Samsung CLX-3305FW

Arguably small enough to share a desk with, the Samsung CLX-3305FW ($400 street) can be a good fit as either a personal color laser MFP or a shared MFP in a micro office. It's a little slow for a laser, and it offers limited paper capacity, but both its speed and paper handling are good enough for light-duty printing. And although it's a little pricey for what it delivers, it can certainly do the job it is meant for.

Aside from its relatively slow speed, the CLX-3305FW has a lot in common with the Editors' Choice Dell 1355cnw Multifunction Color Printer . Like the Dell printer, it can print, scan, and fax, including over a network; it can work as standalone copier and fax machine; and it can scan to and print from a USB memory key.

As with the Dell 1355cnw also, the CLX-3305FW offers a letter-size flatbed supplemented by an automatic document feeder (ADF). However, the CLX-3305FW's ADF offers a higher capacity, at 40 pages. More significant is that both printers offer the same meager paper handling for printing, with a 150-sheet input tray and no duplexer (for two-sided printing), which is what limits both to light-duty use.

Both printers also offer both Ethernet and Wi-Fi network support. One nice extra for the CLX-3305FW is that it adds Wi-Fi Direct, which makes it easy to connect directly to a smart phone, tablet, or laptop.

Setup and Speed
Another key feature that the CLX-3305FW shares with the Dell 1355cnw is its small size, with a footprint that actually takes up less desk space than many inkjets. At 13.1 by 16.0 by 14.3 inches (HWD) it's a touch smaller than the Dell printer in every dimension. It's also light enough, at 30.8 pounds, for one person to move easily.

Setup was absolutely standard, although a few details differed enough from the steps in the Quick Start guide to be confusing. Samsung says this was only because the printer it provided for review had been previously used, which means that with a new printer you shouldn't run into the discrepancies I saw.

For my tests, I connected the printer to a wired network and installed the drivers and other software on a Windows Vista system. As I've already mentioned, the speed was relatively slow. Samsung rates the printer at 19 pages per minute (ppm) for monochrome and 4 ppm for color, which are the speeds you should see when printing text files or other documents that don't require much processing. I timed it on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing), at an effective 3.3 ppm.

That makes the CLX-3305FW significantly slower than the Dell 1355cnw, at 4.5 pages per minute, and far slower than, for example, the Ricoh Aficio SP C240SF , at 6.3 ppm. It's not even hard to find inkjets with faster speed. The best that can be said for this level of performance is that the speed is well within a tolerable range for light-duty printing.

Output and Other Issues

The CLX-3305FW's output quality is in pretty much the same class as its speed: not impressive, but not a serious weakness. Given its par-quality graphics and slightly below-par text and photos, it's a touch below par overall for a color laser MFP, but still more than acceptable for any business use.

Text is a little short of what I'd insist on for serious desktop publishing, but more than good enough for any other business need. Graphics output is easily good enough for any internal business need, including PowerPoint handouts. If you're not too much of a perfectionist, you may well consider the text, graphics, and photos useable even for basic marketing materials like tri-fold brochures.

One other issue I ran into came up only after I finished all my official tests and turned the printer back on for one quick ad hoc test. The printer woke up with an error message on the front panel LCD telling me to change the waste toner tank, and refusing to print.

What makes this potentially significant is that I saw a similar error message on another Samsung printer I recently tested that uses the same printer engine. However, this appears to be a problem with how these two printers were shipped rather than a serious problem with the design or manufacture. Both of the test units had been previously used, and were shipped without the plastic foam piece meant to hold the toner cartridges and waste tank in place. According to Samsung, without that packing material, the cartridges and tank can shift during shipment and damage the waste tank sensor. Samsung also says it has not seen this problem in shipping units.

In any case, assuming that the waste toner tank issue is not a real problem, the Samsung CLX-3305FW qualifies as a reasonable choice for the personal or micro office use it's designed for. It's a little pricey for what it delivers, but it's also one of the few color laser MFPs that's small enough to sit on your desk without dominating it. More important, both the speed and paper handling are suitable for light duty use, the output quality is good enough for almost any business purpose, and the printer delivers all the MFP features most individuals or micro offices need.

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