Samsung ML-2951ND Printer

Design and Build Quality

Grey and uninspiring are two words that might describe this printer. It looks like one of those devices that might be catching dust at the back of your office. But guess what, at least it’s not yellow or purple! To us at least, it looked dapper in that grey outfit, with the grills on the side and the flaps only adding to the look. This one is professional, conservative and classy. It’s got a boxy design, but a pretty tiny footprint, so you’ll have plenty of space to clutter your workspace with other stuff.

Here's a quick tour of the printer. The top consists of power ON button, the Cancel button, the demo page button, an Eco mode button and two LEDs – the first one shows the status of the machine and the second shows the status of the toner. The back consists of the LAN port, the USB connector and the power cord.

A complete grey outfit

The output tray is located at the top, alongside the control panel buttons. The front consists of the cover, to input the cartridge and there’s a paper level indicator located at the bottom, next to the first tray. There’s a manual feeder above it as well. The back consists of the last flap that is a paper width guide on a manual feeder.

At 7.2 kg, it’s definitely lighter than the Epson photo printer, which we reviewed recently. This monochrome printer has a quite a bit of plastic in its build, and it may come off as little flimsy, but considering it’s going to just sit out there minding it’s own business, we don’t see too much of an issue.

A manual feeder and a feeder tray

Features

The printer is powered by a 533 MHz processor with 64 MB of storage, which is pretty much adequate for your network printing needs. The printer is capable of printing at a resolution of 1200 x 1200 dpi and has PCL6 / 5e and SPL emulation. It supports a wide variety of media formats, including A4, A5, A6, Letter, Legal, Executive, ISO B5, JIS B5, Envelope and Postcard. A good variety of media types are supported as well, which include Cotton, Recycled, Bond, Thick, Envelopes, Cardstock and Transparent.

A small footprint

According to Samsung, the printer can print up to 28 papers per minute in A4 and 29 letter papers per minute. It’s got a first print out time of less than 8.5 seconds from ready mode. We’ve put that to test in our performance section. Installation of the single cartridge is easy. Flap out, cartridge out. Paper placement is pretty easy as well and the printer has been designed keeping speed and efficiency in mind.

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