Product Reviews

Increasing standards and decreasing prices have always been an attractive combination, and recently Samsung has been a driving force behind these trends in the laser printer industry. We were impressed enough by the ML7000N (reviewed issue 56, p166) and the 6050 (reviewed issue 57, p153) to give them both Recommended awards, so we had high hopes for Samsung's latest printer.

Samsung is aiming the ML6100N at the user who needs a network printer but isn't willing to pay through the nose for it. Typical examples would be departments within an organisation, or an SME. As such, apart from the inclusion of PostScript Level 2 emulation, you don't get any luxuries: no LCD panel and a mere 250-sheet paper cassette. There's some compensation thanks to the machine's compact form, and the build standard is sturdy enough for general use with only one concern - the small, flimsy and highly breakable plastic tongue that helps guide paper into the output tray.

This is a trait the ML6100N shares with the 6050, and on the surface the two printers are extremely similar. The ML6100N's dimensions of 360 x 426 x 220mm (W x D x H) make it 58mm deeper than its smaller brother, but the print speed of 12ppm is identical and it's no surprise that both use the same print engine. Where the printers start to differ is under the hood. Not only is the ML6100N's Power PC RISC processor running at 100MHz rather than 33MHz, but its memory is a much more practical 12Mb, with an 8Mb SIMM boosting the 4Mb internal RAM included as standard in the 6050.

This last point is about more than just print speeds. Although the 100MHz chip does mean the ML6100N processes complicated pages more quickly, the 6050 actually failed our graphics-heavy tests when using PCL6 due to lack of memory, and this was one of the few criticisms we levelled at the printer.

Another was its lack of networking ability, and Samsung answers this criticism with the inclusion of a network card with a 10/100 BaseT Ethernet port. If you just want to keep the option of a network card in the future, the printer alone has a £549 list and £429 street price. Whichever option you choose, this printer will easily

ADVERTISEMENT

be able to cope with an average office's workload as Samsung guarantees a 15,000-page monthly duty cycle.

The ML6100N's list of specifications pitches it directly against HP's mighty 2100TN (reviewed issue 53, p170), which has a street price of £600 and a 1,200dpi resolution. In terms of print quality, both printers have their strengths and weaknesses. As you'd expect, text reproduction is universally razor sharp, and it takes the detail required by photos to separate the printers. In PCL6 emulation the HP 2100TN produced underexposed photos, whereas the 6100N's results were far more realistic and suffered from less obvious banding.

However, the ML6100N did fail to pick up all the detail in the photo, and in PostScript 2 (PS2) mode this was even more obvious, with the HP 2100TN producing far superior results at 1,200dpi. This was the one area where its superior resolution definitely paid off, and if you want detail in your pictures then the ML6100N can't rival it

The Samsung strikes back thanks to its print speeds - 12ppm compared to the HP's 10ppm. Moreover, after running our printer tests, the ML6100N delivered in practice. In PCL6 mode, a 15-page plain text document appeared in the out-tray after just 86 seconds, with the first page printed in 16 seconds and the rest appearing at a rate of 12ppm. This contrasts with the HP 2100TN's more modest 9.3ppm. Our more graphics-laden document slowed the Samsung down to 10.9ppm, compared to 8.4ppm from the HP 2100TN. Don't expect the ML6100N to keep this pace up in PS2 mode though, as it could only manage scores of 8.3ppm and 4.2ppm in these tests.

It's even more difficult to separate the two printers when it comes to running costs. In both cases, the manufacturers claim that the cartridge lasts for 5,000 pages at five per cent coverage, with the Samsung's replacement cartridges costing just £2 more than those of the HP.

The ML6100N proved quite straightforward to setup on a network. Samsung's SyncThru utility can't match JetAdmin from HP for user-friendliness, and it doesn't allow you to assign printing privileges or create group and user objects, but in practice you should have the ML6100N up and running using NetWare 5 in 15 minutes. More importantly, there's full support for NDS and DHCP, and the network card contains an embedded HTTP server that you can access using a Web browser over TCP/IP. It's also a 10/100 BaseT card as opposed to the 2100TN's 10 BaseT.

Many potential buyers will require more than slightly faster print speeds and - arguably - marginally superior print quality to dissuade them from opting for the HP. When the 2100TN has a £28 lower street price as well, Samsung may have to rethink its pricing strategy for the ML6100N to make an impact.