Color Laser Comes Home

Color laser printers have many advantages over ink jets for business use, including much faster print speeds, better-looking text, and lower long-term costs. Unfortunately, price has long kept the color laser out of reach for many small and home offices. Now Samsung's $699 CLP-500 joins a short list of recent, low-cost printers that allow home- and small-office users to enjoy color laser capabilities.

For an entry-level laser, the CLP-500 posted impressive printing speeds: 12.9 pages per minute for text and 3.2 ppm for graphics, scores that were on a par with those of other color lasers we've tested, including many that cost significantly more. The CLP-500 also beat out a previously tested $700 color laser, Minolta-QMS's Magicolor 2300W.

The CLP-500's print quality was mixed. Text was clean, dark, and straight, and overall color was good on simple graphics, but more-complex designs and photos fared less well, losing some detail.

The CLP-500 comes with an intuitive driver interface and a built-in automatic duplexer (for double-sided printing)--a nice touch at this price. It has a too-small 250-sheet main paper tray and a 100-sheet multipurpose tray (an optional 500-sheet tray is $299).

The CLP-500's price, speed, and text quality make it a solid option for small and home offices that need to print documents with sharp text and fairly simple color graphics.

CLP-500

Samsung

A great price and impressive print speeds help to overcome uneven color reproduction. Price when reviewed: $699 Current prices (if available)

Lisa Cekan