Samsung ML-3050 Mono Laser Printer Driver and Software

If you want a simple but functional laser printer, there are several models under 100 euros, but one of the main players in this market that produces serious machines is Samsung. The Samsung ML-3050 is an entry-level printer, but it has several features that you might only expect in higher price ranges.

This Samsung printer comes in light and dark gray and has the company’s typical no-nonsense design. Almost cubical, although not as tall as it is wide or deep, it has a conventional paper path that runs from a 250-sheet paper tray at the bottom and ejects sheets to a depression in the top.

Above the paper tray is a pull-down multi-purpose tray that can hold an additional 100 sheets. This is a good capacity for a comparatively inexpensive printer where sheet feeding is more common. A second optional 250-sheet paper tray can be installed underneath the printer.

In addition, the Samsung ML-3050 has no status display and only three control buttons. The first is an orange stop button and there’s also an illuminated toner save button and one dedicated to printing demo pages, which is oddly extravagant. On the back, in addition to the ubiquitous USB port, there’s also a standard parallel port, which is also unusual for a printer in this price range.

The printer is designed for easy installation and operation. Pull down the front cover and you have access to a single slot into which the all-in-one photoconductor and toner cartridge can be inserted. This couldn’t be easier and should keep maintenance costs down.

The ML-3050 is a pretty snappy little machine, creating our five-page text document in 23 seconds and mixing text and graphics pages, again five of them, in just 19 seconds.

This gives a true top speed of almost 16ppm, which is well below the advertised 28ppm but is still very respectable for a sub-£100 printer. Even photo printing took just 14 seconds, a graphics print speed of 4.3 pages per minute.

When we looked at the pages we produced, we were also currently surprised by the print quality. Text is reproduced very well, without spatter and with very clear letter formation, even at small point sizes. Business graphics also print well and different colors are well represented through grayscale dither patterns.

Interestingly, the normal mode resolution of 600 dpi produced a better representation of our photographic test piece than the enhanced 1200 dpi print. It was obviously more blotchy, but the banding on the 1200dpi print was greatly reduced and the shadow detail was marginally better.

The cost is very easy to determine because the only consumables are the integrated photoconductor and the toner cartridge. This comes in two capacities, suitable for 4,000 and 8,000, five percent pages. As usual, the higher capacity cartridge offers better value and we used this to determine the page cost. Priced at around £95 street price is 1.66p per page. This is in the middle of the typical cost for mono laser pages.

However, the price of a replacement cartridge is dangerously close to the price of a replacement ML-3050 cartridge, which is never a good position for a manufacturer to be in if it wants to make money from consumables rather than original printer sales.

Of course, it is more expensive to make a complete printer that includes a consumable cartridge than a cartridge alone. While the printer and cartridge list price may show a good difference, street prices can distort these differences, making it attractive to purchase an entirely new printing mechanism rather than a high-yield replacement cartridge.

This printer also offers upgrade options such as: B. an additional paper tray and additional memory to upgrade from the included 16 MB to a maximum of 272 MB, which are not often offered on entry-level printers.

Related Printer: Samsung ML-3051ND Driver

Verdict

The print speed is impressive and the print quality is better than some machines that cost significantly more. While Samsung has to be careful about the price of its consumables, which are now close to the cost of the printers themselves, the Samsung ML-3050 offers very good value for high-quality mono printing.