Introduction In the recent past, in the computer press, the statement "the user is tired of the monotonous gray boxes" was quite common. It's hard to argue with him - indeed, when computers gradually turned from a purely working tool into a familiar part of the home environment, "unexpectedly" (in fact, of course, as unexpectedly as winter comes for our motorists and road services every year) for buyers began to acquire Not only specifications but also the appearance.

Ten years ago, the vast majority of computers looked almost the same: a large rectangular box of light gray or light cream color, next to or on top of a CRT monitor of the same color: under a fairly typical light gray furniture for offices, this combination was still suitable, but at home it looked completely foreign subject. For example, when was the last time you saw a VCR or music Center in the form of a gray steel box? But the modern computer, in fact, has already become the same household appliances- moreover, for many people, he replaced both the VCR and the music center at once.

However, those are things of bygone years, but now we have a very rich assortment of cases and monitors that satisfy a variety of aesthetic needs - both in color and in shape. Moreover, cases made of black glossy plastic are especially popular among buyers: although it is rather impractical (glare, easily dirty, easily scratched), it is beautiful and fits well into the home environment.

At the same time, alas, manufacturers of various "optional" peripherals are still far behind manufacturers of cases and monitors: one glance is enough to a directory, say laser printers to understand - even having decreased for last years in size, in design, they generally remained the same boring gray office boxes.

One could assume that the reason for this is the low prevalence of "laser printers" at home - however, this argument is somewhat outdated: far from everyone needs color printing, and in black and white, even the simplest laser printer will easily give odds to any inkjet printer in terms of speed, and quality and cost per print.

In addition, laser printers are also quite inconvenient in their design - as a rule, home computer a fairly small table is allocated, the printer requires quite a lot for installation free space. Both in height - the control and the tray for printed sheets are located on the top cover, and in length - the blank paper tray usually protrudes strongly forward and closes only if there is no paper in it.

However, today we have the opportunity to present you a laser printer whose design can be called, if not revolutionary, then at least noteworthy - Samsung ML-1630.

Appearance

The ML-1630 printer perfectly corresponds to the adage "it is better to see once than hear a hundred times". So let's start right away with a photo:

We wrote above that one of the disadvantages of typical laser printers is a rather large height, while at the same time it is necessary to provide access to the top cover - there is a receiving tray for printed sheets and, as a rule, control buttons. With the ML-1630, you can forget about it: not only is the printer only about 12 cm high, but also its top cover is perfectly smooth.

However, "perfectly smooth" can be said about the entire printer as a whole: its body is made of black glossy plastic. The advantage of this solution is the appearance, but the disadvantage is the excellent visibility of any scratches, dust and fingerprints.

The paper tray is located at the bottom of the front panel, it opens when you press the round button located right there. The tray holds up to 100 sheets of paper (with a weight of 80gsm) - not much, but more than enough for home use. Please note that when closed, the tray is completely retracted into the body along with the paper - unlike classic compact printers, in which the tray is folded forward during operation.

Printed sheets emerge from the gap between the two halves of the printer body. There is no output tray as such, but in case you need to print more than one or two pages, there is a plastic mini-tray that snaps into a slot on the front of the printer in one motion. It is designed to load up to 30 pages.

To service the printer, its top cover opens - to do this, just press your fingers on the lock hidden in its front part and pull it up; in the open position, the lid is fixed by itself, it is not necessary to hold it.

Under the cover, access to the cartridge and part of the paper path is opened - in case of a paper jam in it.

If the sheet gets stuck in the central part of the path, the printer will have to be disconnected from the network and turned back to itself. There is a decorative cap on it (in the photo above it was taken), which opens access to the tract. Thus, "jamming" of paper is not a significant problem in the ML-1630 - a jammed sheet can be reached literally in a matter of seconds. However, it should be noted that during operation - and a total of about two hundred pages were printed on the printer - it did not crease a single sheet.

