Samsung ML-1750

It isn't often that a laser printer provokes cooing noises in the PC Pro office, but with its desktop footprint of just 348 x 355mm and height of 193mm the ML-1750 is as cute as a button and one of the most compact personal lasers we've seen. Unencumbered by rear-mounted paper holders or catchers, it will fit into practically any gap, and the build quality also feels solid enough. The only exception is the small flip-over paper catcher to prevent printed pages sliding off the top, but there are otherwise no protruding bits of plastic to get snapped off.

The ML-1750 sits at the top of Samsung's new 1700 range of small-footprint lasers, boasting a rated speed of 16ppm (pages per minute) and both USB 2 and parallel interfaces. However, in spite of its size, the ML-1750 is still a proper cassette-fed printer. Its horizontal sliding paper tray accommodates up to 250 sheets and a separate single-sheet slot accommodates thicker media and envelopes.

In keeping with the simplicity theme, there's a mechanical indicator at the bottom right of the front to show how much paper is in the cassette, rather than a fancy electronic sensor. Gracing the top of the unit, you'll find a single cancel button, along with online/error and toner save LEDs.

Installation and setup are completely straightforward: installing the combined toner and image drum cartridge is simply a matter of opening a flap and sliding it into the front, with no force required. The starter cartridge supplied is good for 1,000 pages at 5 per cent coverage, and the replacements are rated at 3,000 pages. Three separate install routines are provided for basic drivers, a status monitor applet and WinRCP, which is useful for reducing unnecessary background processes.

The Samsung's also pretty quick for its size, although it's a little slower than the A-Listed Kyocera Mita FS-1010 (see issue 101, p92). The first page of our 50-page text test - the workaday printouts that will be this printer's bread and butter - dropped into the output tray after 20 seconds, in comparison with the Kyocera's 14.9 seconds. The whole test was completed in three minutes, 50 seconds, equating to a speed of 13ppm. It's good, but again slightly behind the FS-1010. Moving to our 24-page DTP document, which mixes graphics and text, the Samsung averaged 13.3ppm, with the first page taking 16 seconds - the Kyocera managed 13.7ppm.

But the speed difference is almost negligible, and there's thankfully little to choose between modern laser printers as far as text quality is concerned. With its 1,200 x 600dpi print engine, the ML-1750's monochrome text output is as dense and crisp as you could wish. However, in our mono graphics test on the Best quality setting some halftoning and a touch of banding was evident on photographs, and some shadow detail was also lost, although solid bar charts and other presentation graphics came out fine.

The main problem for the ML-1750, though, is its running costs. It works out at 1.7p per page at 5 per cent coverage, which can't compete with the FS-1010's 0.7p per page. For this reason, and its slightly reduced speed, Samsung hasn't managed to knock Kyocera from its A List perch, but we can still recommend the ML-1750 as a capable and great-value personal laser printer. And it's ideal if you're short on space.

Author: David Fearon