Samsung CLP-500 Color Laser Printer

• Up to 1,200 dpi resolution, 4-color toner system
• Up to 21 ppm black, 5 ppm color
• Automatic duplexing; low noise, just 48 dB
• 65 MB RAM, expandable to 192 MB
• USB and parallel interfaces; PC and Mac compatible

When it works, it's just acceptable, not great:
I purchased this printer last year with tax refund money. I thought that I was getting a great color printer for a pretty good price. I have a lot of IT experience, having repaired and run service on networks for over 20 years now. I've had experience with a LOT of printers in my time. This one was supposed to be for my home, just to print color pages. Well, I bought it in February, and by April, the thing almost caught fire in my bedroom. I started smelling smoke and turned it off. After hours on the phone with Samsung technical support, I discovered a gear had just broken off in the drive path. This was causing the whole machine to think that paper was still in the path and it had to eject it. Thus the smoke, it was literally burning up. Well, Samsung wanted ME to repair it myself, and insisted they send the parts. When the parts came, I found the area to repair was not accessible to the user, requiring special tools to open it up. So back to Samsung technical. After reading my warrantee to them, I finally convinced them that the printer had on site warrantee. Then they told me they didn't have any service people in Kansas City. KANSAS CITY!!! Central US, Major hub of almost all commerace coming and going across the US. Home of of Sprint, and Hallmark and HUGE Ford, AND US Government HQ of IRS! NO support techs! Well, they did send me another printer as a replacement, but no toner or drum, and told me to use the ones I had. They sent me the wrong printer. They sent me the CLP510N. The tone and drum and such to not match. So then they sent me another printer. This one worked with my toners, but by this time, it was September 2005. I had bought the printer in February, used it two months, and been without it 5 months. So now the printer works. Come to February 2006. Warrantee is off, and the blue toner cart has developed a problem with streaking. Now the page count is only 560 pages on the color carts. So it's off to the store to buy a toner catridge. I find all CLP510 carts and no CLP500 carts. Not only that but the cost online of CLP500 carts is around $120 each, when the printer new is now running less than $300 for the CLP510. Then I see my old friend, HP printers. I have had experience with dozens and dozens of HP printers, and never had a problem, and IF and WHEN one of them goes out, HP stands behind what they sell. I'm ditching the Samsung and will never be tempted again to purchase a Samsung computer component. NEVER. Neither will any of my IT customers. If they do, I won't support them anymore, and I have very loyal customers. Do yourself a favor, stay away from the Samsung printers totally.

Amazing printer for the money:
The Samsung CLP-500 is so inexpensive and packed with features that it didn't make sense for me to purchase anything else. And I couldn't be happier. First off, ignore the other reviews that claim "fuzzy text." My 500 prints crisp text, even on cheap paper. These guys are either misinformed, or shills for HP, who is bleeding customers to Samsung right now. The main selling point is built-in duplexing. I can print double-sided in full color. If I purchase 93 brightness 32 lb paper, I get a vivid print that's absolutely astonishing. The consumable prices seem high, until you price them out per sheet. Think about it: You'll pay $100 for black toner (if you shop online) that gets you 7,000 pages. That 1.4 cents per page! Most other lasers price their consumables out to 2 to 3 cents per page. And forget inkjet. You'll pay 25 cents or more per page. When it comes to color, you'll pay about 8 cents per page on the Samsung, compared to 10 to 15 cents on an HP or any other printer. Inkjet photo printing can cost you up to $1 per print! The Samsung is a real workhorse. It's definitely designed for office or professional home office use. I'd recommend it for beginner graphic designers and freelancers who need to put a little extra oomph into their printed materials. And, for booklet printing, forget buying a longneck stapler. An internet search for "mini booklet stapler" will get you a great little stapler that does the job for under $10. Problem solved!

OK (ish):
This printer has worked well for me for the past year. However it started developing a print issue wehre it would screw up some of the image information. I initially thought that it was due to me running a faster computer and the USB information was being sent too fast to the printer. Ie under-run issues on the printer itself due to lack of memory or processing horsepower. I bought an additional memory and it still does the same thing. Basically the printer has died for some reason and I'm not too happy about this. I expect to be able to print for a long time and just have to buy consumables (ie toner etc). I'm going to ditch this printer and get some more reliable brand. HP or something similar. I don't want to have to deal with unreliable stuff as I need to print professional quality documents. Won't be buying a Samsung, that's for sure!

bad output, no photo printing.....OF NO USE!!!:
i urgently needed a laser colour printer and found this one rather cheap. although i wasnt satisfied with its performance, like fuzzy text etc. i still kept on using it. but then the problems seemed to attract my attention. the major drawback which i found out in a few days time was that it doesnt print photos on photo or glossy paper!!! i tried every sort of paper and the result was rubish!!..it doesnt even have the option of glossy paper, which really shocked me!!! i didnt even use the printer much and the screen started flashing 'insert cyan toner'!!...but i found a trick for controlling that...which meant that the toner doesnt actually finish!! i also experienced the bad transparencies' printing, and was really disappointed. seriously, this printer seemed larger than life... it really made me regret its buying!! Im giving it a star only coz the review required this field to be filled!!! otherwise, two words,..DONT BUY!!

Stay away from this printer!:
We received this as a gift from Samsung for our school. I can see why they were wanting to get rid of them! We have had multiple problems with the toner indicator saying that the bottle is full when it isn't even close. The problem is that the sensors are defective from the factory, even though Samsung won't admit to any wrong doing. A serviceman for Samsung said he has replaced dozens of these sensors and the problem magically goes away... Do a Google search on "samsung clp-500 problems" and you can read away all you want on why you should steer away from this printer, including why cost per page is excessive, as it counts the number of pages to tell you when it is out of toner, not by the amount of toner actually left. When you get the out of toner msg, you have no choice but to replace the expensive toner assy.