Digital Home Thoughts: Samsung's CLX-3175 Colour Laser Multi-Function Printer: Not a Good Choice

Late last year, I did a bit of office re-configuration, and retired my old Canon MP780 inkjet all-in-one in favour of something that would get the old "dried out ink cartridge" problem, and something that had a lower cost per-page. That something was a colour laser multi-function printer.

I had a specific space for the printer, and since most of them are quite large, I was seeking something as small as possible. The Samsung CLX-3175 fit the bill: it printed, scanned, faxed, and was much smaller than any competing product. It fit exactly where I needed it to fit, so I thought I was all set. It didn't turn out that well in the end.

The first problem when I set it up and did a test print was the horrible stench - I'm used to laser printers being a little oderous, but this was extreme. Thankfully, after a few days it lessened to the point where it was tolerable. What wasn't tolerable, however, was the print quality of the CLX-3175. The first sample print I did looked awful - the colours were horribly washed out. I thought perhaps I had it set on some sort of draft mode, but after triple-checking every driver checkbox and drop-down menu there was, I couldn't see any way to improve the quality.

Here's what an image looked like printed out from the Samsung CLX-3175 at maximum quality:

Pretty bad right? Now best consumer-grade laser printer isn't going to match the photo printing quality of even a $99 inkjet, but that's far below where it should be. I printed out the same image on my still-connected HP 2600n and here's how it turned out:

It looks like the CLX-3175 is defective, right? Well, it might have been, but Samsung tech support was of no help when I phoned them about another issue, so I didn't pursue getting the printer repaired/replaced for fear that the replacement printer would be just as bad. Next I tried printing out my invoice template, thinking that perhaps the CLX-3175 was more heavily geared toward text and graphics printing. Here's what my logo looked like:

The same logo printed out on my HP 2600n looked dramatically better:

The issue I phoned Samsung tech support about? The CLX-3175, despite being programmed to pick up upon detecting a distinctive ring, simply would not recieve a fax. It would happily recieve a fax if I set it to pick up on my main phone line, but that's not what I needed it to do. I phoned tech support and they walked me through various settings, and they couldn't figure out why it wasn't working. They escalated the issue to second level tech support, but they never phoned me back. Not very impressive.

The CLX-3175 has a bunch of neat features - one of my favourite was that you could configure it to recieve an incoming fax, convert it to a PDF, and email it to you - all without wasting a single sheet of paper. Slick! Unfortunately, because of its inability to recieve faxes, this feature was of no benefit to me. Equally cool was the ability scan over the network, but it was limited to 300dpi - and considering that I was hoping to not need a stand-alone scanner, that wasn't enough scanning quality for me. The driver install was also a bit of a train-wreck; it took me several tries to get it all installed on one of my computers.

In the end I returned it to Staples, the office supply store I bought it from, and purchased an HP Color LaserJet CM1312nfi MFP instead. Despite the awful product name, it's a very impressive printer. My first test print looked great, and over the past few months I've had zero complaints. Well, OK, I have one: it does a calibration process every so often, and while you can adjust the time between calibrations, you can't adjust the time of day it happens at. I'd prefer to see the have the calibration happen at midnight, when I'm not in my office, rather than during the middle of my work day. And, as always, HP charges a ridiculous amount of money for their toner cartridges - though thankfully because I don't print heavily I'm still on the original set that came with my printer. If you're looking for a multi-function colour laser printer, the CM1312nfi MFP is a good choice. The Samsung CLX-3175 is not.

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys photography, mobile devices, blogging, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. Why is printer ink and toner so expensive exactly?

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