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Samsung ML-2851ND

Manufacturer: Samsung Part number: ML-2851ND

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 Compare with most popular

$124.99 - $299.99 at 13 online stores

CNET Editor rating:
3.5 stars Very good
Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 7 reviews

More product information:: Editors' review; User reviews; Specifications; Accessories; Manufacturer info

Bottom Line:: Small businesses should take a serious look at the Samsung ML-2851ND's monolaser because of its excellent print speed, text print quality, autoduplexer, and networking features. It's a little more expensive than the competition, but its chart-topping test results speak for themselves.
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*Total price for the Samsung ML-2851ND are estimated and may vary slightly based on exact tax, shipping, manufacturer rebate or any sale/promotion on the merchant site.

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CNET editors' review

Samsung ML-2851ND

price range: $124.99 - $299.99

Reviewed by: Justin Yu
Edited by: Rich Brown
Reviewed on: 05/12/2008
Released on: 12/07/2007

The good: Lightning-fast text speed; excellent text print quality; compact; built-in duplexing; network ready with straightforward setup; comprehensive driver settings.

The bad: Expensive; mediocre graphics print quality.

The bottom line: Small businesses should take a serious look at the Samsung ML-2851ND's monolaser because of its excellent print speed, text print quality, autoduplexer, and networking features. It's a little more expensive than the competition, but its chart-topping test results speak for themselves.

Read full review

Samsung's ML-2851ND is a barebones monolaser 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 $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 and Features
The Samsung ML-2851ND isn't much to look at. It looks unsurprisingly similar to every other monolaser currently on the market. We wouldn't call it ugly; more like utterly forgettable.

It measures 8.3 inches tall, 14.3 inches wide, 14.5 inches deep, and weighs 26.2 pounds. 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 monolaser, with no bells or whistles other than a built-in duplexer for printing double-sided sheets of paper.

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 for $100. We did the math and it factors out to approximately 2 cents per page for the high yield, which is good but not the best deal you can get. 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 600 or 1,200 dpi. 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 percent consumption.

Performance
Although the ML-2851 isn't much to look at, it really shows its colors 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' monolaser 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

Like most monolasers, 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 color. 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.

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

Find out more about how we test printers.

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User reviews

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Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 7 reviews
My rating: 0 stars

Showing opinion 1 to 7 out of 7

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9 stars

Great features for the price - Excellent for home office network

by Doncrescas on May 15, 2008

Pros: Very Low Price, Crisp Fast Output, Duplexing, Networking, Postscript

Cons: Initial network setup not seamless

Summary: If you can get this printer at the lower end of the price spectrum (I paid ~$160) it is an amazing value.

The printer is compact, has great looking text

...

Read more

Summary: If you can get this printer at the lower end of the price spectrum (I paid ~$160) it is an amazing value.

The printer is compact, has great looking text output, and duplexes. Face it, if you are not printing double sided you are wasting paper. Plus, the built in networking allows you to configure the printer via a local TCP/IP port. This means that if you have a wireless router, you get wireless printing right away.

Another important feature is that it has native postscript emulation. If you print a lot of PDF files you will see noticeably more accurate printing.

One small downside is that if you know absolutely nothing about how your home network is configured you may need to read some manuals. Particularly, you need to install the setIP application first and configure the printer to use the correct network settings before installing the drivers. Once you have, the installation software is very easy to use.

It also does not include usb or Ethernet cables, but at this price who can complain.

I can't find another printer that comes close to these features at this price.

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2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.
10 stars

great printer, can't complain

by njin on November 2, 2008

Pros: fast printing, duplex option, easy set up

Cons: can't think of any

Summary: I bought this printer based on great consumer reviews. It wasn't the cheapest printer out there but the duplex option was attractive to me so it was worth the ...

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Summary: I bought this printer based on great consumer reviews. It wasn't the cheapest printer out there but the duplex option was attractive to me so it was worth the extra $50. I was nervous about the set up since some consumers complained that they had problems, but I have had none so far. I also read that people noticed that the paper curls a bit and there were printing streaks on the sides. I've printed about 50 sheets now with none of those problems. I highly recommend!!

