Print Quality and Efficiency
While the previously reviewed Epson WorkForce 600 is smaller and offered color printing, it is an entirely different beast. For starters, it’s an inkjet and can rifle through cartridges quite quickly. This is especially true when printing in color. What’s even worse is that many color inkjets nowadays expect you to replace the color cartridges when they are spent, even though you may only use black and white.
The Samsung SCX-5935FN, by contrast, is a monochrome laser printer. This is much more efficient and inexpensive in the long run, especially if you happen to go through a lot of volume. I found the print times to be faster in general and the resulting print quality was good too. For people that care about speed, the rated page per minute for this printer is 35 PPM for standard letter size and 33 PPM for legal. We didn’t have any legal paper, but we did find that depending on the complexity of the pages, 35 PPM was within the ballpark of speed. That’s pretty good and will keep you running with the single tray. But then again, the does handle 1050 pages which is two reams of paper versus the capacity of most printers which is one ream of paper or less.
You can see some gradation lines when printing images, but text is very crisp and you don’t have to worry about any ink smears. The large paper tray, which holds about 1000 sheets, is designed for this higher level of volume too. Speaking of volume, since the toner is a toner, a few shakes when the empty notification comes on can often yield a few hundred more free pages.
The cartridge tray is located in the front, above the paper tray, making for easy access. This makes for a somewhat unsightly panel, but I’ll accept for the sake of its utilitarian utility. The fact that you can hide the printer completely from plain site and still print due to the networking capability makes the chunkiness acceptable.
Final Thoughts
It is not a thing of beauty nor is it supposed to be. The Samsung SCX-5935FN was built from the beginning to be useful and functional. I think that Samsung has succeeded in this regard as the printer will win no beauty contests. It’s definitely more beast than beauty.
The network-ready features come in really handy, not only working as a network printer, but also giving the ability to upload and download documents to and from a remote server. The print quality and speed are within acceptable ranges, though the “warmup” time can take several seconds. However, once warmed up, it starts to pump out pages at a reasonable pace.
This multifunction printer is certainly not without its issues, like being forced into a fixed IP and only having a single paper tray, but it’ll do the job for a small office. For larger offices, the lack of dual trays may be an issue, but the printer’s massive 1050 page capacity tray is nearly equal to the capacity of some dual tray setups.
At the same time, at about $1100, I’d expect it to do a little more than just “do the job.” There are more affordable options out there for home office dwellers on a budget, but there are bulkier and more expensive ones too. In the end, the SCS-5935FN ends up being pretty middle of the road.
Pros
- Robust network features
- Large paper tray and output area
- Hard drive dock available in the back
- Handy touchscreen user interface
Cons
- Physically large for some smaller offices
- Startup time is longer than expected
- Monochrome only
- Pricier compared to smaller alternatives
Overall Rating: 7.5/10.0
Love This Review? Hate This Review? Leave a Comment or Hit The Forums!