Samsung CLP-315 Toner Cartridges

Samsung CLP-315 Printer Review

The Samsung CLP-315 is a color laser printer for the personal or small office user. Its compact size, affordable price and included printer toner cartridge make it very appealing. Its slower speeds likely won't bother personal users.

The CLP-315 is one of the most affordable color lasers on the market, priced only a little higher than many budget monochrome lasers with affordable Samsung toner costs. It also manages to fit solid print quality and speed into a very compact design. The unit takes up very little space, as it measures 9.6 inches by 15.3 inches by 12.3 inches (HWD) and weighs only 24.3 pounds. Taking up only 9.6 inches of vertical space allows it to even sit on a shelf if necessary. The only design compromise that is evident is its paper capacity, which is only 150 sheets. Still, for a personal printer, this probably won't be an issue, and it would be hard to complain for the price.

Print speed suffers a bit from the printer's compact design, as Samsung used a four-pass printing engine. Black prints still print quite fast, at around 17 pages per minute, but color prints average around 4 pages per minute. While this is slower than many color laser printers, those printers are all significantly more expensive. Even more important is to consider that most color inkjet printers are much slower than the CLP-315, so users upgrading from an inkjet will still notice improvement.

Print quality is excellent, and better than many budget color lasers. Text is very sharp, typical of toner based printers, and readable at small font sizes, though some fuzziness shows up in extremely small fonts. Color output is quite good for its price. Color prints are not quite inkjet quality, but still very good. Users who plan to do a lot of color printing may want to look for a faster printer with better quality, but the average user who only does the occasional color print will find it more than adequate.

Overall, the CLP-315 represents a great value for both the printer and the toner cartridge by putting together decent speeds and great print quality in a compact, affordable printer.