Samsung's ML-2851ND is a bare bones mono-laser printer with a few extra features attached that will appeal to the small-to-medium business crowd that simply needs to print out text documents or light graphics. The AU$330 price tag is higher than average for a monochrome printer (especially one that that isn't wireless), and the Dell 1720 monolaser has the same features for $30 less. Still, the Samsung is a faster printer with higher quality prints. If those are deciding factors for you, go with the Samsung ML-2851ND.

Design
The Samsung ML-2851ND isn't much to look at. It looks unsurprisingly similar to every other mono laser currently on the market. We wouldn't call it ugly; more like utterly forgettable.

It measures 21.1cm tall, 36.3cm wide, 36.8cm deep, and weighs 8.8 kilograms. The top of the unit has one big power button and one of two LCDs for power and print status. The input tray feeds into the bottom and can hold the standard 250 sheets of paper; Samsung also gives the option to purchase another 250-sheet drawer as an accessory. The Samsung does have an additional tray on the front for single sheet feeds, but again, the Samsung ML-2851ND is as basic as you can get in a mono laser, with no bells or whistles other than a built-in duplexer for printing double-sided sheets of paper.

Features
The Samsung ships with a standard yield toner cartridge capable of producing 2,000 pages, but they also sell a 5,000-page high-yield cartridge. Samsung rates the printer's monthly duty cycle at 3,000 pages, which will be fine for most small-to-medium-size businesses.

You can either connect the printer to a computer with a USB 2.0 cable (not included) or through a network by way of a wireless router. Attaching it to your network is as easy as installing the driver onto the host computer and then simply connecting an Ethernet cable from the printer to your router. From start to finish, we successfully connected the host computer as well as two tangential computers to the ML-2851ND in less than 10 minutes.

Along with the typical driver options (layout, duplex, watermark, overlay), you can also adjust the resolution to 600dpi or 1,200dpi. It also boasts a text-enhancement option as well as a toner save mode that, according to Samsung, will lower toner consumption up to 40 per cent consumption.

Performance
Although the ML-2851ND isn't much to look at, it really shows its colours in both speed and text print quality. It's fairly rare to see a printer crank out text, graphics, and PowerPoint presentations at the same speed, but this Samsung printed about 20 pages per minute across the board. You can see below that it compared very admirably against two speedy competitors. It placed second in all of the categories to the top-performing Lexmark E350d, but the two came very close in our presentation and black text tests. Conversely, the Samsung printed much faster than Dell's 1720dn.

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

Presentation

Black Graphics

Black Text

Lexmark E350d

21.22 

25.47 

24.13 

Dell 1720dn

11.79 

21.59 

13.46 

Samsung ML-2851ND

20.28 

21.8 

20.68 

Products in this test are for comparative purposes only and are not necessarily available in the Australian market.

Like most mono lasers, the Samsung text quality results were superb, with dark lines and even thickness in bold fonts and large lettering. Navigating through the driver, you'll find options to "Print all text to black" and "Print all text to darken", which do exactly that: they allow the printer to make dark lines and text even darker, enhancing those solid characters for extra emphasis. The mono graphics page, however, was not without its shortcomings. The black-to-white gradations were marred with both vertical and horizontal lines, and we noticed muddy patches dumped throughout the page, most notably on large blocks of black colour. Portrait shots were tolerable, and the graphic characters were on par with text quality; lasers aren't meant for heavy graphics anyway, so overall we were happy with the results.

Samsung supports the ML-2851ND with a one-year limited warranty and phone support. Samsung's online Support Center also offers a how-to guide, an FAQ, and software downloads including drivers, manuals, and firmware updates.