In the same place, on the back wall, there is a socket for the power cable and USB port. Unfortunately, because of them, it will not work to move the printer close to the wall - the connectors are not recessed into the case, which means that you will have to leave at least 5 cm between the printer and the wall for laying wires.

Also, about 5 cm of free space should be left on both sides of the printer - they have ventilation grills for cooling the printing mechanism. Cooling is active, but the fan only turns on when printing, the speed is low and as a result it is almost inaudible.

The only printer control touch button Job Cancel button located on the right front corner of the top cover. Nearby is the power indicator, despite the symbol drawn on it, it is not a button - you can turn off the power only with a toggle switch on the back of the printer. When you touch the cancel button, the printer emits a short confirmation beep.

Above, in the photos of the printer with the tray extended, you could see a glowing blue arrow next to "Samsung" in the center of the front edge of the cover. This is an indicator of the current status of the printer, made in the form of a matrix of blue LEDs and several additional icons.

When the printer is turned on, while it starts up and performs self-diagnostics, the indicator shows an animated splash screen - it clearly shows the dimensions of the LED matrix. At the same time, the printer tries to play a simple melody on its built-in tweeter - to be honest, it is still far from polyphonic calls, but it looks funny. The sound is not loud, it is not annoying.

Under the matrix are four icons with various warnings that light up in red - while a blue arrow is drawn on the main indicator, pointing to the icon. So, above you see a message about the end of the toner in the cartridge.

Three other red indicators indicate a paper jam in the print path (for the reason indicated above, we could not show it to you in operation), the end of the paper in the input tray, and other errors. In the latter case, on LED matrix instead of a blue arrow, an explanation is displayed: for example, in the photo above, the inscription "OPEN" scrolls on it (the top cover of the printer is open).

The indicator does not stay idle during normal operation: it displays the counter of printed pages. For each new print job, it is reset to zero - and this is very convenient, because by printing several dozen pages, you can determine at a glance how long you have to wait.

As a result Samsung developers they killed several birds with one stone with one shot: this way of presenting information about the printer status is much more convenient and informative than one or two status LEDs of ordinary inexpensive printers, large blue numbers and bright red icons are perfectly visible from afar and in semi-darkness, which is not always possible to say about small LCD screens of "advanced" office printers ... And, finally, it just looks very beautiful and unusual.

The printer uses a specially designed cartridge model (including both the drum and the toner container) - ML-D1630A.

There are absolutely no problems when installing the cartridge: just lift top cover printer and, with a little effort, insert the cartridge into place along the guides.

Cartridge resource - 2000 pages at 5% coverage (the so-called "test cartridge" is supplied with the printer, with a resource of 1000 pages). Just in case, we remind our readers that such a filling corresponds to a rather loose text - for example, a one-page business letter with a caption above the text and a caption below the text, where the content itself takes up half a page. On a printout of solid text, the cartridge resource in pages, of course, will be less.

Software

Drivers are available from the Samsung website. Operating Systems Microsoft Windows(starting from 2000 and ending with Vista), Linux (without specifying kernel versions, printing subsystem, etc.) and MacOS X (versions 10.3 and 10.4). In our work, we tested only the first of them.

I was pleased with the fact that both 32-bit and 64-bit systems are supported - not only Vista, but also the not very popular Windows XP Professional 64-bit Edition.

The driver installation went without any problems, after which the "SSManager" icon appeared in the system tray, through which you can call the printer status window or its settings panel.

In addition to the current status of the printer, the status window shows the level of toner in the cartridge (most likely, it is calculated based on the number of printed sheets). The "Buy Now" button right there will take you to the Samsung website with information about the type of cartridge and stores cooperating with Samsung, the remaining two buttons open the typical troubleshooting guide and the driver settings panel.

The settings are quite standard: you can choose the print resolution, turn on the toner save mode and make the image a little lighter or a little darker.

There is also the option to automatically print posters that span multiple sheets of paper.

