Noisy but
nice
If you’re
looking for a real workhorse of an all-in-one laser for a busy office, read on.
However, if the words ‘unobtrusive’ or ‘quiet’ appear on your wishlist, best skip to the next review, as this workgroup
laser all-in-one, the Samsung CLX-6220FX, is neither.
Samsung CLX-6220FX
Although
its footprint isn’t much larger than that of your average small workgroup laser
all-in-one, the CLX-6220FX is a lot taller, making it awkward to heft into
position. And it’s noisy, clattering its way loudly through prints. There’s
also a distinct smell of melting toner when it’s operating.
However,
setup is a breeze. The installer automatically detected the printer on our
network and went through the entire process of installing the drivers and
software with minimal interaction from us, although it took a while to
complete. The menus are easy to navigate using its built-in mono LCD display
and directional buttons, although the copier shortcut buttons stop working if
you’re in, say, the system settings menu. The control panel also makes it very
easy to scan to your network, a Mac or a USB stick that’s been inserted in its
host USB port.
It’s nippy:
both mono text and a color document printed at just over 17 pages per minute.
Everything was pin-sharp
The HTML
interface lets you get an at-a-glance view of the printer’s status and keep
track of consumable levels remotely. If you want greater control over it,
you’ll have to log into the SyncThru admin account to
view the settings and security menus.
If you don’t like the person sitting opposite
you at work, put this on your desk – you’ll never see them over the top of it
The
CLX-6330’s print quality is particularly good. Our color document prints were
extremely accurate and even tiny font sizes were pin-sharp. Shading was also
smooth in both dark and light areas. It has a best quality mode that prints at
an effective resolution of 9600 x 600dpi using interpolation. This is great for
picking out fine detail in line drawings and diagrams, but makes little
difference to photo printing. There’s also a glossy color mode designed to
enhance photos. Enabling both resolution enhancement and glossy mode meant that
two 10 x 8in photos took one minute 24 seconds to print and made little visible
difference to their quality, except for slightly warmer skin tones. The same
task took just 30 seconds at normal quality.
The
CLX-6220FX is pretty nippy, too. Mono text printed at 17.2ppm, and our color
document was almost as fast at 17.1ppm. A five-sided color duplex document took
one minute and 49 seconds. Print costs are also low, with a mono page cost of
2.2p and a mixed-color page cost of 11.5p.
Samsung’s
scanner interface is very basic, with only a handful of preset options at
300dpi. If you want custom resolution options and other settings, you’ll have
to slick on the thin bar at the right-hand side of the preview window. This
opens the interface’s extended options and lets you set your own bit-depth and
size, and choose from a variety of resolution settings. There are also a wide
range of color correction setting and filters.
The scan
quality was excellent. We noticed a slight lack of sharpness at resolution of
150dpi, but higher-resolution scans were finely detailed, although some bright
colors looked a little muted. Scan speeds were quick, too, with a 1200dpi photo
scan completing in just 40 seconds.
The
automatic document feeder was slightly prone to paper jams on our test unit.
This only happened if there was something thick on the flatbed platen below,
though, which caused the ADF to sit at an angle.
Fast color
printing and relatively low color costs make the Samsung CLX-6220FX worth
considering for a workgroup that needs quality color on a regular basis.
However, although it’s fairly cheap to run in the long term, it’s expensive to
buy, it’s bulky and it’s noisy – definitely one for a larger office.
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Details
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Price
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$781.5
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Info
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www.Samsung.com
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Needs
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OS X 10.4
or later
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Pro
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economical
* good prints * fast
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Con
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bulky *
heavy * noisy
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Rating
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5/5
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Paper per minute
More =
better
5pp color
17.5 secs 17.1ppm
Six 6 x
4in photos 1:39 mins 3.6ppm
A4 scan
(300dpi) 24 secs 2.5ppm
A4 color
copy 1:25 mins 0.7ppm
10pp A4
copies (ADF) 2:51 mins 3.5ppm
9600 x
600dpi *scan *copy * fax * 50-sheet ADF *USB * Ethernet
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