Samsung CLP-310N Color Laser Printer Driver and Software

It might seem strange to start with, but Samsung cites the Samsung CLP-310N’s small size as a selling point, and who are we to argue with?

At 388 x 313 x 243mm, it’s certainly on the small side for a color laser, although claiming that it’s small enough to “fit comfortably in the corner of your home office desk or bookshelf” is perhaps a little optimistic. Unless you probably have pretty large bookshelves.

If there’s one feature that most people associate with laser printers, it’s speed. So it’s strange that Samsung only rates the CLP-310 at a relatively quiet 16 ppm for black prints and 4 a.m. for color. It’s probably a lot more honest than many other providers – especially inkjet providers, which rate the ppm number about the same as the printer can spit out blank paper – but it’s also not a vote of confidence in what is meant to be laser important Points of sale.

The Samsung CLP-310N connects via USB 2.0 only – there’s no built-in network port, although a plastic tab on the back hints at the potential of this particular case – and just a printer. If you’re looking for a multifunctional device, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Performance

The initial setup phase of the Samsung CLP-310N was reasonably efficient and easy, right down to the simple installation of the toner cartridges. We were a little worried about the whole NO NOIS business when the CLP-310 first came to life, as it was quite loud, at least initially. However, once we completed the installation, things were appropriately quieter.

An example of printing draft-quality text documents took about 22 seconds to spit out the first page. After that, more pages came out about every five seconds, giving a real-world speed rating of just over nine pages per minute. The print quality in the draft was surprisingly good, but at these speeds it would have to be.

Related Printer: Samsung CLP-315W

Given the smooth monochrome speed, we didn’t expect the color pages to fly out of the CLP-310. Samsung rates the CLP-310 at four pages per minute in color. We got halfway through that with a pretty strong color coverage page, similar to photo-style printing – although we wouldn’t necessarily recommend consumers use a laser printer like this for specific photo work.

When it comes to noise, the Samsung CLP-310N did moderately well. It’s still a long way from being a truly quiet printer, but it’s also a bit quieter than most competing lasers, and its bulky, solid body absorbs its operating sound much more robustly than the creaky cases most inkjet engines are placed in .