In general, only one thing can be said about the printer driver: it works. We did not have any problems with the software during the entire period of using the printer.

Test results

The printer was tested on a computer with the following configuration:

processor AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (2.4 GHz);
Biostar motherboard included in the iDeq 330N barebone kit (Nvidia NForce 6100 chipset);
1 GB DDR PC3200 memory;
hard drive Samsung T166S HD321KJ (320 GB);
OS Windows XP Professional 64-bit Edition.

Test patterns were prepared in PDF format and printed from Adobe Reader 8.0, font reproduction tests from Microsoft office 2003SP3. The results were scanned on a Canon CanoScan 8800F scanner, the scanning resolution was chosen depending on the test so that the scanner did not introduce additional artifacts visible to the eye into the image.

Connecting the printer and installing the driver went without any problems. We used driver version 3.04.32, the latest available at the time of testing on the Samsung website.

From the moment the job was submitted to the end of the first page printing, 14 seconds elapsed - one second less than the printer manufacturer promises. Further, on a test task of about 30 pages of text, the printer showed a print speed of 16 ppm (excluding the aforementioned 14-second warm-up), which exactly matches its passport data.

Samsung promises a quiet operation of the printer, and does not deceive - the ML-1630 emits a fairly moderate hum when printing, unobtrusive and does not interfere even when working in a small room.

600dpi

The print quality of Times New Roman and Arial fonts at 600 dpi did not cause any complaints: even a 2 pt font. displayed very well. Small steps are noticeable on the letters, but in reality it is almost impossible to see them without a good magnifying glass.

1200dpi

Switching to 1200 dpi made the fonts a little thinner, and there were no display problems in this case either.

600 dpi, toner saving

Surprisingly, the toner save mode had about the same effect: the fonts became thinner, but even at a size of 2 pt. printed quite confidently.

The following test is designed to determine the printer's resolution and how well its driver handles vector images that have line densities that exceed this capability.

The first part of the test is hatching, the density of lines in which increases from left to right. The picture you see above is a combination of two - with the printer set to 600 and 1200 dpi. Surprisingly, they are no different! In both cases, the printer confidently works out resolutions up to about 700 dpi, after which the lines begin to go unevenly - sometimes less often, sometimes more often. The result on horizontal hatching is no different either: apparently, the words "effective resolution" in the description of the printer are given for a reason, and it still does not support 1200 dpi resolution in hardware.

On the world (a circle with converging lines - accordingly, their density grows from the periphery to the center of the circle), the printer showed a generally good result, but closer to its center it produced a series of artifacts in the form of white streaks. This is a consequence of incorrect rasterization of a vector drawing, in which the line density greatly exceeds the capabilities of the printer; ideally, he should have just filled that area with solid black.

To compare 600 and 1200 dpi resolutions, we printed two worlds in different settings, scanned and stacked end-to-end. As you can see, the picture is completely identical - the display quality vector graphics the printer is completely independent of the resolution set in the driver.

As a final resolution test, we printed a solid gray field in three modes and scanned them with high resolution - so that individual dots of toner could be seen (it is obvious that any black-and-white printer can actually print only black, and emulates shades of gray by making gaps between black dots).

It can be clearly seen that the shape of the toner dots in all three modes is slightly different - thus, it cannot be said that the "1200 dpi" mode is a complete fiction. It slightly affects the way the gray color is built and the display of fonts, but it does not change the quality of drawing vector graphics at all - the latter is rasterized at a resolution of 600 dpi anyway.

However, this should not be attributed to the shortcomings of the printer - as we saw above, at the default resolution of 600 dpi, it copes well with its tasks.

And finally last test- print photos on A4 format. Of course, it is unlikely that anyone will use a black-and-white laser printer specifically for these purposes, but the test allows you to evaluate the quality of printing graphics in general - and therefore, to understand how suitable the printer is for printing documents with embedded pictures, diagrams and so on.

