Samsung CLP-500 Color Laser Printer Drivers and Software

The Samsung CLP-500 can be summed up in six words: Excellent output quality at slow speeds. But that’s not the whole story. It’s also the only color laser in this roundup that includes a duplexer. And it’s the only host-based printer that works with Windows, Mac and Linux. The cost per page is high for monochrome at 2.6 cents per page, but much better at 8.1 cents per color page.

Output quality was consistently good to excellent. Text was easily readable at 5 points and below for most fonts we tested – even at 4 points for several fonts. The colors in the graphics were appropriately saturated and the photos looked excellent.

The built-in duplexer is a nice touch, but using it slows down printing significantly. And even when printing on one side of a page, the Samsung CLP-500 is a slow printer.

The total time for our speed tests with general settings was 27 minutes 52 seconds – just 22 seconds ahead of last place. It performed slightly better on high-quality settings of 3 minutes and 32 seconds, compared to 7 minutes and 30 seconds for the last-place Lexmark device, but it was still in fourth place.

What’s more problematic is that the host-based approach keeps the PC busy for far too long, especially with Adobe Acrobat. For a PDF file, we waited more than 1 minute and 17 seconds after issuing the print command for the printer to return control to the application. The next slowest printer only took 5 seconds.

Related Printer: Samsung CLP-415 Driver

Ultimately, the Samsung CLP-500’s slow speed – especially for returning control after printing – makes it hard to recommend. However, if you need a color laser with a duplexer or one that works on Linux, this is your most cost-effective choice.