Samsung ML 1250 - The Accomplished Home Business Printer

The Samsung ML 1250 printer - Samsung ML 1250 printer toner cartridge combo works well for the home-level office, without doubt. This mono laser printer is not a networkable unit, but it'll be more than adequate for just about any desktop application in that same home office, linked as it will be a single personal computer or Mac on the desk, or to a laptop.

Hooking the printer to a computer is fairly straightforward. The ML 1250 comes with standard USB and parallel printer ports, which gives it adequate flexibility. There is no Base-TX 10/100 Ethernet or modern 801.11 wireless functionality, but it probably isn't needed for most printer-to-single-computer situations. The unit doesn't come with a USB or serial cable, so keep that mind when purchasing.

Print output for this small desk-type mono laser printer is adequate, at 12 pages per minute. The 1200 dots-per-inch resolution is also an improvement from the 600dpi resolution of the printer it replaced. It can be reduced all the way down to 300dpi, if needed. Also, keep in mind that printer speeds will vary in accordance with the graphics and text richness of the print job being sent to the Samsung.

The Samsung is provided with a standard 4MB of installed memory, and is upgradeable to 68MB. This will allow the printer to handle just about any print job needed of it, including graphics-heavy posters and transparencies. It's also a more energy-efficient model than the one it's replacing, which should make those wanting to be a bit more 'green' a little happier.

This unit was made to accommodate most any Windows operating system — in addition to Mac and Linux — adding to its flexibility. It holds a standard 150 sheets of paper on the printer uses a vertical cassette to feed paper down and into the unit. This makes it look like a fax machine or an old-style ink jet printer. It also makes it extremely lightweight and portable, which is a big plus.

The printer's control panel is very user-friendly and intuitive to handle. One of the buttons is a Toner Save function, which can help to cut down on the rate of toner usage when resolution and extreme darkness of the print is not that much of a concern. This makes for a good, cost-saving measure.

The unit comes supplied with the Samsung toner, which is good for around 2,500 pages of output. After that, it will need to be replaced. If the jobs, though, are mainly graphics and picture-heavy, expect the cartridge to need replacement sooner than normal.

As a working team, the Samsung ML 1250 printer and ML 1250 printer toner cartridge perform every job with grace and aplomb, delivering clean copy in an acceptable manner. It will also do so at a low cost-per-page price, for the most part. With a maximum monthly duty cycle of around 12,000 pages, maintenance should be infrequent, giving it sturdiness and long life. Samsung printer toner is the best cartridge.

- Ben Pate