- Up to 1,200 dpi resolution, 4-color toner system
- Up to twenty-one ppm black, 5 ppm color
- Automatic duplexing; low noise, only 48 dB
- 65 MB RAM, expandable to 192 MB
- USB as well as together interfaces; Personal Computer as well as Mac compatible
Product Description
With a Samsung CLP-500 array Color Laser printer we will be rebuilt for anything. Whether we make use of a together port, a ultra-fast customary USB 2.0, or a discretionary twin wired/wireless interface network label for cable-free connections, you’ll be ready to go in an instant…. More >>
Do not buy this printer if you plan to print transparencies. I bought it to print a lot of transparencies. In your hand they look good, but when I put them on the projector, the colors all show up as different shades of gray. A big waste of my money.
I have been going to my local electroncs store many times and looked at all the laser printers on the display. I had see this model on sale/off sale and with a rebate ect… I almost bought it a few times after demo-ing it at the store.. Finally I just Put It In My Cart and took it home. I Dont think it was a mistake at all… I would recomend it…
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.
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!!
I could not recommend this printer to anyone! Why? Read on…
Firstly I should state I specifically bought this printer to print at least 4 copies of my PhD thesis (315 pages each copy).
I printed about 50 pages in a futile attempt to correct the slight bluriness inherent with all text. The bluriness is especially noticeable with serif fonts, on numbers such as 9 or anywhere there is a sharp point on a character. I tried all sorts of settings, different types of paper, downloaded the latest printer drivers — still the same result. In comparison, my Canon LBP-810 prints crisper text and it is muuuch older (and cheaper).
The other problem with printing a large colour document with this printer is that if you select “colour printing”, it does 4 passes on the black pages as well. So the thing is not smart enough to know that there isn’t a speck of colour on B&W pages! This slows printing down to 5ppm. Since that speed is unacceptable, you have to print the whole document in B&W, then print the colour pages separately. This wastes paper, toner, & shortens the life of the transfer belt + rollers. If your document contains colour on every 2nd page, this also wastes vast amounts of time by deteminging the print ranges & inserting them once everything is printed.
Double-sided (duplex) printing slows printing speed considerably – less than half the speed. It would be quicker to do manual duplexing. So it’s a white elephant in that department.
Apart from that, the printer is a juggernaut. It needs FURTHER space around it in order for the numerous compartments to open… and you will need to open these compartments frequently if you don’t heed my advice. Despite the size, the paper tray can only accomodate 250 pages. There is a side feeder which takes another 100 pages, but that tends to get used for special papers. So if you seek a decent paper capacity you have to pay extra for the optional paper tray.
The printer stats tell me it has printed a total of 1369 mono pages & 191 in colour. Shortly before I reached that number, the squinty little display started complaining about a lack of black toner! Literally *ALL* of those black pages were 1.5 spaced, with huge margins. I.e. they shouldn’t have used that much toner. THAT JUST ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH!!! If Samsung can’t even afford to completely fill up the toner cartridges with toner, it makes you wonder about the quality of the rest of the unit.
I was satisfied with the colour output, although it couldn’t handle a 3D excel graph that had white-grey planes graduated diagonally. It kept printing steps, instead of a steady colour change. Still, although the colour output is satisfactory, what good is a colour laser printer that cannot print crisp text adequately? Another white elephant. You might as well get a top of the shelf inkjet for this price.
One more thing:
The printer jams up at the slightest overfilling of the internal paper tray. In the end, 3 copies of a 315 page thesis printed out without incident, so I won’t give it one star (but I am tempted).
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Customer Service Issues:
After dealing with Samsung Australia customer service I realised that they weren’t willing to take back the printer for a refund. They were happy enough to arrange a technician to visit to check the printer was working correctly, but after being on hold several times, I basically informed them that I didn’t think anything was wrong with my specific printer, but that the problem was probably endemic to all CLP-500s. THey said I’d have to take it back to the retailer…. yet the retailer insisted that I needed “special permission” from Samsung to accept it’s return. I didn’t pursue that circular path, saving time by knowing where it would take me – back where I started. I even told the customer service consultant rather bluntly that I couldn’t be bothered asking for the manager or writing letters of complaint as that can get too stressful.