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When you think of a laser printer, you either tend to shun them due to their exorbitant price if you are a home user, or you think about the very economical cost per print if you are an enterprise user. But the Samsung ML-1640 attempts to strike a balance between the two different user segments. We have this compact mono laser printer for test in our test labs today and we will try to find out whether it succeeds in its balancing act.
Bundle
Toner cartridge USB data cable Power cable Driver disc Quick Start Guide
This is the toner cartridge installed in this printer.
The Samsung ML-1640 is a compact printer that is just 20.9 cm high, with a footprint of just 35.3 cm x 29.8 cm. This lets you place it in just about any corner of your office. It sports a cubical look with a polymer black body, but looks good enough to be even placed on your desktop. The build is quite rugged and there aren't many moving parts, so it should be able to endure the rigors of office work.
The output tray is on top of the unit and is just a plastic flap that flips out to keep paper from falling over. It can hold up to 50 sheets. The prints come out with the printed side facing down.
Toner cartridge can be inserted into the unit by opening the toner bay at the front.
This printer has no display; the only indicators are two LEDs. While one indicates if the printer is powered on or is on standby, the other lights up in case of any error, such as when the cartridge bay is open or when there is a paper jam.
The ML-1640 has a 150 MHz processor and 8 MB of memory to take care of the print buffer. The buffer seems to be adequate for this class of laser printer, since the workload will almost never be heavy. PC connectivity is available via the USB interface. Driver interface
This printer comes with a single driver CD and there is no additional software. The drivers support Windows as well as Mac and Linux.
There is also a Toner Save option to save toner ink. You can choose to print at either 600 dpi or 1200 dpi according to your requirements. You can also adjust the level of darkness here.
We put the printer through our regular battery of tests.
Font Size Printing
We printed a page containing all the letters, in font sizes ranging from large to very small. The print was found to be very clean and the edges of the text were crisp.
We printed a page of black text to determine the speed as well as quality of the print. The first page took 14.2 seconds, which is more than that taken by the Samsung ML-2245. The pages per minute (PPM) in the first minute was 14.5 and it reached 17.6 subsequently. This is faster than the HP P1007 we had tested a few months ago, but slower than any of the other laser printers.
For this test, we used a page of multi-colored graphs, text, charts, patterns and photos. Since it's a monochrome printer we were looking at, we checked for the grayscale output quality. The document took 14.5 seconds to produce the first print, while the PPM in the first minute was 13.3. The PPM touched 16.2 subsequently. The quality of print was good in this case too and the legibility was not affected down to the lowest point size. The only problem we noticed was that it could not print well when it came to printing varying shades of color documents in shades of grayscale.
Paper handling was not an issue throughout the entire review.
The Samsung ML-1640 is an ultra-compact laser printer that looks good enough to adorn your living room besides your PC. For its small size it performs admirably well, printing at speeds up to 16 pages per minute, which is in accordance with its rated speed. The print quality is excellent and only falters a bit when it comes to printing shades of different colors in grayscale. The toner has a yield of 1,500 pages and costs Rs.2,200, with a cost per page of Rs.1.47 per page, which is a bit high for a laser printer and could be made lower if Samsung drops the price of the toner. The monthly print duty cycle of this printer is 5,000, which is good for most SoHos. The Toner Save mode claims to print up to 30% more pages making it even more economical.
Samsung has a special toll-free number and another number, which can be dialed to have the toner conveniently delivered at your doorstep. This printer comes with a one-year carry-in warranty. It is priced superbly at an MRP of Rs.5,699 making it very appealing not just to SoHos but also home users, who may not need color prints and would rather prefer good quality black and white printouts.
Specifications
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