Samsung ML-2580N Laser Printer Drivers and Software

The first is color. Instead of the jet or gloss black of the other two machines, the Samsung ML-2580N is dressed in light grey, but with the textured top and the distinctive bulge design on the back of these other printers, they all look very much less deep than they actually are. This means that the main 250-sheet paper tray is not proud of the printer at the front. There is a single sheet feed slot above the tray

The control panel is simple, with LEDs for paper jams and other errors and buttons for power and canceling a current print job. A third button, which produces a useful screen print on the cheaper, slower device, is used here to print a demo page. Yes, a whole button for printing a woodcut of a flying galleon as an example of print quality. Once you purchase the printer, it seems to have no useful function at all.

There are jacks on the back for USB and 10/100 Ethernet connections, although the device doesn’t offer a wireless option.

Drivers are provided for Windows and OS X, and you can download drivers for a variety of different Linux distributions from Samsung’s website. You can also download a copy of AnyWeb Print, a utility that is very helpful when researching the web.

This software allows you to cut and paste sections of web pages into a scrapbook before printing them out together. Very handy and should come standard with all printers.

Folding the front panel down reveals the one-piece drum and toner cartridge. It has two capacities of 1,500 and 2,500 pages and is very easy to insert or remove.

Our five-page text print took 36 seconds, which is a speed of 8.3 pages per minute. However, on the 20-page document this value increased significantly to 16 pages per minute. The five-page text and graphics test returned 15 pages per minute. The corresponding speeds for the Samsung ML-1915 were 10.3 ppm, 13.8 ppm and 12 ppm. Although this machine is faster in two of the three tests, it is only slightly faster in each.

The Samsung ML-2580N also prints at 1,200 dpi thanks to the print enhancement, and the quality of the prints we produced was very usable. Black text is clear and well formed, displaying neat, sharp characters down to small sizes. Grayscale graphics are also good.

Although you may see a dot pattern in these shades, it is very regular, with minor streaking or spots and a good range of grays that can represent a variety of different source colors.

The good grayscale reproduction also applies to photo images, and gently varying tones, such as. B. in the sky, also largely show no artifacts. Some detail is lost in dark areas of an image, but overall the device is as good as any in the price range at reproducing grays.

Related Printer: Samsung ML-2251NP Driver

The prices for the drum and toner cartridges available for the ML-2580N vary significantly. It is therefore worth using price comparisons to determine the best value. We found the 1,500-page cartridge for just over £35 and the 2,500-page cartridge for £48. This gives a best case cost per page of 2.8p, including 0.7p for paper, which is a good figure for a printer at this price

Verdict

Perhaps Samsung’s own ML-1915 is the ML-2580N’s biggest competitor. OK, this device has built-in Ethernet and faster printing speeds, at least on paper.