A No-Frills Laser Printer From Samsung

Looking to equip your home office with a simple, few-frills monochrome laser printer for less than the price of many ink jets? Samsung's $299 ML-1750 fills this role nicely, offering reasonably fast printing and sharp text. However, it could not beat the price or speed of our current Best Buy, the $199 Minolta-QMS PagePro 1250W (see our Top 10 Laser Printers chart).

Two lights graced the simple front panel on the shipping ML-1750 I looked at: one for power and one to alert you that the printer's toner-saving feature (which lets you print in draft mode) is on. The panel's single button sets the toner-saver and serves as a cancel switch.

The printer includes 8MB of RAM, a 250-sheet input tray, a small manual feed slot, and for connectivity a parallel port and a USB 2.0 port (an optional external 100-mbps print server costs $130).

Though probably best for a single user in a home office, the ML-1750 printed text at 11.7 pages per minute--close to the SOHO average in this month's Top 10 Printers chart. Mixed text and graphics printed at 5.4 ppm, also about average. I was impressed with the ML-1750's crisp and sharp text at its default resolution of 600 by 600 dots per inch. The print quality didn't hold up as well in gray-scale graphics.

Samsung added a few features to a relatively simple printer driver, too, including seven predetermined watermarks so you can imprint labels like "Confidential" or "Draft" on your printout and add overlays such as a header graphic for form letters. It also will print on media as small as 3-by-5-inch card stock.

SUMMARY

Samsung ML-1750 This inexpensive laser printer is a decent buy for a solo user. Price when reviewed: $299 Current prices (if available)