Archive for the ‘Samsung’ Category

Many of us don’t want anything very fancy from our printers, in fact for a lot of people color is not really necessary.  We’ve discovered that for a few pennies each we can get our digital photographs from our local supermarket or a machine in the shopping center.   So we start thinking about a cheap, fast laser printer – so is the Samsung ML1665 the solution to our minimal printing needs?

There’s no doubt that this Samsung is very cheap, in fact at the moment you can pick it up from Amazon for under £40.   Now that’s pretty incredible for even the most basic laser printer so what do you get for your money.

It’s quite a smart little printer, well it’s pretty much a small black box.  Obviously it takes up a little more room when you open the feeder and printer tray but not too much.

It weighs just over 4 kgs and to give you an idea it’s perfectly feasible to carry this around with a laptop – it’s a very portable printer although it’s not designed specifically so.

It’s pretty simple to use – there are only two buttons on the control panel.  One is obviously a power button and the other is a print screen button.  This is actually a pretty good idea, it just prints out whatever is on the screen of the computer connected to the printer.  If you want a page of text, a web page or some other information you can just maximise on the screen then press this button.

The paper feeder tray holds 150 sheets of paper, which is enough for a little printer like this.   It’s enough that you don’t have to keep refilling it all the time, if you are then you’d probably be better paying for a larger model.

There’s no doubt that the Samsung ML1865 is a neat little printer but what’s the print quality like ?

Well it’s surprisingly good, the text is well defined and the blacks sharp and readable.  The scales of grey are pretty distinct too, but this isn’t a printer for printing out graphics masterpieces.  Perfectly presentable output and the equal of some much more expensive ink jet printers I’ve seen.

It’s reasonably quick, Samsung says 16 pages per minute but I didn’t get anything like that, 9-10 pages per minute is more my experience.  However again it’s perfectly acceptable for a printer in this price bracket and quicker than the majority of ink jet printers.

As it’s only a black and white printer, the consumables situation is fairly straight forward.  The Samsung ML1865 takes a single toner cartridge with a capacity of 1500 pages (although obviously that is highly variable depending on what you print).

The cost might catch you unawares,  please don’t think that this is a cheap printer to run because it isn’t.  The replacement cartridge for the Samsung ML1865 is actually more expensive than the printer itself, certainly now it’s been discounted.   The cost is just under £50 currently although you can get the latest price on the Amazon web site –   Samsung ML1865 toner .

It’s always disconcerting when you find the replacement cartridge costs more than the printer itself but it’s very often the case nowadays.  This little printer although a solid performer and available at a very discounted price is not a great budget buy simply because of the running costs.  If you include the cost of paper – it’s going to cost around the 4p per page , which is actually on the expensive side.

If you’re going to be doing big print runs then this printer could cost you significantly more than some of it’s rivals. However if you just print occasionally it might not be an issue for you.

As far as refilling the toner cartridge goes it’s perfectly possible although those lovely people at Samsung have fitted the Samsung ML1865 cartridges with a killer chip to stop you refilling them.  It’s reasonably easy to replace though and available for £8 (plus VAT).  To refill the cartridge is quite simple though and you just need to undo some plastic rivets and fill directly from a bottle of replacement toner.

Just for information I’ve priced up the replacement costs from Toner Top Up for refilling this printer and it comes out as below

• Bottle of Replacement Toner (approx 2000 sheets at 5% coverage) – £7 plus VAT
• Replacement Killer Chip – £8 Plus VAT.

So you should be able to cut down the running costs of the ML1865 to under £20 a refill.  With normal use you should be able to refill the cartridge two or three times before needing a replacement £50 unit.

The costs were courtesy of Tonertopup who specialise in supplying refill kits for most major printers.

Now despite what my children and spouse may think I am not a cheapskate. But please tell me if I’m the only one who think the cost of toner cartridges for the Samsung CLP-600 is somewhat extreme. Who can honestly blame me if I look around for alternatives to find out if the Samsung CLP600 Toner can be refilled for example.

Samsung CLP600 - a Nice inexpensive printer

I mean when you buy a printer and it runs out of ink, you don’t expect to pay 2-3 times the cost to replace the CLP600 toner cartridges do you ? Well I don’t, but that is the rather sad truth, in UK money pay £180 for this printer then expect the bill to be over £400 to replace all the toner cartridges. The printer won’t be the only thing spluttering, so can it be refilled ?

Samsung CLP600 Toner Refill or not ?

Yes you can thanks goodness, or I for one would give the printer away! However thanks to the those lovely people at Samsung it’s made a little bit more difficult by them putting these little computer chips on the bottom of the clp600 cartridge.

So you need to buy the chips to replace as well, however they are not too expensive if you don’t mind replacing them. Here’s one deal I found which seems pretty reasonable – Samsung CLP600 Refill – when I looked £149 for a full set with instructions, not too bad and about 33% of the cost of a new cartridge set!!!

It’s much better for the environment as well, all that waste of a perfectly good cartridge that just needs some more ink. It does take a little work though but it’s not too difficult at all, refilling all the toner cartridges in your CLP600 doesn’t take long. In my opinion it’s well worth doing but not everyone will be comfortable with the procedure of refilling the Samsung CLP600 Toner Refill.

Some asked me if it was possible to refill the Samsung CLP315 Toner Cartridge. Unfortunately it is not possible currently purely because Samsung want you to buy or refurbish their own cartridges.

So those proud owners of the very good Samsung printer the CLP 315 will have to buy new cartridges each time they are out of ink.

The reason the Samsung CLP315 cannot be easily refilled with new toner, is quite simple. The cartridge is perfect usable, it’s internal mechanisms are fine, in fact they are fine for many thousands of more prints with a little ink. All the blades, rollers will be working correctly, there is only one thing besides the lack of ink that is stopping this nice little Samsung CLP printer being refilled – that’s because Samsung have made it so.

Samsung CLP315 Refilled or not ?

Nope, not currently, you see Samsung have put a little computer chip on the side of their toner cartridges. This little chip stops the cartridge functioning, yep in these days of eco awareness, companies are actually putting in self destruct mechanisms to stop it working. Imagine how you’d feel if your perfectly good Television set shut itself down after watching 2000 hours of television – well that’s what is happening with these cartridges.

Forget about the recycling schemes, forget about the packages with green trees all over them to send your cartridge back. The Samsung CLP315 and similar printers in their range have an encrypted chip on the side of them so you can’t refill or reuse them. The printers used to have an ordinary computer chip but recycling companies produced copies meaning you could reuse the cartridges and refill them.

Pretty bad huh – but they are not alone, printer firms are all adding these killer chips to stop you taking the green option (or should I say the less profitable option). So sorry no you can’t refill the Samsung CLP315 toner cartridge.

Shame on you Samsung !!! (even if you did make my wonderful laptop)