Two photographs were chosen as samples - with an extensive light gray background and with a high-contrast image on a dark background - taken on a Canon EOS-350D camera with a Tamron AF28-75 / 2.8 XR Di LD lens. Photos in JPEG format with a resolution of 3456x2304 pixels were printed from the XnView 1.91 program on the full size of A4 sheet.

On a light gray background, you can see both the printer's raster and uneven stripes running across the sheet - however, it should be noted that they do not spoil the overall impression of the photo, but in general, the printer did an excellent job of drawing small details, halftones and transitions between colors, according to at least by the standards of black and white "laser".

The printer also coped with the second photo - note how carefully both the rays of the sun and the brilliant water drops of the fountain are drawn. Although transverse stripes are again visible against the dark background of the sky, they do not spoil the overall impression.

So, what conclusions can be drawn about the print quality of the printer?

Advantages:

print speed corresponds to that declared by the manufacturer;
accurate rendering of fonts up to a size of 2 pt.;
accurate drawing vector images with resolution up to 700 dpi;
very good (by the standards of laser printers) transmission of details and halftones in photographs.

Flaws:

small flaws in rendering high-resolution vector images;
mode with a resolution of 1200 dpi does not affect the rendering of vector images;
uniform gray fills show stripes running across the sheet.

Conclusion

In general, the Samsung ML-1630 printer is definitely a success. This model is hardly suitable for a large office due to the small capacity of the paper tray, not too large cartridge resource and modest print speed in modern terms, but if you choose a printer for home use or "on the manager's desk" - on ML- 1630 is worth paying close attention to.

The main feature of the new printer is a unique compact design - the printer is very easy to place on a table, bedside table, wide shelf, and at the same time it only needs a dozen and a half centimeters in height. Moreover, if the printer is on the table - in conditions of lack of space, absolutely nothing prevents you from putting, say, any extraneous papers on its top cover. The paper tray completely retracts inside the printer and does not interfere with its operation, and the tray for printed sheets may not be installed at all - if you do not need to print more than two or three pages at a time.

At the same time, the printer is also very beautiful: a strict form, a lacquered black case, a large and clear LED indicator of the current status - this model immediately attracts attention.

At the same time, the ML-1630 is inferior to the "classic" compact laser printers only in terms of paper tray capacity and print speed - but, let me tell you, do you often need to print more than a few pages at home? ..

Of course, this printer cannot be called cheap - while "classic" models with similar characteristics cost in the range of 3-4 thousand rubles, at the time of preparation of the article, the ML-1630 was sold in Moscow retail at a price of about 5800 rubles, and a spare cartridge for it - at a price of about 1800 rubles. However, in our opinion, if you choose a printer for the home, based not only on technical characteristics, but also on the ability to fit into the interior, the ML-1630 is worth it. Moreover, he has no competitors yet.

P.S. By the way, at the same time as the ML-1630, Samsung released an MFP of a similar design - the SCX-4500 model, which includes a color scanner with an optical resolution of 600x2400 dpi.

Other materials on this topic

Samsung ML-3051ND laser printer: the best model for business
Fast, high quality, inexpensive - a choice of three entry-level printers
Monochrome printing in low volumes: testing personal laser printers

Samsung introduces the compact and ergonomic ML-1865W laser printer. This stylish and - for all its power - miniature device will easily fit into any interior. With built-in smart features such as Wi-Fi, the ML-1865W is highly intelligent, while low noise, fast print speeds, and a conveniently located power button ensure the most comfortable working experience. Samsung ML-1865W: less is more. Did you doubt?

Safe wireless connection at the push of a button
The one-click wireless printing feature on the ML-1865W makes the connection process much easier and faster. Just press the WPS (WiFi Protected Setup) buttons on your router and printer and you're done! With the traditional configuration method, the user is forced to spend time creating a network name and manually entering a security key or password for all wireless devices. Thanks to the inclusion WiFi features At the touch of a button, configuration and security issues are resolved automatically!

