Designed to bring multifunction colour laser printing to the masses the Samsung CLX-3160FN represents excellent value for money if its price tag is anything to go by. The real cost of printer however can usually be found in the cost of the printer cartridges. The Samsung CLX-3160 toner cartridges are slightly different to other colour laser printer in that they are smaller and yield fewer pages. Genuine Samsung toner cartridges work out to cost 2p per sheet for black printing and 10p for each colour print, but there are cheaper compatible/remanufactured toner cartridges available for the CLX-3160FN and these can cut the running costs of the printer in half. So the Samsung CLX-3160FN is affordable to buy and run, but is it any good in terms of performance? Well the print quality seems to be pretty good, black text printing is fast with 16ppm but colour is a little slow at 4ppm, this is direct result of the CLX-3160FN being made to a price and have a single imaging drum for all the colours to share, if it where to have separate imaging drums for each colour it would make the printer more expensive to buy and run so it swings and roundabouts. This seams to be the only sign of compromise when it comes to performance, the scanning and copying factions of the clx-3160fn are impressive, ok they’re not to the standard that a standalone device would produce but they’re good enough for most peoples needs. Overall the CLX-3160 seem to be a very solid performer in terms of value and performance.
