the original packaging. So I said if you are missing one item that came in the box, or the box itself, the warranty is voided? The CSR rep said pretty much that was true for returns. She explained that Samsung requires those stipulations. So I said that was cool I needed to talk to their manager because it doesn't say anything about that on their warranty page, and that I was going to post our conversation all over the internet, like I'm doing now.
So she said she would check again to see if she could do it just this one time. About 30 seconds later she had the "ok," but said I needed all of the items including the text pages or I would not get a refund. So I dug it all out of the trash for them. Furthermore, they will not cross ship the items. They want me to repurchase the same unit and they will credit my card for the return.
I then asked her if I could buy another unit and when it arrives simply use that units box. She said no because each box has the units serial number on it. This sounded strange to me because the UPS box I'll be sending it back in will not have the serial number either. So it sounded like I was getting somewhat of a run around from New Egg--which you WOULD NOT get from Amazon. On the other hand, she explained that if they return the unit to Samsung with a box that does not match the unit's serial number, they would not refund it for them. Who knows? I initially wanted to buy it from Amazon, but New Egg beat Amazon's price by 100.00US at 299.00. (Sorry Amazon)
Other than the unit not working in duplex mode out of the box, I was very impressed with this printer. I can't see anyone not being satisfied with this printer if you like what it advertises it can do--which it does do, including print speeds and excellent color.
Oh yes, it is network ready also, or you can use a USB cord for single computer use.
UPDATE: 05/07/08
I had a feeling that Samsung Tech Support didn't do a very good job trouble shooting my problem, so I ran through my own trouble shooting steps. I cleared the printer settings and set them back to factory default. This set the margins for duplex printing at 5mm each for left and top. This time it printed with the image perfectly in the center of the page on both pages. I have no idea if there really is a problem using duplex margins or not, but it would seem more intuitive if "0" meant no offset. As it is, 5mm on both equals no offset. So now the printer is completely functional, and I tested more high DPI photo images. The color and smoothness across high contrast images is truly remarkable.
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Samsung CLP-610ND Color Laser PrinterThe easy-to-use Samsung CLP-610ND Color Laser Printer delivers high-quality professional color print jobs at speeds up to 21 pages per minute. With a durable monthly cycle of 65,000 pages, this heavy-duty printer is designed to meet the high demands of your bustling office.
The sophisticated CLP-610ND color laser printer features a time-saving one-touch automatic duplexing as well as image detail up to 2400-by-600 dpi, for crisp professional results. Single sheets are printed in under 20 seconds, while 100-page print jobs take less than five minutes to print--whether they're full color or simple black-and-white text. In addition, this hard-working machine features a 250-sheet cassette and 100-sheet multi-purpose tray, and is backed by a 360 MHz processor and 128 MB of RAM, allowing it to start fast and stay strong throughout the work day.
The 24.1-by-24.5-by-25-inch Samsung CLP-610ND maximizes output and reduces operation costs with its built-in duplex feature to reduce paper consumption and decrease your business's cost-per-page ratio. In addition, the hassle of changing ink and toner is dramatically reduced, as this machine is designed with four easy-to-replace consumables. The Samsung CLP-610ND Color Laser Printer was awarded the Better Buys for Business Editor's Choice Award for 2008 for its inventive design and durable construction.
What's in the Box CLP-610ND color laser printer, toner cartridges, power code, USB cable, quick installation guide, and CD-ROM (driver, user's manual).
Click here for more information about Samsung CLP-610ND Color Laser Printer