Compact and functional
Need a high performance desktop printer? And preferably small? The ultra-compact Samsung ML-1865W (341 x 224 x 184 mm) takes up less space than other laser printers on the market. It will easily fit on your desktop and will not crowd you. And don't let the modest dimensions of the ML-1865W fool you: in terms of its functionality, it is by no means inferior to heavyweights.

Saw - printed
To make it easier to work with this printer, you can use special application for printing from the Internet - Samsung AnyWeb Print. It allows you to select and drag content from various web pages to a new blank page on the screen without resizing or other editing operations. AnyWeb Print will help you compose and process any information you are interested in - whether you need it to work on an important project or just for fun. The pages created in it can be saved in TIFF and PDF formats. These pages are printed by pressing the button. Print Screen on the printer or through the normal print menu. This way you can quickly and easily print what you see on the screen.

One less source of noise
Sometimes you have to exert all your strength in order to focus on your own thoughts while being next to the printer. Relax! The Samsung ML-1865W has a noise level of 50 dB when printing, which is much quieter than the faint hum of a refrigerator! A desktop printer works great on its own - and doesn't get in the way of your work. Isn't this a miracle?

Flexible power consumption
The modern office is no place for "gluttonous" printers. The power button on the front panel of the Samsung ML-1865W allows you to put it into an economical standby mode with one click. Need to print? Press the button again and get started.

Smart and attractive
Is there a printer that will not only not interfere, but also make the desktop truly stylish? Of course. The elegant Samsung ML-1865W laser printer will perfectly fit into any interior. The smooth glossy surface looks spectacular, while providing reliable protection from dust. By purchasing the ML-1865W, you get not only an indispensable assistant in your work, but also an attractive desktop accessory.

Better and faster
Do documents print too slowly? Decreased productivity? High speed Samsung printing The ML-1865W (18 ppm for A4 and 19 ppm for Letter) solves this problem. The first page print time is only 8.5 seconds, while the resolution is 1200x1200 dpi. Quickly and efficiently!

I am sure that the laser printer installed in the office no longer surprises anyone. This phenomenon is quite common and is justified by the combination of the technical characteristics of these devices with the needs of modern offices. Another thing is a home printer. Today, most home PC owners prefer inkjet technology. This is mainly due to the rather low cost of inkjet printers with their quite tolerable technical characteristics. Add to this the possibility of color printing, and you get an almost perfect printer "for home and family." Why almost? Yes, because ... No! Still, the topic of today's review is not inkjet printers, and therefore now I will not discuss them, but will return to them in some next article.

So, we can safely say that technology laser printing confidently began their journey towards our home with you. An example is the culprit of this review, the Samsung ML-1210 laser printer. Judge for yourself: not all of us need color printing. In addition, not everyone is satisfied with the water resistance of hard copies of documents received at inkjet printers. Cartridge resource, print speed, copy price, buffer size - all this makes us look towards laser printers, but the price of these devices is quite high, which scares off a potential buyer. The aforementioned Samsung ML-1210, having very good characteristics, has a very low price for a laser printer. It is because of this fact this device falls into the line of home rather than office printers. So we will consider it from the point of view of a home PC user and start with the configuration and technical specifications.

Having opened the box for which we paid our hard-earned $200-$210 (the price on the day the review was published), we find the following contents in it:

• Laser printer Samsung ML-1210
• Cartridge (in sealed package)
• Network cable
• Centronix cable
• Driver disk
• A sheet of thick paper that shows instructions for installing the software, installing the cartridge, and preparing to turn on the printer for the first time

