Samsung SCX-4500 – Redefining Printer Aesthetics

Pros

The Samsung SCX-4500 is a glossy printer with stylish design and offers pretty decent color scan and good print quality.

Cons

The feature set here for Samsung SCX-4500 is pretty good for the price at which the printer is available. The printer’s grayscale scan can definitely use some improvement and so can the task speeds, as the printer is rather slow. The printer’s output tray ruins the all-black aesthetics of the printer and the absence of an onboard LCD means for every advanced function you will have to turn on your PC.

Introduction

The Samsung SCX-4500 is one of the very few printers which are capable of turning heads, just with its aesthetics. The printer priced at $300 totally justifies the price with its glossy piano-black looks, though it’s more in line with some of the inkjet multifunction printers that are office-oriented. But, this justification doesn’t last long and it becomes pretty clear that the $300 is not at all a bargain and by paying hardly $100 more you can get $400 laser multifunction printers which come with several other additional features such as the advanced task features, auto duplexers, fax capability, automatic document feeders, and network-readiness. That said, the SCX-4500 do have its own special characteristics.

If you are practical kind of consumers and love to get true value for every penny you spend, then we will recommend the $400 multifunction printers like the Lexmark X342n and Canon ImageClass MF4690 to you. But if you are someone who loves style and SCX-4500 has taken over your mind then you can easily get SCX-4500, though the Samsung SCX-4200 offers the same print quality, speed and features, and is priced at meager $180.

Design

The design of Samsung SCX-4500 clearly groundbreaking and clearly redefines the designing of printers. The shinny smooth black body of Samsung SCX-4500 includes a control panel paced on top of the similarly sized printing unit and a rectangular shaped scanning unit. Measuring 15.5 inches deep by 6.5 inches tall by 13 inches wide, the SCX-4500 weighs around 19 pounds.

The control panel of the printer comprises of numerous touch-sensitive buttons and LEDs placed on the top of the printer alongside the scanner lid. Though the buttons here are touch-sensitive, they need to be pressed firmly. The buttons here includes Scan to PC, Stop/Clear, Start, and three different options for: Reduce/Enlarge Darkness and Copies. Pressing any of these three buttons brings up and down arrows and lights up a small display area which displays the number of copies or displays how much the copy is being compressed or reduced. Though the design of the printer is significantly eye-catching, but still the absence of text and graphical LCD means figuring out the toner levels or performing the other maintenance task certainly won’t be easy.

The paper input system of SCX-4500 has a 100 page cassette which comes out from the bottom at the front of the printer with a simple push of a button. To collect the output prints you’ll have to attach a clear-plastic panel, provided with the printer, because of the fact that the actual output area here is rather short. Though attaching the panel ruins the aesthetics of the printer, but it’s really necessary to attach.

System Configuration

Price: $263.58 – $380.78
Manufacturer: Samsung
Part Number: SCX-4500/XAA
Printer Type: Laser Monochrome Printer
Operating System Supported: Microsoft Windows XP, Linux, Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows 2000, Apple Mac OS X 10.3 – 10.4 and Microsoft Windows Server 2003
PC Connection: Hi-Speed USB
Microsoft Certifications: Works with Windows Vista
Dimensions (W x D x H): 13 x 15.5 x 6.5 inches

System weight: 19 lbs
Supported Media Type: Labels, Cards, Plain paper, Envelopes and Transparencies
RAM: 8 MB

Performance

In comparison to the competition, the Samsung SCX-4500 is a tad slower, and there’s no surprise in it as the printer is cheaper by $100. The SCX-4500 printed 13.05 pages per minute of black text, which is almost 1 page per minute slower than Canon MF4690 and way slower than the Dell 1815dn and Lexmark X342n. Similarly the printer was lagging behind in black graphics prints, printing 12.68 pages per minute. The printer was as usual slow in grayscale and color scan as well.

But the good news here is that the Samsung SCX-4500 makes up for its poor speed performance in its quality testing. The black prints were clean, imposingly dark and crisp, as we like them. The same was the case with the grayscale graphics print and that again was pretty good. Though, there was a little bit of conventional low-cost laser printer’s minor cross-hatching. The only problem we had with this printer is that the color here was a tad washed out and soft. Though, we won’t say that the quality produced here was perfect for the office use, but it definitely was good enough for casual printing.

Support

The Samsung SCX-4500 multifunction printer gets one year standard warranty from Samsung. The other support system includes a toll-free telephonic support available 2487. The support can also be obtained through Samsung’s web site offering downloadable drivers and software, FAQs and manuals.

Word from the Experts

The Samsung SCX-4500 is a multifunction printer with great aesthetics, but limited office or home use. If you are not looking for a showcase printer you don’t have to get this printer. You easily get a much better printer for the same amount, but with great features and comparatively faster speeds.