Samsung ML-1630 Monochrome Laser Printer Driver and Software

The speed of the Samsung ML-1630 is poor for the price and the output quality is not optimal. But both speed and quality are good enough for the slots the printer is intended for – in the home office, in a small office or as a personal printer in a larger office. If you care enough about your office setup and only have light printing needs, you’ll be more than happy to sacrifice a little performance for the ML-1630’s good looks.

The ML-1630 weighs just 14.1 pounds, which is less than many inkjets. At first glance, it looks more like a scanner than a printer. It is 4.8 inches tall and has a footprint of 13.1 x 14.8 inches (width and depth). At the same time, its shape – a big part of what makes the printer so attractive – takes up a little more space than a more traditional design with a smaller footprint.

A potentially more serious problem is that one result of holding altitude is limited paper capacity. The paper cassette is so thin that it can only hold 100 sheets, an unusually small capacity for a laser printer – and even lots of ink jets. If you print more than 20 pages a day, you’ll get tired of refilling the tray quite often.

Setting up the Samsung ML-1630 is straightforward and somewhat typical of the breed: insert the toner cartridge, load paper, snap the output tray into place, and connect the power cord and USB cable. Then run the fully automatic installer and you can print.

Overall, the output quality was a little below average for a laser, but good enough for most business purposes. Text was a half step below the vast majority of monochrome lasers, which is still much better than almost any inkjet.

More than half of the fonts in our text suite – including all the standard fonts you might use in a business context, like Arial and Times New Roman – were easily readable at 5 points, some were easily readable at 4 points.

Only the most heavily stylized font with thick strokes required 20 points to exceed the easy-to-read threshold, not uncommon even for a laser. The ML-1630 can print any text you need, unless you occasionally need small fonts or a printer for demanding desktop publishing applications.

The graphics quality was in the same league as most monochrome lasers, which is good enough for any internal business use, but with enough flaws that I would hesitate before handing over graphics to a client or client, wanting to impress with my professionalism. The two main issues were obvious banding, which appeared in several samples, and dithering in the form of highly visible patterns in different shades of gray.

Related Printer: Samsung ML-3310D Driver

The photo quality was sufficient to print web pages with photos. However, the output was a bit dark, with a tendency to lose detail in dark areas. Depending on how much of a perfectionist you are, you may or may not consider this acceptable for things like photos in customer newsletters.