It seems to be quite normal equipment, but personally I found it insufficient. Considering that, in addition to the usual parallel interface, the Samsung ML-1210 also has USB interface, it would be logical to expect the presence, complete with USB printer cable. Let the price be a little higher, but the user does not have to run around the shops in search of this very cable. In addition, the lack of normal instructions in the kit is very upsetting. The instruction that comes with the printer on a disk is universal for several models. Samsung printers, and the specifications stated in it do not exactly correspond to the actual characteristics of the ML-1210 model. On the site you can find more truthful information, which I will now give you. So, for the Samsung ML-1210 printer, the manufacturer claims the following specifications:

Print speed	12 pages per minute
Permission	600x600 dpi
Warm-up time	25 sec.
Size (mm)	329x355x231
First page exit	13 sec.
CPU	66MHz
Memory	8 mb
Working cycle	12000 pages per month
Tray	150 sheets
Output Tray	100 sheets
Paper size	Letter, Legal, Monarch, com 10, C5, DL, A4, A5, B5
Emulation	Smart GDI
Interface	IEEE 1284 (parallel), USB
Supported operating systems	Windows 95/98/Me/2000/NT, Linux (Redhat 6.0), MacOS 8.0 and above
Toner cartridge	Single cartridge: 2,500 pages (at 5% coverage)
Power consumption	180W (printing) / 5W (standby)
Noise level (max)	47 dB
Fonts	Windows fonts
The weight	6.2 kg

In my opinion, for home printer such characteristics are more than acceptable. Whether they correspond to real ones, I will tell later when I will describe the tests of the ML-1210 directly, but for now I want to draw your attention to the very useful features that this model is equipped with and which will surely appeal to many users. Here is some of them:

• Print multiple pages on one side of a sheet (up to 16)
• Scaled printing (scale 10-100)
• Poster printing (up to 6x6 sheets)
• Printing overlays
• Watermark printing

Attractive? Well, perhaps it lacks the ability to double-sided print, but to demand so much from a fairly cheap printer is simply indecent!

Externally, the ML-1210 is nothing special. Quite a common design for a modern printer and rather modest dimensions.

The printer has two output trays. One is for plain paper and the other is for envelopes. And don't try to put sheets of plain A4 paper into the envelope tray. No matter how hard you try, but the ML-1210 will assume that it is dealing with envelopes and, accordingly, will not fully use the length of the A4 sheet. Convincing the printer that there is plain paper in the envelope tray is not possible, nor is it necessary. There is only one receiving tray in the ML-1210, but in addition to it, there is a paper exit slot. Located right on the front of the printer, it is used primarily when printing on thick paper. Of course, it can also be used when printing on plain paper, but the sheets coming out of the printer will take up space on your desktop and, of course, will not be stacked as smoothly as when issued to the output tray.

The control and display panel consists of three buttons and three LED indicators. The LEDs indicate an error condition (for example, a paper jam), the end of paper or envelopes in the input trays, and the receipt / presence of data in the printer's buffer. With buttons, there are no more difficulties. One of them is designed for nothing more than printing a test page. A test page can be printed whether the printer is connected to the computer or not. The other two buttons are more useful to the user in Everyday life. The Toner Save Mode button turns on the economical print mode accordingly. In this mode, the button is illuminated with a matte green light and looks ridiculous, but you know what mode the printer is in. The remaining Cancel/Redo button has two functions. In print mode, it allows you to cancel printing. But when you click on the same button at the end of printing, the ML-1210 will print the last page of the document for you.

In the photos I have provided, you can see the cartridges used in the ML-1210. The cartridge supplied with the printer is not fully charged and is designed to print 500 pages of text (approx. 5% coverage). But by buying a new cartridge or refilling the one that comes with the kit (after it ends), you can count on printing 2,500 pages already.

From the external examination of the ML-1210, we proceed to the consideration of the supplied with it software. In this case, all the screenshots I have given are made in Windows environment XP Professional. I hope these examples will help you better understand functionality printer.