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1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
8 stars

Great printer for the price and features.

by jeff.bloom on October 31, 2008

Pros: Networkable and USB, duplex, speedy, good text and graphics.

Cons: Noisy. Samsung support was useless when I called regarding problems connecting. See below for details.

Summary: I just purchased this product, so time will tell. I've printed text with a gradient graphic at in toner saver mode. Both the text and the graphic looked great. ...

Read more

Summary: I just purchased this product, so time will tell. I've printed text with a gradient graphic at in toner saver mode. Both the text and the graphic looked great. I printed out a 104 page document in duplex in a manner of minutes. The problem was connecting this printer to our network. Most of the computers in the network are connected through wireless. I could not connect to the printer at all. When I connected through ethernet, the printer worked flawlessly. I'm still working on the wireless connection, but Samsung was no help. In fact, at one point the tech asked me where I bought the printer. When I told him that the company, which is a reputable online company, he said there was no warranty on the printer, because the company wasn't an authorized distributor. After a frustrating few minutes of telling him that was not legal and that I'll ship him all of my Samsung products in pieces, I asked to be connected to his supervisor. Of course, there was not supervisor available, but he did connect me with another tech, who thought that it was a software problem, but the people who could deal with the issue would not be in till Monday. After this useless 15 minutes, it took me another 2 hours to get three computers connected. At this point, the "Samsung" corporate attitude might stop me from buying another product of theirs, but otherwise I'm satisfied with this printer.

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1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
10 stars

Outstanding value

by rhomp2002 on September 30, 2008

Pros: Prints fast and prints clean, quiet, great size, very easy to set up on my Linux O/S, easy duplex printing.

Cons: The tab to catch the paper as it prints could be better designed.

Summary: Does exactly what it says t will do - speedy - excellent duplex printing (funny to see the paper come out and then go back in to print the other ...

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Summary: Does exactly what it says t will do - speedy - excellent duplex printing (funny to see the paper come out and then go back in to print the other side). Could not be happier with it.

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1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
10 stars

Seams to be worth the money, outstanding speed

by davefer on September 22, 2008

Pros: Clean print, easily networked, Very Fast...recommended to any one needing a monochrome laser printer for their small business.

Cons: Can't think of any

Summary: Wanted a decent compaq work horse of a printer, I believe I have found it in this model.

Summary: Wanted a decent compaq work horse of a printer, I believe I have found it in this model.

1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
3 stars

Very Poor operation. We returned it in three days.

by oklahomabusiness on January 9, 2009

Pros: None noticed

Cons: Poor paper tray operation.
Poor print quality because the paper did not load well.

Summary: The paper tray operation was sticky. The printer sometimes pulled more than one page thru resulting in printing that should have been on one page spread over two pieces of ...

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Summary: The paper tray operation was sticky. The printer sometimes pulled more than one page thru resulting in printing that should have been on one page spread over two pieces of paper. Other times, it pulled extra papers so that there would be blank pages mixed into a report. The inidividiual paper loader was difficult to use according to my assistant who never has problems with her current HP printer. The printer would also have unexplained delays in printing. We only kept the printer about three days. We only purchased it because of the high editor's rating. It seems the one they reviewed worked a lot better than the new one that we bought.

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4 stars

Good features but runs very hot

by markil2 on March 21, 2008

Pros: Fast, easy to set-up on home network

Cons: Runs very hot, paper curls

Summary: this should be a great printer, small footprint, great features (10/100 network, duplex, postcript) and easy to set up i thought i had bought a winner. however, the first ...

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Summary: this should be a great printer, small footprint, great features (10/100 network, duplex, postcript) and easy to set up i thought i had bought a winner. however, the first time i printed it got very hot and smoke actually came from the paper exit, now to give it the benefit of the doubt as this could be a build up of oil that burnt off on first use. subsequent prints have not seen smoke but it runs very hot and causes the outputted paper (good quality) to curl which is annoying. Not sure if this is a one off on my unit or a design fault as i can't find any other reviews but mine is going back.

