In a world of multifunction colour printers that do everything short of cooking dinner, monochrome laser printers are often overlooked. They are still the workhorses of most offices, and they are becoming more common in homes and home offices, too. The ideal mono laser printer should offer fast print speeds and excellent text printing while being relatively inexpensive to maintain and use. The Samsung ML-2571N hits on all of these areas, and it's a particularly good fit for home office use.

For a mere AU$349, you get a small-form-factor printer that is quick and Ethernet ready. If you don't need tons of text prints and you think you'll need a scanner, a fax machine, or a copier, you should look into a colour inkjet multifunction such as the Canon MP530 -- its efficient design packs a lot of functions into a small machine and it costs just a little more than you'd pay for the Samsung laser. But if you're sure you need only mono laser printing, the Samsung ML-2571N is a good pick for multiuser home offices.

Design and features
The Samsung ML-2571N is quite small, even for a mono laser printer. It measures only 14 inches wide, 11.7 inches deep, and 9.7 inches tall. Considering its price and size, we weren't surprised we didn't find anything resembling a control panel; an on/off switch resides on the side, and a cancel button graces the top. Paper handling is also predictably limited. A panel on the front folds out to reveal the two input trays. The main all-purpose tray holds up to 250 sheets of plain paper and has an expansion tab that lets you fill it with legal-size paper. The paper input tray isn't expandable, but it's easy to refill on the fly. Sitting above the all-purpose tray is a single-sheet manual feed tray with adjustable paper guides. The top of the printer houses the output tray, which includes a fold-out tab for corralling longer sheets. The ML-2571N lacks automatic duplexing, but for the price, again, we're not surprised.

The printer comes with a 400MHz processor and 32MB of RAM (not expandable). Befitting its office role, it has USB, Ethernet, and an IEEE 1284 parallel connector. It supports Windows, Mac, and Unix operating systems, so everyone can share happily on a network.

The ML-2571N ships with a so-called starter toner cartridge, which prints about 1,000 pages.

Performance
The Samsung ML-2571N outstripped its competition in print speeds, especially with black-and-white graphics. It posted a score of 16.71 pages per minute for text prints and 18.19ppm for graphics prints. For comparison, the HP LaserJet 1022 printed text at 15.91ppm and graphics at 15.3ppm. (The HP printer also costs AU$100 more for the network-ready model.) The ML-2571N also shined in print quality. Text was clean and well formed, and it was legible down to very small point sizes. Graphics quality was quite good, too, with lots of detail in photographic elements and excellent greyscale handling. The only issue of note was hash marks in the graphics elements -- a common problem for laser printers.

CNET Labs' colour laser speed tests (pages per minute)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Black graphics

Black text

Samsung ML-2571N

18.19 

16.71 

Konica Minolta PagePro 1350W

16.03 

16.49 

HP LaserJet 1022

15.3 

15.91 

Brother HL-2040

13.57 

14.12 

CNET Labs' laser quality
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Black graphics

Black text

Samsung ML-2571N

good 

excellent 

Konica Minolta PagePro 1350W

good 

excellent 

HP LaserJet 1022

good 

good 

Brother HL-2040

fair 

good 

Samsung backs the ML-2571N with a standard one-year warranty. Samsung's Web site has FAQs; a download center with user manuals, drivers, and software; and a guide to consumables and accessories.