After installing the driver from the disk that came with the printer, you have a fairly wide range of options for customizing the ML-1210 to suit your specific needs. Russification of all bookmarks of the driver is done correctly, and if you still have any questions, you can refer to the user manual, in which the printer settings are described in sufficient detail. The manual is supplied on the same disk as the driver, but, unfortunately, the quality of its Russification leaves much to be desired. However, if necessary, you can figure it out.

In the "Paper" tab, you can control the parameters inherent in almost any printer. This sets the paper type and size, the paper feed tray or its automatic selection, and the paper orientation (portrait/landscape). In addition, in the same tab you can set the number of printed copies of the document if you want to replicate it.

In addition to the parameters related to the graphics itself, this tab allows you to manage some printer parameters that are not directly related to the graphics. This controls the power saving mode and how the printer reacts to paper jams. All other parameters relate directly to the graphic part. You can change the resolution, print density, and programmatically control the toner save mode. Unfortunately, when the toner saving software is enabled, the corresponding button on the printer control panel is not highlighted, so if you always want to know what mode the printer is in, use hardware mode switching.

It is in this tab that the management of additional and, perhaps, very useful features with which the ML-1210 is equipped. If you are not comfortable with standard output, which prints one document page on one physical page, you can have the ML-1210 lay out multiple document pages on the same physical page. Maximum driver allows you to place up to 16 pages on one sheet. If you do not need to reduce the pages of the document, but rather increase them, then in the same tab you can set the appropriate output. With the maximum enlargement of one page of your document, you can get a poster of 6x6 sheets. When displaying graphical information, two more output modes may come in handy. This is the "Fit on page" mode, which is useful when the output graphic image exceeds the size of the sheet in size, and "Print with scaling", in which it is possible to change the print scale in 1% increments.

Printing overlays is useful if you work a lot with business documents. Once you create, for example, your organization's letterhead and indicate its use in the overlays tab, you save yourself some work. Each time you output a document, it will be superimposed on the form you created. You can create multiple overlays by reducing the creation of business documents to simple typing.

Of course, the ML-1210 does not know how to make real watermarks, but using the settings in the “Watermarks” tab, you can somewhat embellish the printed documents. Any text of your choice can be printed as if under the main text of the document. At the same time, you can change the brightness of the print of such "watermarks", their size, font, position on the page and angle of inclination. Naturally, you can enter the text itself "watermarks".

On this, I consider the descriptive part of the printer finished. I hope that it was enough for you to appreciate appearance and functional equipment of the ML-1210. Next, I turn to tests of some technical parameters, which, it seems to me, combined with functionality and allow us to evaluate the attractiveness of this printer as a whole.

"Iron" tests

The printer was tested under typical home conditions (temperature environment 23 degrees, humidity 55%). The printer under test was connected to the bench computer using the supplied cable (IEEE 1284 (parallel interface)). The bench computer was running Windows XP Professional, in which the corresponding driver was installed, which was supplied on a disk with the printer.

Warm-up time

Suppose that you sent the document you created for printing, but forgot to turn on the printer. Of course, eventually you will find it and turn it on, but a cold laser printer will take some time to warm up, so you will not receive your document immediately. But when? It depends on the size of the document and the warm-up time of the printer. It was the latter that I checked in this test. To do this, the printer was “held” in the off state for 5 hours. A test job was placed in the print queue. After that, the printer was turned on and the time from the moment it was turned on to the capture of the first sheet of paper was measured.

So ... The manufacturer's declared warm-up time for the ML-1210 (hereinafter, the information is taken from) is 25 seconds. My experiments have shown that the real average warm-up time of this printer is 33.5 seconds. Perhaps the manufacturers took measurements of this parameter from the “hibernation” state in which the printer was for some time. But this is not mentioned anywhere, and I, according to my logic, believe that the measurement was made from a “cold” state.

