Samsung ML-1865 Printer Driver and Software

Inexpensive mono laser printers continue to appear periodically, and Samsung is one of the main manufacturers. The Samsung ML-1865 is a small printer that is ideal as a laptop partner for anyone with occasional high-quality black printing needs.

Related Printer: Samsung ML-1866W

The case made of glossy and matte plastic has a slight curvature on the top and wide radii of the vertical corners. With both compartments closed, it stores easily on a desk or shelf. Fold down the front cover and pull out the paper stop to load up to 150 sheets of A4 paper. However, there is no single sheet feeder for special media.

Similarly, flip the top cover over to create a paper output tray. Although these two compartments increase the printer’s footprint, it is still more modestly sized than any single-function inkjet.

The simple control panel has two indicators for power and wireless connection and two buttons for the same. The wireless WPS button is for wireless setup. If you press it followed by the corresponding button on your wireless router, the connection should connect quickly and automatically. it did in our case.

If you don’t want to use a wireless connection, there’s a single USB socket on the back as well as the regular kettle socket for mains connection. The Samsung ML-1865’s power supply is internal, so there is no separate power supply.

The printer comes with a drum and toner cartridge pre-installed, but can be replaced very easily when the time comes. Lift the top cover and the cartridge sits deep inside the machine. It has a convenient handle to hold it when inserting or removing it.

The software includes a driver and AnyWeb Print, a scrapboarding utility for collecting and printing a selection of text and graphics from web pages.

Samsung rates the printer at 18 pages per minute and for once this isn’t that fancy. Although our five-page black text test returned only 11.1 pages per minute, the 20-page document returned 15.0 pages per minute. In toner save mode, which is not a real draft but just uses a different character matrix, the speeds were exactly the same.

The main reason for this strong performance is that the Samsung ML-1865 starts a print job almost immediately when you click OK in the print dialog, with very little time spent on pre-processing. If only more laser and especially inkjet printers did this, many more would approach their manufacturers’ speed claims.

Our five-page text and graphics printing in normal print mode reached 12.5ppm, which again is an excellent result for a sub-£90 printer. A 15 x 10 cm photo print on A4 paper took 20 seconds.

The print quality of this improved printing machine is very good at 1,200 dpi. Text has a good weight to it, neither too light and thin nor too heavy and bold. Characters are crisp and there are no signs of toner splatter or other unwanted features.

Toner save mode reduces the overall density of the text, but the characters are just as well formed. In fact, the printer can be safely set to this mode and switch to normal mode only for top copies of documents or for use outside the home or office.

Grayscale prints are also good, with enough shades to reproduce color originals and only a small amount of banding in large areas of gray fill. Even our test photo print looks better than many we’ve seen from more expensive mono lasers. It shows details in the shadows and smooth gray transitions in the sky.

The combined drum and toner cartridge is available in just a 1,500 page capacity. The best prices we could find for these supplies give a cost per page of 3.6p, including 0.7p for paper. Monolaser printing costs vary significantly with the purchase price of the printer itself, but for devices under £100 this is a good result.

Verdict

If you’re looking for a low-cost mono laser printer for general home or small office work, it’s hard to fault Samsung ML-1865. This modestly sized machine prints quickly and with very little initial waiting time, produces excellent prints, and doesn’t cost much to run. With an easy-to-setup wireless connection, it embodies what most people look for in a budget laser printer.