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Showing opinion 1 to 7 out of 7

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Specifications

Manufacturer: Samsung
Part number: ML-2851ND
Description: Imagine style and power condensed. The Samsung ML-2851ND small office network monochrome laser printer combines a compact and stylish design with the speed and strength of a larger printer. The ML-2851ND can help reduce costs with its monthly duty cycle of 30,000 pages and TonerSave mode that can extend the cartridge life up to 40%. Working hard and looking well.

General
Printer Type Workgroup printer - Laser - Monochrome
Form Factor Desktop
Width 14.3 in
Depth 14.5 in
Height 8.3 in
Weight 19.4 lbs
Printer
Print Speed up to 30 pages/min - Letter A Size (8.5 in x 11 in), up to 28 pages/min - A4 (8.25 in x 11.7 in)
Connectivity Technology Wired
Interface USB, Ethernet 10/100Base-TX
Max Resolution ( B&W ) 1200 dpi x 1200 dpi
Duplex Printout Duplex
First Print Out Time B/W 8.5 sec
Language Simulation EPSON, PCL 6, PostScript 3, IBM ProPrinter, SPL (Samsung Printer Language)
Processor
Processor Samsung 400 MHz
RAM
RAM Installed ( Max ) 32 MB / 160 MB (max)
Media Handling
Media Type Labels, Envelopes, Transparencies, Postal card paper
Max Media Size (Custom) 8.5 in x 14 in
Media Sizes A4 (8.25 in x 11.7 in), A5 (5.83 in x 8.25 in), A6 (4.13 in x 5.83 in), B5 (6.93 in x 9.83 in), Folio (8.5 in x 13 in), Legal (8.5 in x 14 in), JIS B5 (7.17 in x 10.12 in), Executive (7.25 in x 10.5 in), Letter A Size (8.5 in x 11 in)
Envelope Sizes Com-10 (4.13 in x 9.5 in), Monarch (3.87 in x 7.5 in), International C5 (6.38 in x 9 in), International C6 (4.5 in x 6.38 in), International B5 (6.93 in x 9.83 in), International DL (4.33 in x 8.66 in)
Total Media Capacity 250 sheets
Media Feeder(s) 1 x Autoload - 250 sheets - Legal (8.5 in x 14 in), 1 x Manual load - 1 sheets - Legal (8.5 in x 14 in)
Max Media Capacity 500 sheets
Duty Cycle
Monthly Duty Cycle 30000 pages
Telecom
Modem None
Networking
Networking Print server
Connectivity Technology Wired
Data Link Protocol Ethernet, Fast Ethernet

Scanner
Type None
Copier
Copier Type None
Expansion / Connectivity
Expansion Bays Total (Free) None
Expansion Slots Total (Free) 1 ( 1 ) x Memory
Interfaces USB, RJ-45
Connections 1 x Hi-Speed USB - 4 pin USB Type B, 1 x Network - Ethernet 10Base-T/100Base-TX - RJ-45
Compatible Slots None
Miscellaneous
Consumables Included 1 x Toner cartridge - up to 2000 pages
Windows Vista Readiness Works with Windows Vista
Power
Power Device Power supply - Internal
Battery
Type None
Software / System Requirements
Software Included Drivers & Utilities
OS Required SuSE Linux 8.2, SuSE Linux 9.2, Red Hat Linux 9, Red Hat Linux 8.0, Mandrake Linux 9.2, Apple MacOS 8.6 - 9.2, Red Hat Fedora Core 1, Red Hat Fedora Core 2, Red Hat Fedora Core 3, Red Hat Fedora Core 4, Apple MacOS X 10.1 - 10.4, Mandrake Linux 10.1 Discovery, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Windows Vista / 2000 / XP
Peripheral / Interface Devices USB port, Ethernet port
Environmental Parameters
Sound Emission (Operating) 50 dBA

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Samsung ML-2851ND

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