Samsung SCX-4828FN Laser Multifunction Printer Driver and Software

Laser-based multifunction printers are becoming increasingly popular because they enable copying and faxing as well as printing and scanning. One of Samsung’s latest releases is the Samsung SCX-4828FN, which is aimed at the SOHO market and includes some useful additional features.

With a curved and slightly chunky appearance, this multifunction device combines a mono laser printer with an A4 flatbed scanner and a 30-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF). Both the ADF feeder and the output tray are located near horizontal, so the sheet feeder adds little to the overall height of the machine.

There is a fairly large gap between the top of the laser printer section and the bottom of the control panel. However, this makes it easier to remove paper from the output tray. Although there is a small stitch extender and a fold-up paper stop, neither of these are needed for normal printing.

There’s a 250-sheet paper tray at the bottom of the device, and a fairly large fold-down cover reveals a slot for specialty papers, but only one sheet at a time. A second 250-sheet tray is available as an option, but this raises the entire machine by approximately 80 mm.

The control panel spans the full width of the device and includes a 2-line x 16-digit mono LCD display, a diskette with menu navigation controls, and a numeric keypad for fax dialing. At the right end of the panel are large start and stop buttons, as well as an ID copy button that allows you to scan one side of an ID card, flip it over, and scan the second side before printing out both images from a single side of the paper.

The sockets on the back of the Samsung SCX-4824FN offer USB and Ethernet connections as well as sockets for a fax line and an optional handset. No wireless networking is provided. However, you can use a third-party wireless print server if Wi-Fi operation is important to you.

Hardware setup is fairly simple as the only consumable is a one-piece drum and toner cartridge. This slides in from the front once you have folded the front panel down. Installing the software is also easy, with just a driver and the SmarThru and Dr. utilities. Samsung printer must be installed. Windows 2000, XP and Vista, Mac OS X 10.3 and later, and various versions of Linux are supported.

Samsung specs the SCX-4824FN at 24 pages per minute, but while it has a reasonable change in speed, we couldn’t get more than two-thirds of the speed in any test. Our five-page text print took 23 seconds and resulted in a speed of 13 pages per minute. When printing the longer print of 20 pages, it took 1:13, which is still only 16.4 pages per minute. A text and graphics print showed 9.38 ppm.

Related Printer: Samsung SCX-4321NS Driver

One reason for these comparatively slow speeds, which also accounts for the difference between Samsung’s claims and our test results, is that the printer takes a long time to warm up. Between 17 and 20 seconds before the paper moves, and it can be longer if the printer is asleep, as is often the case in a typical small or home office environment.