Samsung CLP-500 21PPM 1200 DPI 266MHZ 16MB GDI PARALLEL & USB (Samsung-CLP500XAA)

Samsung CLP-500

CLP-500 21PPM 1200 DPI 266MHZ 16MB GDI PARALLEL & USB (Samsung-CLP500XAA) Review, by Dan Littman April 1, 2004

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• Latest User Reviews 1 review
• Reviewed by: saintphd

  Duration of ownership: 6 Months

  Strengths: Price, Calmness, standard-duplex, decent font and graphic quality, and compatible with REFILL INK

  Weaknesses: Photo quality is so-so (but reasonable with plain paper).

  Overall: I purchase pre-owned CLP-500 6 month ago. Compare with HP and Xerox color laser printers, this one is more calm and hard to notice whether ready or in sleeping mode. Printing speed is quite acceptable: 4+ photoshop color picture printing per minute...which is faster than HP 4500 (less than 2 per min.). Graphic and font quality is equal or slightly better than HP4500. Standard built-in-duplex works fine and I didn't get any jam with that. Further, I replaced used toners with eBay-selling compatible refill kit and It works as equal as the original toner. One complain for me...is picture quality. Also, I didn't try with photo papers but the general quality in plain paper is just so-so though users can improve the picture quality manually. Overall, CLP500 is a good printer with proper manipulation.

• Reviewed by: ashtongraham

  Strengths: holds a door open

  Weaknesses: deteriorating print quality after 15K pages. New toners & spares dont fix it. Samsung "support" unhelpful. Both my CLP-500N have exactly the same poor quality.

  Overall: AVOID THIS AT ALL COSTS. Unless you want something large to hold a door open or a fancy looking step to reach things on high shelves. Better to spend more money & get an HP or Ricoh.

• Reviewed by: catapult34

  Strengths: ummm.... trying to think of one

  Weaknesses: alignment, grey tinting, jamming, toner doesn't adhere, slow....

  Overall: It's incredibly slow to "wake up" from sleep mode. There is a faint gray background to my pages, even though I have cleaned all the recommended parts. I have to turn my artwork on a 0.5 degree angle to get it to print straight on manual feed. The toner doesn't adhere properly to paper surfaces except basic 20lb bond. It jams on 28lb laser copier stock. It's slow to process when paper type is set to "thick". Photos printed on photo paper are streaky,blotchy or dull. WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS PRINER

• Reviewed by: mrcomp

  Strengths: Price very reasonable, Excellent quality printing, fast color & super fast b/w printing. Duplexing works great & minimal paper jams.

  Weaknesses: Samsung support terrible, comes with only 2000 pg toners (new ones print 5000 pages), Won't print charts from MS Works 6.0, 7.0 or 8. Very heavy unit.

  Overall: At first I thought this was the best deal ever for a color laser printer, but I had a problem first with the print quality deteriorating and the pages would have a light gray tint to them compared to when it was new. Contacted tech support regarding this by phone and tech seemed to be very unknowledgeable and actually somewhat non-caring. This became especially apparent after he told me I would have to scan a page and email it to him to show him what it looked like - I did this and did not get a reply back. Had to email again after a few weeks and then he responded that he was working on a solution and would let me know. I finally gave up on this and put in a new black toner cartridge which seemed to take care of the problem - it is printing nice now, although nothing in the printer manual or tech support pointed to the possibility of a defective cartridge. Another problem is that it WILL NOT whatsoever print a chart from Microsoft Works spreadsheet. I even contacted tech support at Microsoft and Samsung and got no solution besides copying the chart from Works and pasting it into the word processor and then printing it. Other issues - no 64-bit driver on the Samsung website for Windows XP x64 edition, although it will install if you are connected to the internet and have it automatically find the driver from windows update. All in all I enjoy the printer but can not recommend it due to the crappy tech support I received from Samsung. It is already discontinued and although I just purchased it a year ago it seems Samsung could care less about new drivers or fixing a problem with it or supporting their warranty on it.

• Reviewed by: DavidChung

  Strengths: Great image/text quality, realatively cheap, basic duplex, high speed

  Weaknesses: none

  Overall: It is really excellent color laser printer that I have ever met. As a result of use for 5 months, I'm very satisfied with text/image quality and price.

• Reviewed by: paulnye

  Strengths: Price

  Weaknesses: Wont print on glossy photo paper

  Overall: Moderatley happy with the assembly and it produces a 5 out of 10 print quality on regular paper, BUT put photo paper in and it screws up leaving blotches and scratches on the printout, that you can only clear from further prints by printing some test pages.