Samsung CLP-650N Color Laser Printer (20 PPM, 2400x600 DPI, Color, 256MB)

You can feed envelopes only from the auxiliary tray, where they can be stacked up to 10 high. You can add a single optional 500-sheet paper drawer for a moderate $249, but Samsung doesn't offer a duplexer option. The control panel features a two-line LCD and a diagram of the printer where lights indicate any errors. The printer comes with a generous 256MB of memory, and has drivers for both PCL and PostScript. The embedded Web server makes the unit easy to administer.

The CLP-650N compared poorly to other color lasers in our quality tests. Its text printing was light and fuzzy. Our line-art sample was a mess, suffering from blue and yellow shades in blocks of closely spaced horizontal lines, and diagonal interference patterns. The grayscale image looked grainy, with moiré patterns in textured areas and lots of narrow horizontal banding. On plain paper, our color tests had dull shades, diagonal dithering patterns, and excessive graininess. For our photo tests on glossy paper at the best quality settings, Samsung made the odd choice of Epson Premium Semigloss paper, which is designed for inkjets. We saw major horizontal and vertical banding, muted colors, jaundiced skin tones, and grainy highlights. Informal testing with other glossy papers showed no improvement.