Samsung ML-1640 Printer Driver and Software

How small and simple can a laser printer be? Samsung ML-1640 has to be pretty close to the limits on both counts. Designed as a personal printer for the home or home office, it is as simple as a printer gets.

Related Printer: Samsung ML-1630 Driver

The matte and glossy black box is about the size of a half-loaf bread maker and takes up very little desktop space when closed. To print, you need to open the output paper holder from the top and fold down the front door, which becomes the paper input tray. This can hold up to 150 sheets of 75gsm paper.

The controls and indicators on the top of the printer include a power and data indicator, a second toner low indicator, and a single button to cancel a print job. There’s a single USB socket on the back of the left side and a standard kettle power port on the back of the right side – we said this printer is easy!

With the Samsung ML-1640, Samsung offers a combined drum and toner cartridge. This includes a long articulated handle that allows you to manipulate the cartridge on the back of the printer inside the case. This is a bit awkward and it is important that you press it firmly on the left side. Otherwise the device reports a lack of cartridge. We were affected by this because the cartridge was delivered locally and had shifted during shipping, so it was not positioned correctly during testing.

A standard cartridge for the device has toner for 1,500 pages, but like many other vendors, Samsung offers a starter cartridge in the box – this has a capacity of just 700 pages. Providing starter cartridges is more excusable on inexpensive devices like this, but Samsung should make the toner capacity clearer on the packaging.

Samsung claims a print speed of 16 pages per minute for the Samsung ML-1640, and for once we don’t disagree. Our five-page text print took 30 seconds, which corresponds to a print speed of 10 pages per minute. When we ran our 20-page job, it completed in 1:24, which is 14.3 pages per minute. As you increase the length of a print job, the processing time becomes smaller and smaller and we can see that the machine achieves 16 pages per minute for a job of around 100 pages.

Verdict

This is a neat, functional mono laser printer that is easy to use and quickly produces good quality text and graphics prints. However, it is comparatively expensive to operate and we would like to see a dust cover for paper in the feed tray. You need to compare it with competitors like the highlighted Canon device before making a final decision.