First sheet output

During this test, I measured the time from the moment data entered the printer's print buffer until the first sheet was completely ejected into the output tray. For this from text editor One page of text was sent for printing (approximately 5% coverage). Immediately before the test, the same page was printed, that is, the printer was warmed up and was not in “hibernation”. The result of my measurements showed that the average first sheet exit time is 20.4 seconds, while the manufacturer claims 13 seconds. I considered the end of the measurement to be the moment when the sheet came out of the printer and lay down in the receiving tray. To clear my conscience, I measured the time from the moment data entered the print buffer until the sheet appeared from the bowels of the printer. The result is 16.8 seconds, already closer to the declared 13 seconds, however, it is still somewhat higher.

Print speed

So we got to one of the most important tests - checking the typing speed. Based on the 12 pages per minute declared by the manufacturer, I sent 15 pages of text for printing (about 5% fill), but measured the print time of exactly 12 pages. Further, using the simplest mathematics, it was not difficult to calculate the number of pages printed in one minute. Why I printed 15 pages, I will explain a little later, but for now I will give the results of measurements.

The average print speed with a resolution of 300 dpi was 11.14 sheets per minute - a value very close to the declared one. When the resolution was set to 600 dpi, the print speed dropped to 8.52 pages per minute, which is explained by the large volume of the file sent for printing. I can also add to the results I got that there is no difference in print speed between normal and economical modes (true for both 300 dpi and 600 dpi).

And now I will tell you why I sent 15 pages of text for printing for this test. The fact is that I took measurements on 12 pages (I just took this number from the manufacturer’s statement), but, as it turned out, the ML-1210 tends to “think” before issuing last pages document. All the results of measurements given by me above were obtained without taking into account this “thoughtfulness”, since it appeared before printing the 15th page. If you want to print exactly 12 pages, then real time printing at a resolution of 600 dpi will be 1 minute and 29 seconds. I have not tried printing large documents, so I cannot say how many times the ML-1210 can “think” in one print session. In my case, when printing up to 30 pages, it appeared only once per session and always before the last page was printed.

Print quality

There is no need to describe the print quality of the ML-1210 in words. Below are scanned examples for the normal mode and the toner save mode, on which you can evaluate the readability of the font of different sizes and the quality of the fill. From myself, I can add that, in my opinion, this quality is more than enough for a home printer.

Paper for typewriters (Znamenskaya factory. Paper quality is below average)

Print borders

A rare printer can fill a sheet without leaving margins, and the ML-1210 is not one of them. On an A4 sheet, it leaves margins of the following sizes: left - 5.3 mm, right - 2.0 mm, top - 5.7 mm, bottom - 1.4 mm. Of course, you will not be able to print a black-and-white photo on the entire sheet, but it seems to me that the ML-1210 is not positioned as a photo printer, and such fields are quite enough for printing documents.

Other nuances

Among other nuances, I would like to highlight one, but very significant and positive. It concerns the ability of the ML-1210 to work with thick paper. For the sake of satisfying my curiosity, I slipped a linen sheet 0.4 mm thick into the test printer. I don’t know how much a square meter of such material weighs, and it can hardly be called paper (it’s painfully hard and dense), but it is used in printing and is perfect for making business cards. Surprisingly, the printer did an excellent job with this material, giving it to the paper exit slot. But when trying to send a sheet to the receiving tray, the ML-1210 could not cope with the rigidity of the linen sheet and froze, turning on the “error” indicator on the front panel. But this cannot be considered a minus, since the documentation indicates that for paper weighing more than 90g / m 2, a paper exit slot should be used.

To buy or not to buy?

Let's once again turn to the results of my experiments, comparing them with the characteristics declared by the manufacturer. This is most conveniently done by bringing everything into one table, which I did and now present it to you.

Yes, the manufacturer somewhat exaggerated the performance of the ML-1210, but are its real characteristics really that bad? For a home printer or a printer for a small office, they are quite satisfactory. Consider also the size, functionality and low price. As a result, it turns out that among laser printers, the ML-1210 is perhaps the most optimal model for home computers. In general, I recommend…